Friday, July 22, 2011

Fox News and Their War on Logic

So I'm over at Think Progress and the first headline I see is Fox Host: Free Birth Control Is Liberal Conspiracy To ‘Eradicate The Poor' which is exactly what it sounds like it'd be.  And because, yeah, if there's one thing us liberals hate, it's poor people. That's why we work so hard to help them, so we'll have fewer poor people. 

Oh wait a minute, that actually makes sense.  In fact, one big reason to give birth control to the poor is so they'll have fewer children, which will also help them be less poor.  So this isn't really a conspiracy, in that it's our stated purpose for poor people to have the ability to limit the number of kids they have.  And being that conservatives typically lament how many kids poor people have, you'd think they'd be in on this "conspiracy" with us.

But that's not my point, my point is: How much longer can they continue to spew this offensive nonsense before they lose their last believers?  Seriously.  I mean, who can listen to this and be like "Yeah, those lousy liberals hate them poor people so much they want them to have fewer kids"?  At best, they have to hope that nobody's paying attention to what they're saying, because even the most diehard Foxfan can't possibly find these arguments convincing;

And then there's the weird issue of them going on and on about women not needing birth control if they "stop having irresponsible sex."  Uhm, duh?  Using birth control IS having responsible sex.  And really, are they imagining that only sluts need birth control? 

And it sounds like they forgot they weren't talking about STD's.  If you abstain until marriage and stay in a monogamous relationship, you won't get STD's; but you can STILL get pregnant.  And if they're arguing that it's irresponsible to ever have sex unless you were wanting a kid from it, then I think they should go right out and say it, and see how far that gets them. I suspect they'd lose a big chunk of their audience with that one.

But of course, they don't really mean this stuff at all, as these are all codewords for what they're really talking about, and this code is so ingrained in their viewers that the words pass through without their surface meaning being heard.  This isn't about birth control.  This isn't even about helping poor people.  This is about them attacking irresponsible black hos who are too dumb to close their legs, as well as getting a funny little dig on liberals.  That's it.  That's the uncoded message that Fox viewers are receiving. 

Because at the end of this, you're not supposed to think "Oh, those damn liberals want to prevent poor people from having kids."  You're supposed to think...well, hold on.  It's late and I'm still actually having trouble with the exact message on this one.  Because again, conservatives should be happy about a program that helps poor people be more responsible and have fewer children.  And so they're attacking the very program they should support, as well as attacking and defending the ability of minority women to have fewer children. 

And so I'm thinking they're just mindless dolts who are using codewords irresponsibly and don't really know what they're doing.  And if their viewers aren't cluing in on how moronic this garbage is, it's only because they also don't know what they're doing, and aren't even really paying attention.  They know they're upset about something, and that's good enough for them.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I think they're mean and nasty and hoping to rile up some friction for even the most rational and non-controversial bipartisan policy.

Because that's what this is about. Destroy the potential for bipartisan action so Republicans win and greedy billionaires can extract even more value out of the economy (causing the US to stagnate even more, because unevenly distributed wealth creates unevenly distributed opportunities and gives the invisible hand arthritis so more of a Brazil 50 years ago than USA 50 years ago--lovely).