TUESDAY, DECEMBER 3, 2024
Spotless minds serviced by Fox: It's a very well-known story from a very well-known book. The leading authority on the story starts its lengthy account of the matter in the manner shown:
Tower of Babel
The Tower of Babel is an origin myth and parable in the Book of Genesis meant to explain the existence of different languages and cultures.
According to the story, a united human race speaking a single language migrates to Shinar (Lower Mesopotamia), where they agree to build a great city with a tower that would reach the sky. Yahweh, observing these efforts and remarking on humanity's power in unity, confounds their speech so that they can no longer understand each other and scatters them around the world, leaving the city unfinished.
According to the ancient story, Yahweh devises a way to stymie the productive capacity of humanity—of the human race. Yahweh "confounds their speech," creating a world in which "they can no longer understand each other."
This explains "the existence of different cultures." That would of course help explain the existence of different warring cultures.
In the modern age, we've reached the point where the so-called "democratization of media" has created a similar state of affairs right here in our bifurcated American nation. Also involved is the corporate journalistic strategy on own as "segregation by viewpoint."
In the aftermath of November's election, it may be worse than it's ever been.
We Americans are now living in an unmistakable type of Babel! Consider Brian Stelter's report about the way the Fox News Channel has chosen to cover—or has chosen to refuse to cover—the controversies which surround the nomination of Pete Hegseth to head the Department of Defense.
For the past few years, Hegseth has been one of the three co-hosts of Fox & Friends Weekend. At this site, we've puzzled about his performance on that show on a fairly regular basis.
Now he's involved in a great civil war concerning his nomination! Unless you're watching the Fox News Channel, where, according to Stelter's analysis, this is what millions of spotless minds currently aren't being told:
Scandalous? Not on Fox
What's a media outlet supposed to do when its longtime host is picked to run the Pentagon, and then a series of eyebrow-raising news stories trigger doubts about his appointment? If you're Fox News, evidently, you just pretend the stories don't exist.
Fox, which employed Pete Hegseth for a decade, has not covered the past week's controversies involving Donald Trump's nominee for defense secretary at all, according to SnapStream and TVEyes database searches. The omission is potentially significant because Fox is the top TV outlet for Republicans, and Hegseth's confirmation hinges on Republican senators.
On Fox, Hegseth's former colleagues aren't raising alarms about the allegations or defending him from the charges—they're just not talking about the issue at all. On Monday's edition of "Special Report," Chad Pergram said Hegseth's confirmation "could be a problem" because "he faces problems about his personal conduct." What problems? Pergram didn't say. Neither has any other Fox show—there have been no on-air or online mentions of the recent revelations by The New York Times and The New Yorker.
Stelter continues from there. At Mediaite, Colby Hall cites Stelter's report, then explores this silence further:
Brian Kilmeade Calls Out the ‘Volume of Personal Attacks’ on ‘Our Buddy Pete Hegseth’
The challenging position that Fox News hosts find themselves in covering many embarrassing allegations against their former colleague Pete Hegseth was on full display Tuesday morning.
[...]
Fox News opinion hosts have primarily ignored the entirety of Hegseth’s controversial nomination. However, [Brian] Kilmeade mentioned it Tuesday morning while interviewing Trump’s spokesman, Jason Miller, during the 7 AM hour of Fox & Friends.
“We saw a lot of people on Capitol Hill, little by little; I know Pam Bondi was up there yesterday, and Pete Hegseth was up there yesterday,” Kilmeade opened.
“I think the volume of some of the personal attacks on some of your, some of the nominees is stunning, including our buddy Pete Hegseth, who wrote a book about the Pentagon, served 20 years in the military, has been decorated—chose the infantry after an Ivy League education. You’ve seen what he’s able to accomplish for veterans.”
Fox News viewers were likely left confused by the mention of “personal attacks” without any specifics being included in this show or any other that’s been on Fox News. “But does the volume of the attacks surprise you? And does it make the president—does it make the president waver or wonder?” Kilmeade asked of Miller, who flatly said “no” before standing behind Hegseth’s nomination.
You can watch the videotape of Kilmeade's performance at the Mediaite link. Kilmeade has been performing this type of journalism for more than two decades at Fox.
David Copperfield once made the Statue of Liberty disappear. The four co-hosts of Fox & Friends perform such tricks as this.
People watching Fox & Friends don't know that they're being clowned. That said, this sort of conduct is general over the Fox News Channel.
