Why Have I Watched More Fox News Channel Lately?
I've not tuned into FNC for years, and even when I watched years back, I was always a critical viewer: I found their coverage repetitive, boring, oversimplistic, rather one-sided (despite professed "fair-and-balanced", which usually consisted of a token liberal/progressive here and there). I particularly loathed Bill O'Reilly's mash-up of right-centric populism (although most of it reflected his "talking point" podcast; I was too bored enough to watch the whole show). The mainstream media was well-represented from a left-centric perspective.There were times I thought Fox News could have been something special: they signed John Stossel and George Will. not to mention Murdoch's earlier acquisition of The Wall Street Journal. I do realize that I'm not your typical demographic: a highly educated libertarian bachelor who majored in philosophy. In fact, my social philosophy professor had us reading the original (translated) Marx and Engels. I love going deep into the arcane details of public policy; I have been known to read Rothbard just for the fun of it. I realize most people wouldn't be able to read the first 2 chapters of my dissertation without falling asleep. Me, I'll watch any Thomas DiLorenzo video on Youtube. I'll even watch/listen to some of Tom Woods' podcasts, and I'm feuding with him.
(Briefly, and I'm paraphrasing here, one day he posted a Ron Paul birthday topic on Facebook (for an anarcho-capitalist. Woods is particularly obsequious to Paul), saying something to the effect, "Thank God we have Ron Paul who's the real deal, a principled person who is the real deal, even when his views ran against the grain, unlike that pretentious political whore, Romney." I don't mind Woods hero-worshiping Paul, but I didn't like the cheap shot on Romney, which was totally unnecessary. When I confronted him, he didn't back off an inch, basically calling on his minions to back him up. When I suggested I would defriend him and/or boycott his show, Woods started this self-serving rant on how he does his podcasts, books, etc., out of the goodness of his heart: it takes so much of his time and effort, and it's free content: who am I to bite the hand that feeds me I'm just an ungrateful bastard. I challenged him to a public debate, and he laughed it off. Yes, even highly intelligent people can have their petty moments.)
So, channeling my inner cable executive, I could imagine world-class Wall Street Journal journalists headlining news coverage, I might institute a buzzer (or commercial break) every time some interviewee, including political whores, got caught launching into political spin. (Yeah, I know that means no airtime for Trump.) It was stunning when former network anchor Bill O'Reilly instituted his signature "No Spin Zone", because nearly all the op-ed content on the network is predictable, trite political spin. (This is not to argue FNC is alone in its filtered take; there are many news stories that the major mainstream news networks give short shrift and/or tend to frame from a "progressive" perspective.) To be frank, I never really understood why the 3 national networks didn't try to compete on content, for audience. This basically left Fox News with a wide-open target for the center-right. I also didn't understand why Fox's dominating ratings success didn't attract more competitors to its profitable niche.
I guess to a certain sense I've been influenced by my late maternal grandfather. I visited him during my college sophomore/junior year when my Dad was stationed overseas accompanied by the rest of my family. He was sort of a news junkie, and my Mom can tell you no noise in the house when the news came on. For some reason, the national news schedules were different in his area (just east of Providence), with one channel broadcasting at 6 PM vs. 5:30 PM. So we would watch a solid hour of news every night; he also subscribed to US News and World Report, which I also subscribed to until it went digital a few years back. (The magazine really screwed up; my uncle priest tried to get my grandfather's subscription transferred after he passed, and they never accommodated him. My uncle is a loyal consumer and would have probably renewed for life. Instead, they lost him for life.) My grandfather was a rare registered Republican (a small grocery owner) in Massachusetts. I don't know if I could pigeon-hole him in terms of his politics; he was quite proud of his social security check, probably a small-business Main Street Republican. The only time he lectured me was against abortion; I was like, "Grandfather, I don't even have a girlfriend yet." (Not to mention I had been pro-life since I ever discovered the meaning of the word "abortion".) My uncle was a strongly anti-Communist conservative, and my Mom is a social conservative (say, who is opposed to censorship of religious expression in public areas, and don't get her started on Hillary Clinton). My uncle is the interesting kind, sort of a Silent Cal type of conservative; he will state his point of view respectfully and let it go at that, refusing to get baited into a stalemated discussion and repeating his point of view. However, unlike some of us with nostalgia over the pre-Vatican II church, my uncle wanted no part of that; his biggest fear was as a bilingual priest, the Bishop would assign him to dying French-speaking parishes. He was about as old-school as they come; his seminary instruction (and exams) were totally in Latin. And he couldn't get permission to attend my Mom's wedding.
