Alex Wagner gets it right!

SATURDAY, JANUARY 21, 2023

Joins others in getting it wrong: Last evening, on Tucker Carlson Tonight, the Fox News Channel's "excitable boy" was excitedly at it again.

The youngster started by comparing mask policy during the pandemic to the way women are forced to wear burqas within some Islamist nations. 

Mainly, though, he was excited about gas stoves—and about the Chinese Communists. 

Starting with a bald misstatement about the contents of a recent report by a conservative publication, the excited and excitable fellow thrilled his viewers as shown:

CARLSON (1/20/23): So why do we suddenly know that gas stoves are a hidden hazard? Why did no one tell us this before? Where did this information come from? 

Well as the Washington Free Beacon has reported, government regulators are citing a study from a group called the Rocky Mountain Institute, and the Rocky Mountain Institute recently partnered with the Chinese to implement an "economy-wide transformation of America." OK, so the Chinese government, by proxy, gets to decide how you cook your dinner, what appliances you're allowed to have in your own kitchen?  

That's right, declared The Washington Post, and it's a good thing. The "hidden hazards of these appliances," the Post declared with obvious relief, "is finally getting attention." 

Finally! We've been waiting for it. Can you imagine the celebration in the Post newsroom? We've been fretting about gas stoves for decades and finally the science has caught up to their concerns. Well, unfortunately for The Washington Post newsroom and the Biden administration and most of all, the Chinese government, not everyone in America was immediately on board with the idea of getting rid of your gas stoves because they're a hidden hazard. 

"Most of all," it's the Chinese government! In this and in all other things!

Just for the record, no! The Rocky Mountain Institute didn't "recently partner with the Chinese" in the way this nutcase said, and the Washington Free Beacon didn't say that it did. None of that stopped the excitable boy from offering this declaration:

CARLSON: Now, remember. All of this, this moral panic on the left about gas stoves, stems from fake science about the health risks of natural gas pushed by the Communist Party of China. 

"All of this" stems from the Communists! It got even stupider after that, but the excitable boy has reached the point where he's able to spot a Chinese Communist under every stove and bed.

This ridiculous figure spews such statements to millions of viewers each night. We think such conduct should be front page news, but our major journalistic organs choose to walk safer paths.

That said, and in total fairness, the misstatements can be general across the sweep of "cable news."  

Our tribe often hears misstatements too. On Thursday night, to cite one possible example, Lawrence O'Donnell angrily made this statement right at the start of his program:

O'DONNELL (1/19/23): Nobody questioned the Justices themselves...No Justices were interviewed, and that line proves that no Justices were interviewed.

Lawrence angrily stressed this claim. Based on today's New York Times, it seems that his confident statement may well have been false. 

Last night, the highlighted statement by Alex Wagner was pleasing but plainly false. Wagner made this inaccurate statement in the first minute of her own show:

WAGNER (1/20/23): Fox News didn't cover the hearings. Every other major network did. Fox News ignored the January 6 committee hearings entirely.

Through a visual appearing behind her, Wagner cited this NPR report as the source of her statement.  (Headline: "Only one major cable news channel did not carry the Jan. 6 hearing live: Fox News.")

In fact, that NPR report only concerned the committee's first public hearing, the one which was held in prime time.  

In fact, the Fox News Channel did broadcast the January 6 committee's daytime hearings. You can refresh yourself on this point in this AP report.

In all honesty, the current structure of cable news is built for inaccurate statements. 

Few others approach insanity in the reliable manner of Carlson. But whether the channel is red or blue, hosts proceed secure in the knowledge that none of their guests will ever question, challenge or contradict their various statements, whether true or false. 

Bookings are done on a "members only" basis. Seldom is heard a discouraging word. Human nature takes over from there.

Wagner made other factual errors in her opening segment last night, along with some logical lapses. That said, she focused on a very important topic in a highly appropriate way.

She focused on the reign of misstatement and factual error which emerged from the Fox News Channel in the wake of the 2020 election. More specifically, she focused on the $1.6 billion lawsuit being brought against Fox News by Dominion Voting Systems.

Good lord! Rupert Murdoch was questioned, under oath, for the past two days in this highly promising defamation suit. If MSNBC was willing to post transcripts of its TV shows—it's fairly obvious why the corporate behemoth stopped doing that—we could show you more of what Wagner and her two guests said.

Could Dominion's massive lawsuit help bring Fox News down? Could such suits force the channel to rein in its relentless misconduct?

We can't answer such questions. To her credit, Wagner was willing to discuss the channel's behavior in a direct (if sometimes erroneous) way at the start of last night's program.

That said, Tucker had been screeching away, in his normal manner, just one hour earlier. Needless to say, Wagner returned to a safer topic—the pleasurable gong-shows of George Santos—before her program was done.

How can members of our blue tribe peel voters away from the red? As our millionaire corporate tribunes script us in our talking points, they simply never ask such questions—and we think the word "never" is justified.

Tucker was screeching away last night. He does so night after after night after night, and our major journalistic organs rarely take any real notice.

Someday, we may stop pleasuring ourselves in the predictable ways and instead start asking ourselves such basic questions as these:

In what sorts of ways could we work to bring such lunacy down? In what ways might we stop talking to ourselves—to "our favorite reporters and friends," even including our "very dear friends," and to no one else on the planet?

In what ways might we hope to show (some of) The Others that what they're hearing is wrong? What sorts of approaches might work? 

That's a fairly obvious question. Have you ever seen any such question asked?