In this way, the channel helps maintain the eternal sunshine of its viewers' spotless minds. The New York Times performs an oddly similar service when it refuses to tell its readers about the depth of this problem—when it refuses to tell its readers about what happens at Fox.
We're living in an American Babel—a Babel of corporate creation. For the record, the cable news channels which serve Blue America are also a part of this problem, if only by their own refusal to report on the conduct at Fox.
Like Yahweh, the people who run these cable entities have created a modern type of Babel, in which populations can no longer understand each other—in which they might as well be speaking wholly different languages, so different are the types of information to which they are exposed.
A final point, and this is important:
Sometimes, viewers of the Fox News Channel are exposed to types of information which are withheld from Us! The woods are lovely, dark and deep, but our rapidly expanding modern Babel involves a type of existential crisis, and the separation of our various American populations is only becoming more vast.
ReplyDelete"People watching Fox & Friends don't know that they're being clowned."
So, to you, refusing to repeat Democrat smears is clowning. And to me, repeating Democrat smears is clowning.
Okay, different folks - different strokes, I guess.
Indeed, to some people facts are clowning; to others, they are...well, facts.
Deletehttps://jabberwocking.com/pete-hegseth-is-a-devout-christian/
DeleteNo mention of Republican smears, 3:43?
Delete“ This explains "the existence of different cultures." That would of course help explain the existence of different warring cultures. ”
ReplyDeleteThe presence of different languages (babel) does not explain the existence of different cultures at all. It is a sign that cultures are different but doesn’t tell us why or how they got that way. Somerby doesn’t seem to know what “explain” means.
There is nothing that says people cannot speak multiple languages.
How did you guys lose an election with charm like that?
DeleteThere will be another election.
DeleteRampant cheating.
DeleteSomerby calls us a bifurcated nation. That means cut in two. Actually there are more than two factions, even in politics. It is reductionist and superficial to reduce us to red vs blue given that the Republicans are in-fighting.
ReplyDeleteWe don’t have to accept Somerby’s framing.
ReplyDelete"Sometimes, viewers of the Fox News Channel are exposed to types of information which are withheld from Us! "
ReplyDeleteUnless you verify the info presented by Fox, you will be taken in by stories and misinformation that consists of lies, doctored videos, and outright propaganda. Fox is so unreliable that the amount of work it would take to verify their content is not worth the occasional different info that is legitimate. It is easier to read Ground.com and look at the stories that are solid news appearing on Fox but not on left-wing and centrist sources. That will be one story out of many, and often it is something trivial that does nothing to widen or enhance our understanding of current events. In the meantime, you will have to wade through a lot of shit to hear anything of even remote value on Fox News.
It is hard to understand why Somerby makes a fuss over this, if he were not advancing Fox as a source in order to support right wing positions. I believe Somerby is doing this in bad faith.
“ types of information” for various meanings of “types of information:” lies, propaganda, bs, smears, crude attacks. That has to be what the man meant, no? If not, he’s a disingenuous tool.
DeleteIf the details of an unsupported claim of very bad conduct are reported, many viewers will believe it, or partly believe it. We saw this with the Steele Dossier -- something that never had credibility.
ReplyDeletehttps://jabberwocking.com/pete-hegseth-conservative-asshole/
DeleteThanks for the link, Ilya. Drum's analysis is surprisingly unfair. He doesn't discuss all the exonerating facts about the alleged sexual harassment that are in the official police report. He ignores the fact that Christian tats basically represent belief in Christianity, not racism.
DeleteThe real problem is that Drum focused on secondary matters. Our military is in desperate need of reform. We need someone with the commitment to fix the military. Note some very serious things:
-- They completely fouled up the withdrawal from Afghanistan. We needlessly lost lives and huge amounts of equipment that's now in the hands of our enemies
-- They are unable to get enough recruits, so they lowered the standards. Will these less able new recruits be able to handle the job? Who knows?
-- Their focus on race is causing divisiveness between races.
-- The Pentagon failed its 7th audit. It can’t fully account for $824 billion
Hegseth should be evaluated on his commitment and ability to shake up the military and solve these problem, not some comment that his mother made nine years ago.
I don't know, Dickhead in Cal, there seems to be an abundance of support. But dig that crazy giant Nazi tattoo on the man's chest. Don't worry, I am sure you will be a good Jew.
DeleteDavid in Cal,
DeleteThe Right-wing media (AKA the media) is how you get people thinking Joe Biden hasn't been the best President of the United States in over 60 years.
How are you going to get more recruits in a capitalist country?
DeleteI hope Hegseth uses his big Right-wing brain and comes up with $omething to incentivize recruit$.
