Sunday, February 07, 2010

A "Fair & Balanced" Response To Fox

Despite the best efforts of some on the Right, the "culture wars" largely remain a US political phenomenon; the homogeneity of the leaderships to be found in New Labour, the Tories & the Lib Dems extends to a general consensus regarding the issues that fuel the fires of the US Right. Last week saw the Daily Show's Jon Stewart venture into the Lions' Den, aka, Rupert Murdoch's Fox News' studios in Manhattan. Stewart was the "guest" of Bill O'Reilly, a strident populist who fits the bill for a network which once tried to copyright the "fair & balanced" tag with which it flatters itself.
To be "fair", as Stewart himself noted, O'Reilly is not the network's worst offender; one of his colleagues, Glenn Beck, last year accused Obama of racism against white people.
Stewart stood up to the barbs that were thrown his way, countering with a few well-considered ripostes, including this observation (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/02/02/jon-stewart-bill-oreilly_n_446372.html ): "They [Fox] have taken reasonable concerns about this president and this economy and turned it into a full-fledged panic attack about the next coming of Chairman Mao."

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