I totally loved Headline News in the early years, where you could get a refreshed half hour of news (not to mention the latest baseball scores). Around the turn of the century I was pretty much of a road warrior and workaholic; I didn't even subscribe to cable for a few years, so most of my news was coming from the Internet. I was vaguely aware of Fox News and its celebrities like Bill O'Reilly. Even when I started watching some of the programming, it was more to supplement what I was continuing to get on the Internet. Even then an hour of O'Reilly was too boring for me to take in one sitting; I was subscribing to his Talking Points memo podcast, where his populist nonsense often provided inspiration of one-off posts in this blog.
The national news networks are now reduced to downloaded Sunday talk show podcasts; on special events like election night I'll usually turn on FNC coverage, but I might also have 8 to a dozen web pages open, refreshing results. Oddly enough, this blog started as a political one, but as time has passed, one feature, political potpourri, has dwindled. I started getting fed up with politics for a number of reasons, even preceding the blog, with the unfunded Medicare drug benefit fiasco, the whole bait-and-switch TARP, the way that Obama shoved the corrupt Senate ObamaCare bill down the House's throat after Scott Brown's election finally ended the Dems' supermajority. I was definitely well on my way to libertarianism in 2012, although I backed Romney most of the way (I briefly supported Ron Paul more because of something stupid Romney did), mostly because I was scared that Santorum or Gingrich could be nominated, certain losers to Obama. And then Romney flushed his nomination down the drain, given the opportunity to run against the policies of both Bush and Obama, which to me was obvious.
I really didn't care what progressives might think of my limited watching of FNC; if anything, Obama's endless attacks on FNC almost made a defense of FNC a matter of principle. But I think if there was one time that I thought FNC had gone a step too far was when Karl Rove was in a state of denial over Romney's loss, still holding some Ohio counties were still in play and feuding with FNC's own pollsters against calling the state for Obama. I wasn't happy over 4 more years of Obama, but Romney had only himself to blame. I'm not sure who would have beaten Obama; I did think Chris Christie had a moment but he quickly ruled out a candidacy.
I had certainly stopped watching before Megyn Kelly's rise to the primetime lineup and certainly before Trump's improbable candidacy. What was clear and puzzling that the GOP voters, despite a deep pool of existing or former governors and senators, had no appetite for veteran politicians, and 3 outsider political novices, led by Trump, dominated early polling, up to 40-60% of the poll, leaving the other 14 scrambling for double-digit support In theory, Jeb Bush, a popular 2-term former governor of a purple state who had backed Rubio's unlikely ascendancy to the US Senate in 2010 against a sitting governor, the choice of the establishment, not to mention the third member of a family dynasty of two past Presidents, should have had the inside track, but it seemed like the Tea Party 2010 revolution was fading from the party's rearview mirror. Jeb's candidacy never got untracked as Trump, unlike Romney, was willing to throw George W. Bush under the bus, perhaps sensing public resistance to a third Bush Administration; Jeb was forced to defend his brother while at the same time to define his own independent candidacy. In the meanwhile, FNC was promoting Trump's candidacy, even covering Trump's campaign plane arrivals prior to campaign events.
My preferred candidate Rand Paul seemed to get off to a decent double-digit start, but faded back, in part due to Trump's attacks in painting him as just another candidate that he had bought off (he had contributed to Rand Paul's charitable efforts in performing eye surgery in Central America, a rather disingenuous attempt to imply political campaign support). And, of course, the largely neo-con GOP candidates love to bash Rand Paul as they did his father. Despite misgivings, I switched support to Cruz, but Cruz had little support beyond the early Southern primaries; all Trump had to do was hold his own in the South, as 14 other candidates quickly dropped out of the campaign; Cruz ran out of states he could win, and to be honest, I never saw Cruz as a viable general campaign threat against Clinton. I thought Rand Paul could have as a more unconventional candidate whose skeptical foreign policy could counter Hillary's interventionist perspective. We'll never know. Ironically, like Obama, Trump ran against Bush's Middle East intervention, and both men betrayed their rhetoric once elected.
