Can the Fox-Bots Be Cured?

Before my beloved Father-in-Law died, my ‘challenging’ Mother-in-Law was one of my more inspiring (and intimidating) role models. She’d occasionally vote Republican (which Dad ALWAYS did), but more often went Democratic for reasons of weighed value to more inclusive values and concerns for all citizens, even if the system’s not perfect. She became an ombudsman fighting for the rights of nursing home patients, she sat on the local zoning board, and she was never afraid to give elected officials - any denomination - a piece of her ample mind whenever they deserved it.

But then the love of her life died, and she’s been lonely ever since. In clinging to something of him and his views of life, she became addicted to Fox News, which - it has been noted many times - is the most successful mass propaganda/mind-control experiment ever deployed by partisan human beings against members of their own species. It has turned her into a regular O’Reilly puppet, victim of subliminal programming, a hater of all who are different or disagree. She was someone who never had a hateful bone in her body in all her years before reaching her late 70s and falling to this addiction.

She’ll be 86 this year. We’ve got to go visit and do what we can to get her some help around the house or live-in care, since she’s too stubborn to do it herself, too independent to go to “The Home,” and still in possession of most of her mental faculties Fox hasn’t yet stolen from her. It’s very sad to see this wonderfully smart, able, strong and loving person become a grim, insulated hater. She hates gays, immigrants, blacks, Muslims, Democrats, the French… anybody Bill O’Reilly tells her to hate. Which - even more sadly - now includes her own children. My husband and I (confirmed liberals) as well as his younger brother, who is a conservative Baptist preacher with his own SBC church! Very strange.

She’s alienated her family, her friends… people she’s known for decades or for their entire lives. I believe it’s a crime to prey on people like Fox does. It does real harm to real people, and they’re doing it purely for the profit. They should be stopped, a treatment for the mind-disease they’ve caused should be high on the list of urgent NIH projects.

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Filed under Slime Machine, Hate Speech, Politics of Hate, Media, Talking Heads, Corruption, Propaganda, Republicans | Comment (0)

Political Elephants in Black and White

As my household prepares to vote tomorrow in the NC primary, I’ll make note here of Frank Rich’s enlightening op-ed in the New York Times Sunday, The All-White Elephant in the Room.

Rich takes a refreshingly detached look at the current situation in the Presidential candidate fields on both sides of the party divide, that stupid game I like to call “Dueling Religious Bigots.” In particular, Rich dares to take on John McCain’s coveted endorsement by the right-wing religious ‘base’ wannabe spokesperson, the Reverend John Hagee. Who stars in the amazing (and highly disgusting) video below, that everyone who reads this should watch - if for no other reason than to remind you WHY Democrats very much need to win big this November…

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Filed under Party Primaries, Hate Speech, Politics of Hate, Religion, Campaigns, Hypocrisy, Racism, Presidential Candidates | Comment (0)

Hate: When is Enough Enough?

On the last day of November, 2007, a tense standoff in Rochester, New Hampshire occurred when a man walked into Hillary Clinton’s local campaign headquarters, claimed he had a bomb strapped to himself with duct tape, and took two campaign volunteers hostage. It lasted for hours before he finally allowed the hostages to leave and walked out to unstrap the “bomb” to turn himself in.

There has been quite a lot of talk in the political blogosphere about how hate speech in the ‘normal’ course of politics as usual can incite unstable people to commit terrible crimes. And as people living near the economic edge begin to fall off, we aren’t seeing any slowdown of bizarre acts and mass murders. But in politics, the hate is just getting warmed up.

On the right (RedState and FreeRepublic) the denizens were hoarding popcorn and speculating that Clinton had arranged for this attention-grab herself, liberally (ha!) salted with the usual right-wingnut hate speech we’re so used to from that corner. Fox’s Bill O’Reilly has of course embraced “The Politics of Hate” as his theme for the election season.

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Filed under Barack Obama, Party Primaries, Hate Speech, Politics of Hate, Religion, Campaigns, Hillary Clinton, Media, Racism, Presidential Candidates | Comment (0)