Fox News shows have gotten creepier and more demented and more histrionic over the years. They’ve also gotten more openly anti-education. Here are a couple of Fox News women working hard to find something to find something to hate about college students — like that they might like cats, which tells us that students are weak.
Fox hosts are PISSED about an innocuous study that said cats on college campuses are good
Campagno: "I don't think these kids need cats, I think they need discipline, I think they need a slap in the face!" pic.twitter.com/WagnZ46io8
— Lis Power (@LisPower1) November 1, 2022
They think students should just toughen up, they can’t possibly be stressed. And if they’re stressed, they shouldn’t be able to find the energy to protest injustice. They really are serving up a heaping bowl of bullshit in this segment. If you like cats, you’re a snowflake! If you can’t make it in college, then just drop out, said in a pitying tone of voice, because spending four years in advanced and difficult studies of complex topics is soooo easy, and they’re there just to take advantage of the freebies
.
What freebies? College is expensive (it shouldn’t be) and it’s mainly a lot of hard work and stress, genuine stress.
Then they invent stupid problems, like that students are man-handling
the cats. They think the appropriate way to help students learn is to take the George C. Scott approach, and slap them. Nope. Colleges are staffed with trained professional educators who know better, and are aware that physically assaulting people is not a good way to motivate them.
Who are these appallingly stupid people on this panel? I don’t want to know. I also don’t understand how this is going to appeal to their base. Where I live, that base is a population of farmers with barn cats and a good ol’ dog on the front porch and kids who are in 4H and love their farm animals to bits, who will watch movies like Old Yeller and Dog and struggle to hold back a tear at the end. This is just desperate reaching for something to despise about young people getting educated, and being smarter than every hateful dolt on that network.
On a more pleasant note, here is Archie, UMM’s campus therapy dog.
He’s a sweet, friendly pup who is often seen around campus and loves to be petted. He’s a good dog.
Fox News wants to slap him and make him homeless and shoot him.
Back when my wife was a single woman, one of her litmus tests for a guy was that he must like cats. If he didn’t, he was gone.
She also required that he like the movie “Harold and Maude.” Fortunately, I passed.
Of course! These damn kids these days! Indoor plumbing, centralized heating, antibiotics, wearing a helmet while riding your penny-farthing to the nickelodeon… IT’S MADE THEM WEAK AND ENTITLED! Why when I was a boy, we used to drive railroad spikes into our kneecaps for fun just to prove how tough, manly, and American we all were! My friends didn’t die at San Juan Hill FACE DOWN IN THE MUD just to make sure some Rockefeller fancy lad got to play with a communal Devil’s familiar!
Fox hosts are coddled, kept free from reality inside their protective bubbles. Aside from Shep Smith and Chris Wallace, no journalistic cred need apply…oh wait they left the building.
I struggle to see how this ageist student bashing on display at Fox News differs one iota from what I’ve seen Boomer Bill Maher regularly engage in while I hatewatch Real Time.
You know who likes cats? My conspiracy aficionado neighbor. Just yesterday his cat was chilling in my yard, disguising himself in the grass like a would be lion. Anyone who has been around a cat more than two minutes realizes these little demons aren’t pets for coddled snowflakes. PZ has stories to relate. Not a pet for me.
A Fox twit fantasizing about college students being slapped in the face just shows how explicitly violent right wing discourse has become. No wonder unhinged people storm our Capitol or go on suicide missions to kneecap a Democratic Speaker of the House. They are fomenting violent extremism with a wink.
I also don’t understand how this is going to appeal to their base.
I don’t think “appealing” to anyone is the objective. The objective is to control the public conversation and keep on making so much incoherent noise everywhere they can, that no one else is able to stay on-topic and say anything meaningful about anything they don’t want to talk or hear about. This is part of Steve Bannon’s recommendation to “flood the system with shit.”
@4- Raging Bee
Sorta similar to what Obama was saying about “squirrels” (ie- distractions) at around 2:27:
The best way to hit back at Fox “News” is to “cut the cord”. Fox gets the bulk of its revenue from fees they collect from the cable companies, not from advertisers, so even if you never watch it they still get some of your hard earned money each month out of your cable bill.
I would express my own reservations about keeping cats on campus, depending upon what’s meant. If they are university maintained therapy cats without free roam of the campus then fine. If they are kept by students themselves in dorms I would worry for those having allergies in their midst. If it’s a campus maintained feral colony I would worry about the impact on native wildlife (birds and rodents).
