Tag: Fox News

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Peculiar Praise

Jessica Tarlov’s encomium for President Joe Biden is curious. “Joe Biden bows out of the 2024 race — we lost a good president and a good man,” ran the whole Fox News headline, but it’s second part, after the dash, that is curious. To the best of our knowledge, Sleepy Joe Biden did not resign the presidency.

Ms. Tarlov has been a contributor to Fox for many years. She is a well-​known “liberal Democrat.” The article’s praise for the Biden Administration is clear in the blurb: “American Rescue Plan, infrastructure funding and gun safety are all things Joe Biden can be proud about.” Uh, OK.

“Biden just announced that he won’t be seeking re-​election this November. And even though I knew it was coming, it feels profoundly sad to me,” wrote Ms. Tarlov below the headline.

Sad on a human level. Joe Biden is a fundamentally good man who did not want this outcome. He believes he can win, even if the data doesn’t say so. And sad on a political level. Biden was an incredible president with a record to be enormously proud of. Whoever is at the top of our ticket will no doubt celebrate his accomplishments – and him! – but there’s a joy to how he talks about what the Biden-​Harris administration has gotten done that I’ll really miss. 

“I know that I speak for regular Democrats in thanking Joe Biden for an incredible four years and saying that we’re really, really sad. Father Time came for a really good one,” concluded Tarlov.

Chad Pergram, reporting on Fox, claimed that White House insiders had called Biden’s debate performance in late June evidence that his campaign was “unsustainable.” Since that June 27th night, and usually with a pretense of shock at Biden’s decline, major Democratic Party bigwigs, from Nancy Pelosi and Barack Obama to a huge cadre of billionaire donors, had been calling on him to give up the campaign.

But, oddly, not to resign the presidency. Apparently running the country is no biggie; running a winnable campaign is.

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folly media and media people social media

Pray Tell

Tucker Carlson, Fox News, firing, money, religion

At the beginning of the week, Tucker Carlson found himself unemployed.

The Fox News commentator and host of his own show was fired, so abruptly that his people didn’t know it until they showed up for work Monday morning.

Carlson was Fox’s first-​string, pulling in not only more viewers than anyone else on Fox, but anyone else on cable television. Since his ouster, viewership of Fox’s line-​up — and most significantly the Tucker Carlson Tonight time slot — plummeted. 

Fox News owner Rupert Murdoch made the decision. This sort of self-​sabotage is breathtaking to behold. It’s the second time in recent years that Fox News has ousted its most lucrative talent.

You may remember that Bill O’Reilly, whom Tucker replaced, was let go because of the many sexual misconduct lawsuits Fox had been forced to pay out. It was not immediately clear why Tucker Carlson got the boot. 

Initial theories focused on the Dominion lawsuit, but that seemed implausible to those who followed the story closely. Most viewers believed the firing was ideological in nature. Murdoch is very establishment-​oriented, and Tucker Carlson has increasingly become anti-​establishment. And on his semi-​penultimate show, he lectured about the dominance of Big Pharma advertising on cable TV, and 

This. 

Is. 

Just. 

Not. 

Done.

As the week wore on, a more intriguing theory emerged: Rupert Murdoch did not like Tucker’s Heritage Foundation speech over the weekend, in which the Fox anchor entreated his audience to pray for the future of America. Murdoch is said to hate that sort of thing, especially since he jilted a former future Mrs. Murdoch (that is, a fiancée) for her over-religiosity.

I cannot imagine anyone praying for Fox News.

Not, it seems, even Rupert Murdoch.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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media and media people

There Goes Da Judge

Andrew Napolitano, former New Jersey superior court justice (and therefore often called “Judge Napolitano”), has been a legal and constitutional analyst for Fox News for some time. For several years now he’s hosted a nightly program on Fox Business called Freedom Watch, ending each show with a tagline: “Defending freedom, every night of the week.”

Monday night he amended it: “Defending freedom, everybody’s freedom, every chance I get.”

The tagline changed because Freedom Watch is now off the air. Fox pulled it.

Thankfully, Napolitano will still appear on various Fox commentary shows as an on-​air consultant. Hence the teeth in those parting words: “every chance I get.”

The show began three years ago as a weekly webcast video. It soon began to air more frequently, and in 2010 hit the Fox Business channel — though it should have found a place on the News channel, alongside Hannity and O’Reilly and The Five. Napolitano drove home his philosophy with a series of oft-​repeated slogans, including one of my favorites, “Does the government work for us or do we work for the government?”

Napolitano’s straight-​forward, enthusiastic and general “good guy” approach made the radicalism of his political beliefs palatable to a wide viewership.

Yes, Freedom Watch was a great show — there is nothing else quite like it on television, though John Stossel’s weekly show remains on Fox Business, and hails from a similar perspective. Both are popular as excerpted on YouTube.

A lot of folks will miss Freedom Watch, but I, for one, will keep watch for Napolitano’s future projects.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
crime and punishment general freedom

Thou Shalt Not Trespass

Some people are creeps. 

On Independence Day, someone — or a group of someones — broke into Fox News’s Twitter account for politics and put out false notices about the death of the United States President. Apparently, they meant this to smear Fox News, which, though calling itself “fair and balanced,” is in truth a conservative counter to the vaguely-​to-​staunchly leftward bias of ABC/​CBS/​NBC/​CNN/​MSNBC. The popularity of Fox really bugs many folks; some become unhinged on the subject.

And they forget that they should obey the law. And principles of decency.

Now, I don’t know what law in particular was broken. I can’t name it. But, just as I need no city council ordinance number to tell a stranger to get out of my house, after he entered without permission (finding the key, perhaps, in its secret spot in the garden — and hey: what was he doing in the garden anyway?), just so no one needs a special law to know that logging in to Twitter and trying a bunch of obvious and not-​so-​obvious passwords to gain access to someone else’s account is wrong. 

We know this by common law and common sense and simple, everyday morality.

I have a simple bit of advice for all political activists. Say you are angry and you want to really hurt your “enemy.”

First ask yourself: Is what I want to do unjust?

Lastly, you might want to consider: Is it tasteless?

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.