Just as I took a bite of my fantastic Fancy Medjool Date, I opened my Firefox and up popped the usual homepage of the New York Times. The first story that caught my eye was the policy change voiced by the Commander-in-Chief himself regarding the use of nuclear weapons by the US. I read the first paragraphs of The Times, but then got curious about The Right's take on things.
My new tab went to Fox News. I took a bit of comfort in the fact that my predictive texts ran to The Fox Theater, location for the BLOWOUT at the feet of Pretty Lights a few days back. I manually went to the Fox NEWS homepage, mind racing back through the nostalgia, and checked out Rupert's take on things.
This, for some reason, made me feel better about things. I'm not speaking to the idea that the right set me straight, but more that I'd at least give them a chance to say their piece without preempting their message. Doing so could reasonably be met the charge of irony, hypocrisy even, given my take on Bush's views for when to start a war.
The first disparity between the two articles to jump out at me was that a poll ran just below the link to the article. "YOU DECIDE: Is Obama Limiting Nukes Too Much?"
I didn't see the Times asking for an opinion in close proximity to the link. Maybe they want you to read it first.
The next thing I noticed was that there was a button that would enlarge the text on the page from, what seemed to me, "Perfectly Legible" to "Huge" to "Fucking Outrageous, Are You Kidding Me Grandpa?" And then I remembered that Fox's target audience is the paranoid old-folks who are sure the world's changing too fast, remember kindly the 50's, wonder how America turned into a sissy nation run by cowards, need high powered eye wear kind of demographic.
Finally, as I was reading the Fox piece, the line "(...)signaling a clear break from his predecessors on the issue." A break from Reagan, Bush, and even Clinton. He's more radical than that cheating, lying, womanizing bastard! Obama: taking the country farther than it's ever been!
I like that America's nuclear strategy is guided by someone with the stones to imagine such a place.
3 comments:
awesome post
Spending that week with your Grandpa and listening to Fox News blast into my brain just about 24/7 made this post really resonate.
Wonderful. Thanks to your post, I decided to check out fox news' home page myself.
In the headlines, I was thankful to see Obama's name rather than Palin's. Last night, I noticed on Google News that every story under 'US News' included a picture of her. I started to wonder if leadership of our country changed hands while I was unplugged in the desert.
Then I noticed in even larger print, 'Terror Plot Details Revealed.' Again, thinking I'd missed some important event, I looked for other stories on the internet. Turns out this mega-headline on FoxNews.com was a follow-up on a terrorist plot from May, 2009. Important news? I suppose. Breaking news? Hardly.
Then I took the 'How can the govt expand revenue' quiz and found that my choices were an excellent demonstration of how to skew data.
Today's two columns are 1) why Obama is the most naive president ever, and 2) Obama might be insane. Fair and balanced? Is this even news?
I've had enough. I feel like I've done my open-minded best, just please don't ask me to watch Glenn Beck... I'd like to stick to Jon Stewart's parodies.
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