@6- moarscienceplz
I cut the cord and don’t much worry about Fox News anymore though FX content is welcome via Hulu. I have noticed while checking out channels available through streaming a panoply of stuff far more extreme than Fox. I imagine susceptible wingnuts have too.
Unfortunately even though most of their viewers probably love their pets they’re still going to buy into this as “snowflakes” who need their hands held. They’ve gone after things like calm rooms before, and generally it’s going to go into the same brain file that doesn’t understand safe spaces that they themselves also have.
My local Nextdoor and Facebook groups are overrun with right-wingers, and often the only thing that humanizes them for me is how much they love their pets.
I think the number one topic on Nextdoor is “missing cat” (usually found).
I’ll happily toss my cats in their face. They like shredding bare flesh with their claws.
It “appeals” to their base because it confirms what these willfully-ignorant and proudly-parochial morons already believe about the educated and the young: That they are limp-wristed infants, whose heads are being filled with “communist” propaganda from the evil (((Marxist college professors))) who can’t handle the the common trials and tribulations of life without a “safe space” or a “therapy animal.” OH! If only there was a straight-talking, politically incorrect, self-made billionaire tough guy, schooled at the College of Hard Knocks, who can save America from this generation of weakling, radical, “snowflakes!”
Wherever you find hate speech, you will find hate violence.
There are always people who take it seriously and act on it.
And, that is why we have a huge right wingnut violence problem in the USA.
These Fox NoNews hosts are just ranting and raving and being cosmically dumb.
We need college educated people to run our High Tech society.
Without those millions of college students, the USA would just be another Third World country.
“According to the Shanghai Ranking, 41 of the top 100 universities globally are American,Most of the top 10 research universities are also American.
Our lead in science and technology has been the main driver of our dominance in the world today. And that lead rests on an educated population and large research budgets.
Even 4chan’s /b/ board had caterday on Saturday (mixed with animal abuse). It’s just another thing to poke at irrationally.
It doesn’t matter what they say. It is the emotional message and a target/scapegoat to rally around. ie. Fascism
And as Raging Bee stated above #4, this has a direct benefit to distract from any real content and conversations about the state of the community.
Of course Fox rails against education. Every person who gets a real education means one lost Fox audience member.
See next post. So maybe it’s all about stochastic variability as a bet-hedging strategy. (In simpler words, they’re throwing crap at a wall to see what sticks.)
Aren’t Fox and education mutually-exclusive categories?
Akira MacKenzie @11 certainly hit on good points. I would add that those farmers tend to think of themselves as tough, hard workers. When they went to school, they had to walk uphill through the snow! Both ways! Dontcha know? They earned that right to cry over Old Yeller due to all that hard work! Seriously, I have found farmers to be quite dismissive of mental work…and, unsurprisingly, mental health issues, especially for those who don’t do more traditional physically demanding work.
I was a farm boy, so I do have personal experience with such people, though I must note my own parents are most definitely not part of the Fox News base. But many in the community I grew up in certainly are.
Nemo@9: “My local Nextdoor and Facebook groups are overrun with right-wingers, and often the only thing that humanizes them for me is how much they love their pets.”
Hitler loved dogs–it’s a pretty damned low bar. BTW Cheetolini hates dogs. Oz kills dogs. Draw your own conclusions.
It’s dumb and hateful, but frankly, what else do conservatives have to sell? They can’t promise to improve the lives of their voters, because Republican voters — even the poorest and most exploited — have been trained to think of themselves as Hard-Working Real Americans Who Don’t Need No Handouts. And anyway, government making anybody’s life better is SOCIALISM.
The only thing Republicans can campaign on is “We hate the same people you do. Vote for us and we’ll hurt them!”
Not sure if anyone knows this, but Fox News is run and staffed entirely by assholes.
@christoph
Oh yeah. Rectally wrecked as “media”.
Yep-they took a bunch of news stories and wrecked ’em.
Spoken by someone who has never lived with a cat!
I don’t think most of the right wing could stand to live with a cat. A cat won’t look up to them. A cat won’t treat them as the pack alpha. A cat won’t even recognize that there might be a pack. I dearly love both of my void cats, but I don’t expect them to cater to me. They are, after all, cats.
it is not about cats at all it is about someone else might be having it easier then you or me,
“the b********s need to be taught a lesson about real life.”
just another way to stoke the fire of resentment the main source to the power of the right wing so long as feeding resentment is accepted by their audience the longer they have power.
resentment has been described as taking poison and expecting the other guy to die.