I think historians will debate Trump's upset victory over Clinton for decades to come. I have to admit, I don't understand the Trump phenomenon at all. Trump, like Obama, has never been more than a transparent snake oil salesman. Trump has been against the Republican consensus in favor of trade and immigration for decades. He has been bashing American businesses.
So I have been intrigued how FNC has aided and abetted this unlikely faux populist Presidency. As I continue to mention in various tweets and comments I cannot understand how Trump, someone who was a registered Democrat 10 years ago, a thrice-married man who has openly admitted his marital infidelities, came to be elected President. The obsequious Fox and Friends, never mind "conservative" Hannity, is hard to watch. It seriously comes across as the propaganda arm of the Trump Presidency. I'm already tiring of the nonsense; I haven't watched in days; I think I briefly watched during the Youtube shooter incident.
I still can't get over the Trumpkin minions. One of them called me a "McCain conservative". My God, there's NOTHING conservative about Trump. As for McCain, he's no libertarian, and he's got a populist streak, but the last time I checked, he had something like an 83% ACU lifetime rating. Trump had an LPA (conservative PAC) rating of F in 2015-6, plus a CrowdPac rating of liberal in 2015.
Wrestlemania Weekend
WWE tried hard to get me back as a subscriber, offering me (and others) a free month, including Wrestlemania, Sorry; no sale. There are some decent matches on the card: Asuka vs Charlotte Flair. AJ Styles vs. Nakamura, and Daniel Bryan's unlikely return from a career-ending injury. Then there has been this quixotic unrequited campaign by John Cena to face the legendary Undertaker.I have zero interest in most of the other matches. Some matches seem to have predictable outcomes. Brock Lesnar's contract with WWE is ending, with a long-rumored return to UFC, and Roman Reigns who WWE has been pushing for years as their top babyface will inherit the universal belt; let's just forget this match was run at a prior Wrestlemania with Reigns being thrown around like a ragdoll. I'm bored with Reigns and his finishing moves like the Superman punch. And who does Reigns feud with? Journeyman John Cena?
I don't get the Cena-Undertaker feud. It ruins the storyline ending of Undertaker's career at last Wrestlemania. And Cena doesn't need the rub, as he himself admits he's heading down the home stretch of his own career. If anything, both Cena and the Undertaker should be giving the rub to younger, up-and-coming wrestlers. I would have thought if they were going to bring back Taker, he would take on Bray Wyatt with consistent other-worldly storylines.
Six-foot Nia Jax should wipe the floor with the much-smaller champion Alexa Bliss. And Owens and Zahn have to come on top of Shane McMahon and Daniel Bryan. I've never liked this "you'll remain fired if you don't beat us" gimmick. Owens is easily one of the top 2-3 wrestlers on the roster, and he's going nowhere. The only question is how they're going to script it. I think it's possible, if not likely that Bryan will execute a heel turn on McMahon, setting up a post-Wrestlemania feud and a championship challenge with Nakamura down the line.
I would be surprised if Asuka and Nakamura don't win their matches tomorrow, although on paper the petite Asuka shouldn't be a serious challenger to the near-6-foot Flair. Flair, of course, is motivated to end Asuka's scripted unbeaten streak. I don't see the logic of ending the streak short of becoming champion. But I don't like the "nobody is ready for Asuka" tagline. And this is a weird feud build without any physical contact prior to the event.
There's a bit of a mystery as to who will be Braun Strowman's mystery partner for the Raw tag team championship match. I wouldn't be surprised if it's a wrestler coming off the injury list or someone making their debut from the NXT roster.
I have zero interest in Ronda Rousey's debut match. Her promo skills are at best mediocre (which leads to the idea of a rumored Heyman manager debut). Outside of a constant pissed-off glare, I don't see much of a character. I don't see where they go with her character except maybe a feud with Asuka, maybe some run-ins with the bad girl trios, like they hinted in one promo down the stretch. But it's hard to see WWE have Rousey job/lose on her debut, but this is the same company who had Lesnar job to Cena on his return from UFC.
The WWE hates to be seen as predictable, so we'll see how my predictions hold up.
