If it were not propagating ignorance that could kill not just the covidiots who watch but you and me too.
But I feel obliged to reiterate the following from “Political Ads: Twitter, Facebook, Fox News: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly. And Then There’s Google,” November 6, 2019:
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Rupert Murdoch can fix all that is wrong with Fox News with one phone call. Yet he seems perfectly content to preside over a propaganda machine that would shock even Joseph Goebbels with awe. But it betrays the conspiracy among media honchos that other networks go after everyone at Fox except that old fox himself.
So here’s to mainstream and social media pillorying Murdoch mercilessly for acting as Trump’s willing propagandist. It’s bad enough that his Fox News makes Putin’s RT worthy of comparisons with the BBC.
But, his anchors present propaganda with such religious conviction, their gullible viewers can be forgiven for accepting it as coming from Cronkite’s mouth to their ears. And don’t get me started on all the captains of industry who blithely associate with Murdoch, when they should be treating this Trumpian Goebbels like a pariah.
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Evidently, media CEOs are too complicit to call out one of their own. But even Carrey fails to mention Rupert Murdoch, who — with all due respect to Trump — is clearly the real villain in the villainy his cartoon depicts.
Former Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd, for example, has been the proverbial canary in the coal mine in this respect. His headlining commentaries include “Democracy overboard: Rupert Murdoch’s long war on Australian politics,” The Guardian, September 6, 2019, “The Murdoch media’s China coronavirus conspiracy has one aim: get Trump re-elected,” The Guardian, May 7, 2020, and “To call the Murdoch media empire a journalistic organization committed to bringing you fair and balanced news coverage around the world these days has become a joke,” CNN, May 17, 2020.
More to the point, when Rudd warns about the perfidy and treachery of fellow Aussie Murdoch, he speaks with the kind of authority US Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer exudes when he warns the same about fellow New Yorker Trump.
Still, I welcome Carrey’s influential voice to the chorus of those trying to hold Fox News to account. For too many years it has been feeding too many Americans fake news, political propaganda, and conspiracy theories that would make the state TV of any totalitarian regime blush with envy.
Incidentally, satellite-radio star Howard Stern went viral through all media this week for making the following observation:
The oddity in all of this is the people Trump despises most, love him the most. … The people who are voting for Trump for the most part … he wouldn’t even let them in a f—ing hotel. …
I don’t hate Donald, I hate you for voting for him, for not having intelligence.
(The New York Daily News, May 12, 2020)
Trust me, Trump would not only agree but probably longs to sit with old celebrity friends like Stern and have a good laugh at these poor suckers who fell for his shtick. But, as it was with Carrey, Stern was merely adding his voice to the chorus some of us formed years ago. Here, for example, is how I described these Trump lovers in “New Hampshire Primary Proved One-Third of Republicans are Gullible Fools,” February 12, 2016:
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Trump’s supporters are, for the most part, the same poor, uninsured white folks who are so ‘angry’ with Obama, they support rich, insured politicians who are hell-bent on repealing the healthcare Obama provided for them. They are the same blue-collar white folks who act as if they have more in common with a white-collar billionaire like Trump than fellow blue-collar blacks and Hispanics. And, alas, they are the same people who made Honey Boo Boo’s redneck blatherings and Snooki’s moronic antics must-see (reality) TV, signaling America’s descent into the cultural abyss where bombastic hucksters like Trump now thrive. …
Clearly, notwithstanding the ignorant fulminations of these Trump supporters, two terms fairly explain their rabid political activism against self-interest: old-fashioned racism and new-fangled xenophobia.
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What’s more, my commentaries are flagged with lamentations that Trump’s presidency (with its kakistocratic staffers and perils-of-Pauline policies) says far more about the pathetic state of our politics than the pathological state of his mind.
Nobody should be surprised that, instead of leading the world in the fight against this coronavirus pandemic, Trump has us wallowing in “deep shit” — as Dr. Rick Bright testified during a congressional hearing on Thursday. He, of course, is the former head of the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA) who Trump fired last month.
And, as Bright’s whistleblower complaint lays out in damning detail, Trump got rid of him simply because, well, he was too competent, and his early warnings about this pandemic were proving inconvenient truths his administration could no longer abide.
That said, I never liked Jim Carrey as an actor, but he may have found his true calling. Because he’s a terrific political cartoonist; and, as such, I like him very much indeed!
Related commentaries:
good, bad, and ugly…
New Hampshire…