What is Going on at Fox News?

[one...two...tree 2,762]

By David Frum

What the hell is going on at Fox News?

On Friday evening, Fox viewers were treated to an hour-long televangelical special starring Glenn Beck. (The opening of the show can be seen in our Watch Now window, at right.)

Watching Beck cry for the cameras is always a treat, although I notice that Beck's colleague Sheppard Smith did not enjoy it very much.

But other viewers certainly did like it. Beck is eclipsing Sean Hannity as Fox's second-biggest story; very likely the ratings for the Friday special even overtook O'Reilly. Clearly, Beck is tapping into something. What?

Beck insists "It's not about politics." His special made a point of featuring images of Republican House leader John Boehner during his castigation of politicians "left and right" and both "the last administration and this administration."

So what is it about then? What are Beck's growing number of viewers responding to? On air, Beck promotes sinister conspiracy theories. Here he is on Fox & Friends, warning that the Obama administration is planning a totalitarian takeover:

We are a country that is headed towards socialism, totalitarianism, beyond your wildest dreams. I have to tell you: I'm doing a story tonight that I wanted to debunk – these FEMA camps – I'm tired of hearing about them – you know about them? - I wanted to debunk them. We've now for several days done research on them. I can't debunk them! If you trust our government, it's fine. If you have any kind of fear that we might be heading towards a totalitarian state: look out. Buckle up. There's something going on in our country … that ain't good.

And here he is suggesting that serial killers erupt because they are pushed to the wall by "political correctness."

The audience for Beck's Friday night special were each given copies of two books. One of them was Cleon Skousen's Five Thousand Year Leap. Skousen, who died in 2006, is one of the legendary cranks of the conservative world, a John Bircher, a grand fantasist of theories about secret conspiracies between capitalists and communists to impose a one-world government under the control of David Rockefeller.

There's always been a market for this junk of course. Once that market was reached via mimeographed newsletters. Now it's being tapped by Fox News.

Conspiracy theories always flourish during economic downturns. They flourished during the terrible slump of the 1890s (when they captured even so fine a mind as Henry Adams) and again in the 1930s. Today's slump – so vast, so difficult to understand – opens the door again.

Right-wing populist conspiracy theorizing often overlaps with the left-wing variety. And yet there are significant differences.

Beck speaks to a feeling that this powerlessness is somehow new, somehow a departure from the natural order of things:

This is your country, you are still in control. … Now you're being forced to bail those people out. There are more of us than there are of them. We surround them.

It's not a new message of course. In fact, big parts of it seem almost self-consciously copied from Peter Finch's legendary declamation in the movie

.

Of course, Finch was only pretending to be crazy. He was an actor performing a role. Then again – so probably is Glenn Beck.

But what about Fox News? What's their excuse?

http://www.newmajority.com/ShowScroll.aspx...04-cb1442e2bcaf

[one...two...tree 2,762]

Glenn weeps on air...

[Trumplestiltskin 5,791]

Its typical media hysterics.

I honestly wonder if anyone seriously believes that the Obama administration is going to turn the US into a Totalitarian state.

What we should be more concerned about are attempts to sideline the constitution or expand the remit of executive power at the expense of other branches of government.

People had similar complaints about the Bush administration - that it was leading us down a path toward Nazi Germany. Equally hysterical of course - but clearly the point is whether an administration has weakened the foundations of government to the point that it would become easy for a real totalitarian to assume complete power.

Indeed for all the scoffing about what civil liberties we've lost following the Bush administrations response to 9/11 and the Patriot Act, the real objection is not whether we are losing our freedoms as we speak, but whether these things open up a back door to something very ugly 10, 20 or 30+ years down the line.

[fozzie 41]

Damn left wing media bias....oh wait

[Amby 490]

wow I missed this circus

[HAL 9000 96]

Fox News FTW!

not.

[pedroh 21]

Glenn Beck is a buffoon.. a very very bad one..

[almaty 19]

Damn left wing media bias....oh wait

[NickD 203]

I find Beck very inspiration when he tells me to find anything to believe it, even though it's 100% BS and you know it. So with that bit of inspiration, I elected to believe in Beck, even though I know it's 100% BS.

[Mononoke28 137]

Glenn Beck is more annoying than Lou Dobbs and O'Reilly going at it at the same time. This guy is such a clown I thought for a second he was going to start speaking in tongues, Hallelujah!!!!

Diana

[HAL 9000 96]

Glenn Beck is more annoying than Lou Dobbs and O'Reilly going at it at the same time. This guy is such a clown I thought for a second he was going to start speaking in tongues, Hallelujah!!!!

Diana

Diana... Beck IS Dobbs and O'Reilly at the same time.

[_Simpson_ 250]

Glenn weeps on air...

wow that was painful to watch. suck it up Glenn

[Peikko 1,575]

Did that get broadcast on a newscast? That's just mental - it's like the 'secret' and radio nutters all rolled into one. It's almost scary, 9/12 project, what a joke and people call Obama the messiah?

[Heracles 417]

So don't watch.

Stock standard liberal American behavior of trash anyone we don't agree with yet at the same time champion on about free speech.

Ironically the criticism usually comes from same liberals who talk about diplomacy and sitting down with tyrants around the world.

Cannot get along with conservatives from your own country but somehow will understand and be diplomatic with those abroad who you don't share one value with. What a crack up

Edited March 19, 2009 by Constellation

[Peikko 1,575]

So, you thought that was a good show then did you? Interesting, what did you like about it?