Fox has refused for the second time in as many months to air a Presidential press conference, in violation of their responsibility to air news and programming of interest to the public in exchange for free use of the radio spectrum they use that is easily worth billions of dollars on the commercial market.
All the networks are allowed to use this spectrum for free on the condition that they broadcast the news, and this was big news. Anytime the President of the United States wants to talk to the American people, that’s big news, regardless of party politics or loyalties.
But that’s not even the most insulting part.
Rabid ideologues on FNC would be the first and loudest to smear NBC as an unpatriotic, America-hating traitor if they had refused to carry any of Bush’s press conferences over the past eight years. That’s hardly a debatable point given how often FNC news actors attack NBC, NBC Universal at every opportunity, and corporate parent GE purely for political theater. Shills and empty suits in the Republican congressional caucuses would demand hearings in the Senate and House to consider revoking NBC’s license and we’d almost certainly have half a dozen [note: This part is missing in my original document as well, I don’t know what got lost. –ed]
When the war against Iraq began even amidst significant concerns about the veracity of the justifications, Republicans began systematically demonizing anyone that opposed the war or questioned the administration’s reasons for starting it. Former U.N. weapons inspectors were greeted on network and cable news shows with the question “why do you hate America?”
I’m not kidding, I saw it for myself and it’s something I will never forget or forgive. I saw it then and I’m still seeing it now, only it’s time that the offenders took some of their own medicine. It’s time to take the traps and the fallacies constructed by the intellectually retarded right and use it against them not because we believe these things are true, but because they actually apply because they were so poorly conceived that applying them now to their creators is essentially effortless.
If you questioned the war, you hated America and were against the troops. If you didn’t support the surge or the implicitly trust the President to carry out the war on terror, you hated America and gave aide and comfort to the enemy. Who are you to substitute your judgment for that of your Commander-in-Chief? You’ve been given orders, peasant, your King has spoken and the fiat is this: only Republicans and conservatives are true patriots so either agree with them and fall in line, or remain an enemy of the state until the day you die – and by the way it’d be great if you could die right now to save us the trouble of having to murder you for the crime of being insufficiently patriotic.
So I’m doing what Republicans want me to do, I’m finally falling in line. I consider anyone that doesn’t mindlessly obey the orders of the American King, and anyone that questions our ruler obviously hates America. Anyone now bowing and kissing the ground that the President walks on must hate that ground and that ground is America, damnit, so why do you hate America?
Fox has refused to allow the President of America to speak to the American people, and over here on the right side of the fence that means that Fox hates America. Yes sir, Fox is giving aide and comfort to our enemies by censoring the great and wonderful democratic leader of the free world. Al Qaeda and Osama Bin Laden are subscribing to Fox and sending chocolates to News Corp headquarters to express their thanks.
Why does Fox hate America? Is it because they want to take away our freedoms? Do they hate our freedom fries? Do they hate democracy?
Kidding aside the reason that Fox dumped the President boils down to two very simple reasons. First and foremost the President is a Democrat and everything owned by News Corp is tainted, absolutely dripping with conservative political bias. If this was John McCain that wanted to talk to his fellow Americans, Fox would have given it wall-to-wall coverage and begged for more in order to prove their patriotism creds. I don’t ever recall Fox refusing to air a Bush presser, do you?
Second and certainly the less pertinent factor of the two: illiterate (reality) programming makes more money for a profit-obsessed network than the President of the United States does. But even outside the superficial and insulting litmus tests used by conservatives to determine who is a patriot, coldly and neatly categorizing every little thing in our lives to stamp it “traitor/un-American” or “USDA Conservative Patriot Grade A”, not based on any rational standard, but merely by asking if a given thing adheres to the Republican hardliners political ideology, Fox is as unpatriotic as anyone or anything simply for placing corporate profit above the needs and welfare of the American people.
That’s why Fox is unpatriotic and that’s why I don’t have to justify it with opinion, that’s what it’s a fact not subject to Newsvine interpretation and censorship.
End of story.