This commentary is by Walt Amses, a writer and former educator who lives in North Calais.
Approximately a quarter-century ago, when the only things going viral were viruses, the smooth-as-molasses drawl of William Jefferson Clinton saw us through numerous crises, including the first World Trade Center bombing and mass murders at the Oklahoma City Federal Building and Columbine High School.
While Clinton deservedly had his detractors and his behavior was far from exemplary, his administration may have marked the last time in American history that objective reality wasn’t on the endangered species list.
Targeted by what former First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton termed a “vast right-wing conspiracy,” the Clintons fended off accusations ranging from cocaine distribution to real estate scandals and even the murder of former staffer Vince Foster (who committed suicide). The president’s well-documented inability to keep his pants zipped certainly didn’t help matters, but Hillary’s perceptions were largely dismissed as paranoia rather than the conception of a sinister evolution that 25 years later verges on threatening the very democratic ideals on which the country was founded.
Although not as carefully choreographed as it might seem, the conservatives nonetheless were playing a very long con whose trajectory beneficially intersected with that of reality television, Rush Limbaugh and Fox News, followed soon after by the explosion of social media, the perfect vehicle for spreading rumor, innuendo and outright fabrications instantaneously to a global audience.
As Fox News commemorates its silver anniversary, it might be a good time to examine the continuing role of misinformation in our daily lives and what the future might hold.
Around since the mid-1990s, reality television tapped into our heretofore undiscovered penchant for voyeurism while illuminating how many of us are competitive in nature, much like the contestants, often vying for cash prizes but still fascinated by the opportunity for payback and revenge as they burn their bridges and turn on each other.
According to Psychology Today, the message is that “ordinary people can become so important that millions will watch them. And the secret thrill for many viewers is the thought that, perhaps next time, the new celebrities might be them.”
But nothing — including reality TV — is quite that simple. One Japanese study finds that reality TV actually lowers IQ while increasing viewers’ incivility and rudeness.
Dr. Marcia Sirota, a psychiatrist, calls it “junk food for the brain,” celebrating stupidity, boorishness and spitefulness, pandering to our basest urges and impulses, titillating us but providing what amounts to empty calories.
Considering the enormous popularity of reality television, which is anything but real, its tendency to crater the IQs of regular viewers would logically create an infinitely more vulnerable audience, ready to believe just about anything.
Enter Roger Ailes. The head of Fox News at its inception in 1996, Ailes found the “moral failings of Bill and Hillary” a perfect, repeated target, according to The New York Times, endearing the new network to conservatives while suggesting Fox seemed far right only because the mainstream media was so far left.
Coupled with Limbaugh’s syndicated radio show, Fox quickly became the original beacon of “Fake News” — famously dubbed “Bull*hit Mountain” by Jon Stewart — and, along with Rush, earned millions of loyal viewers telling people what they wanted to hear.
But while Fox and Limbaugh certainly got the ball rolling, the advent of social media exponentially expanded how far, how wide and how fast the misinformation spread, delighting racists, homophobes and misogynists everywhere by reinforcing nearly every awful idea of the last half-century. Obama wasn’t a “real” American; liberals had declared a “war on Christmas”; Black Lives Matter is a terrorist group; Democrats support socialism; just to name a few.
Melanie McFarland, writing in Salon, suggests we “marvel at the spectacular impact a quarter-century’s worth of Fox News has had on American life.” Whether a person watches or not, “in some way Fox has made your life remarkably crappier.” And shorter, too. Citing the pandemic we’re still dealing with, McFarland says the Fox prime-time hosts (Sean Hannity, Tucker Carlson and Laura Ingraham) “have taken joy in helping prolong it purely for the sake of harpooning a Democratic president’s approval rating.”
Even worse than the false narratives spun around every topic, Fox perpetually simplifies complex issues into bumper-sticker-sized tidbits that essentially mean nothing but — because of their accessibility — fold easily into the core beliefs of millions who would rather crawl naked over broken glass than read anything longer than a Tweet. Just look at the word “freedom,” which for gun owners was a singularly powerful yet painfully simplistic mantra. Well, if it worked for the NRA, why not the anti-vax crowd?
Both Limbaugh and Ailes are mercifully gone from this earth but both lived long enough to celebrate their crowning achievement: the election to the presidency of a walking, talking venomous hate crime plucked from the world of reality television without a shred of integrity, expertise or honesty, who even now remains bent on destroying democracy. His malevolent campaign is supported by Fox talking heads and a Republican Party cowering in fear that the monster they created might turn on them next.
After 25 years, the system is rigged and Fox was instrumental in its rigging. GOP state legislatures across the country are fully engaged in suppression of minority voting rights based on the thoroughly debunked notion of rampant voter fraud; red state governors repeatedly criminalize any vaccine or mask mandates designed to keep their constituents safe and healthy; and scientists, teachers and doctors are demonized while unsuspecting viewers ingest horse medicine.
Each of these individual examples of quackery were strongly and repeatedly endorsed by the network’s talking heads.
The network whose “Fair and Balanced” slogan was laughable to begin with has recently replaced it, according to Salon. Dropping the objectivity pretense altogether, the new Fox slogan is “Standing Up for What’s Right,” a chilling assumption they have some idea of what that is.