Hilarious.
DeleteDavid still thinks he's going to be viewed as one of the good ones.
What a gullible clown.
"They completely fouled up the withdrawal from Afghanistan."
DeleteFalse. The US military evacuated more than 100,000 people in a short window. Any equipment the left behind was in the hands of the Afghan army.
"Their focus on race is causing divisiveness between races."
Cite? I've done contract work at several military installations. I saw no "divisiveness" at all.
"The Pentagon failed its 7th audit. It can’t fully account for $824 billion"
And Hegseth is the man to fix this why? He's never run so much as a garage sale, much less one of the world's largest and most complex purchasing operations.
Anyway, stick a fork in Hegseth. He's done.
"He doesn't discuss all the exonerating facts about the alleged sexual harassment that are in the official police report."
DeleteThe secretary designate got blindass drunk and had sex with someone else's wife--a punishable act under military justice. The woman says she told him "no" over and over, but he did it anyway.
Know what that's called?
It’s called a lying woman. The evidence in the police report makes it pretty clear that she’s lying. That’s presumably why no charges were filed.
DeleteNow Hegseth has other problems that are more real, such as getting badly drunk. There’s also question of whether he has the ability to fix the military. I don’t think he does.
A fascist grifter running the DoD is more than "questionable".
Delete"If the details of an unsupported claim of very bad conduct are reported, many viewers will believe it, or partly believe it."
DeleteSit down, fool who came here touting "2000 Mules".
Take a look at the trend in total number of votes cast in Presidential elections at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voter_turnout_in_United_States_presidential_elections
DeleteBased on the trend, 2020 should have had around 146 million. The official figure was 158 million. That doesn't prove that 12 million bogus votes were cast, but it does suggest that possibility.
Brian Kilmeade calls out the volume of personal attacks on his buddy Hegseth and is waiting for a reply from Hegseth's mother.
DeleteIf there is anyone more stupid than to believe a movie put out by Dinesh D'Souza , it would be someone who defends it after being told flat out by D'Souza that it was non- factual rubbish.
DeleteIt is always useful to visit a link provided by DIC, insofar as the data contained therein most commonly discredits his argument. Take a look at the graph entitled "History of Voter Turnout" in the Wikipedia entry he cites and draw a line from 1996 to 2020.
Delete
DeleteEveryone (even Mr. Soros himself!) knows that the people didn't elect the vegetable in 2020.
Seriously, why would the people elect the vegetable? Think about it, soros-bots. It's ridiculous. To suggest that they did would be clowning.
2:09 Probably because your orange Jesus 1) completely botched the Covid response, killing hundreds of thousands of people, 2) packed a corrupt Supreme Court, taking away the rights of anyone born without a y chromosome, 3) revealed himself to be so mentally impaired that he bragged about passing a standardized dementia test. "Yes, Mr. President, that is a cartoon of a giraffe, you're good to go as leader of the free world. " Oh yeah, Boris, you took his word on the results of that test, which he has remained sealed.
Delete2:09,
DeleteWhatever you say Soros-bot.
David, the vote thing is quite the puzzle. I’ve always said that I never saw any convincing proof of election malfeasance in 2020. I’m not sure now.
DeleteThis thing with it taking weeks and weeks to count votes has to stop. It doesn’t make any sense with the technology we have today.
You'd think it would take less time to count the votes, what with all the Republican voter suppression tactics.
DeleteCecelia, are you agreeable to tell your republican reps to stop blocking the Dems universal voting rights bills? That would help a lot but it seems your reps like it this way.
Delete
DeleteSurely the people didn't elect the veg in 2020.
Why would they elect the veg? Why would any people, anywhere, elect the veg? That's nonsense.
I see Cecelia and DiC have competition:
DeleteMaster NURS FPX 4000 Assessments with Expert Online TutoringDecember 4, 2024 at 3:43 AM
8:27 The voting tabulations in the 2020 election are probably the most well studied in the history of the United States. But you have your doubts. You are the consummate troll.
DeleteI'm perfect, every advertisement tells me so. Every politician does too. So why put myself through the torture of questioning anything? What am I some kind of masochist?
ReplyDeleteIn 1995 at a major indoor track event in Switzerland, a fart occurred so loud that spectators thought a trackside loudspeaker had blown. The fart has been estimated at over 100 decibels – about the volume of a chainsaw. The woman responsible was never identified.
ReplyDeletehttps://www.restonyc.com/whats-the-loudest-fart-ever-recorded/