Before the past few Thanksgivings, some media outlets have run pieces advising readers or viewers on how to respond to right-wing, Fox-concocted talking points that one or more relatives might regurgitate at the dinner table. As the above video from this past November 23 indicates, Ed Schultz invited Occupy Wall Street hero Jesse LaGreca on MSNBC’s “Ed Show” to do just that. Jesse does a good job using logic, facts, and figures to respond to the right-wing talking points raised by Ed. However, if you’re simply being reactive rather than proactive in these situations, you’ve already lost the political argument.
President Obama invites progressive black rapper Common to read poetry at the White House, and the folks at Fox “News” explode. It was perfectly predictable, since Fox and the Republicans have been waging a race-based cultural war on Barack Obama since Obama began running for President. That race war has included Reverend Wright, Van Jones, ACORN, the “New Black Panther Party”, Shirley Sherrod, and others as proxies for Obama in the Republicans’ “Scary Black People” strategy.
This time, the war on Obama (using Common as the proxy) was launched by Fox and Republicans contracted to work for Fox, including Sarah Palin and Karl Rove. Fox’s Bill O’Reilly then challenged Jon Stewart of “The Daily Show” to a debate on the subject of Common, and Stewart took the bait. Many progressives are cheering, saying that Stewart will clean O’Reilly’s clock with the facts. Bad idea. Once such a debate is being held — on O’Reilly’s Fox “News” home turf, of course — Fox, O’Reilly, and the Republicans have already won.
As this piece from Crooks and Liars last December indicates, a leaked email from Fox “News” Washington Managing Editor Bill Sammon demonstrates how Fox deliberately and calculatedly uses language to slant news stories in favor of Republicans and/or against President Obama and the Democrats.
The issue was health care and, in 2009, Republican language guru Frank Luntz (a name you will likely hear a lot on this blog) advised Fox’s Sean Hannity to use the label “government option” in place of the Democrats’ “public option” proposal, because, according to Luntz, that simple one-word change caused a shift in voter reaction against the public option. According to Crooks and Liars, Sammon picked up on this advice and sent an email instructing Fox employees: “Please use the term ‘government-run health insurance’ or, when brevity is a concern, ‘government option,’ whenever possible”.
This is why mentions of “Fox ‘News’” will appear in quotes in this blog. It isn’t a news organization. It is the propaganda arm of the Republican Party.
The summer of 2010 was the second summer in a row in which Democrats lost control of the political message, and the news cycle. Given the 2010 election results, how did that work for you?
What’s the Problem?
In the summer of 2009, Republicans and their Tea Party surrogates took over Congressional town hall meetings, repeating false phrases such as “government-run health care.” Democrats dawdled for weeks, and when they finally responded, all they could muster was “no it isn’t.” Guess who won that battle? The “health care reform” law passed by the Democrats who control Congress and the presidency was severely watered down.