Part of the ongoing program by the Right to destroy education as a positive/essential factor in society.
It’s easy to miss the rhetorical gimmick at the beginning. She pairs something inane with the notion that college students are upset about climate crisis and conservatives speaking on campus. Their writers do that kind of trick a lot.
Of course, Fox TV personalities are shills and not expressing true personal opinions. They just read what is written for them to spout off about, which probably follows some kind of editorial guideline stipulated by one or the other of the Murdochs, the board, and Fox marketing.
BTW Campagno is a college graduate and a lawyer.
Yet another case where I can’t imagine how these a-holes at Fox live with themselves as they set about destroying civilisation, society, culture.
nomdeplume, you seriously, really think “they set about destroying civilisation, society, culture”?
Nah. Just earning a living, is what they’re doing.
(Be aware that civilisation, society, and culture are a bit more resilient than that)
Me, I think Fox News is an aesthetic.
(John Ringo; Ghost — see “OH JOHN RINGO NO.” for context)
@31 I once believed it was “more resilient than that” but the last decade or so has disproved that belief? And “just earning a living”? I guess that’s the drug dealer’s argument, or the terrorist, or the arm’s manufacturer…
well yes and no what is happening and what they are part of is a time of cultural change, with that will come the necessary societal change. Their problem is that they think they can prevent to changes they do not like or want and get only the kinds of change they think will benefit them. they are significantly out numbered how ever and the forces of change are coming from the bottom and the environment. much of the elements they distrust and rail against are the very things that the modern technology and a prosperous market place depend on.
They are selling rationalizations for hating people they don’t know.
And yes, this is a new low.
The people who receive this information will jump on the new rationalization without thinking about it, as long as it makes them feel like they’re better than someone else… At which point will they say “wait, what!?”, at which point will they start feeling uncomfortable about what they’re being told?
@18. seversky : “Aren’t Fox and education mutually-exclusive categories?”
Yes quite so given Fox and other Murdoch media deliberately goes out of its way to misinform and disinform and lie to and brainwash its audience.
@22. christoph : “Not sure if anyone knows this, but Fox News is run and staffed entirely by assholes.”
Hey – that’s unfair! Toa ssholes which are a perfectly good, necessary and for some pleasureable part of the human body. Fox News OTOH, is none of thi8ngs being unnecessary, damaging and for decent people painful blight onthe world. To be unfair in turn to blight which si atleats a natural fungi. Soemof which atleats may play some positive roles in varuious ways eg weed control, medicines see :
https://www.newswise.com/articles/chestnut-blight-fungus-could-have-medical-benefits
@31. John Morales : “Be aware that civilisation, society, and culture are a bit more resilient than that.”
Are they though? I’m not so sure as #33 nomdeplume has noted.
@30. nomdeplume : “Yet another case where I can’t imagine how these a-holes at Fox live with themselves as they set about destroying civilisation, society, culture.”
Theyare in their own bubbles of wllful ignorance, denial and money I suspect. I don’t know that they know what theyare doing or think about the conseuqences of it.
StevoR:
Um, #33 was to what I responded.
(Of course #33 was hyperbole, with the added bonus that the USA is used as synecdoche for the world.
Not that you see that, being the USA fanboi that you are)
Fix for #36 : Fox News OTOH, is none of things being unnecessary, damaging and, for good people, a painful blight on the world. To be unfair, in turn, to blight which is at least a natural fungi. Some species of which at least may play some positive roles in various ways eg biocontrol against invasive weeds, medicines..
@20. snarkrates : Mittens Rmoney springs to mind here too with his dog “incident” :
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mitt_Romney_dog_incident
Of course, in hindsight and compared with what the Repugs have devolved into; Romney looks well, less bad and more moderate and reasonable although at the time & vs Obama in 2012..
@ 27. unclefrogy :
Yup. Reminds me of something I read ages ago – have forgotten exactly where sorry – about there being two ways to respond to a traumatic experience in life.
One way being I went through X and it really sucked and was awful at that time so let’s change it so that X no longer happens to anyone else in the future.
Versus I went through X and it really sucked and was awful at that time so everyone else should have to suffer X too and let’s keep doing it so everyone else goes through what I did.
Obviously those Faux Nyews audience take the latter course whilst most of us, I think, prefer the former. Not sure if there’s a name for this phenomenon / way of thinking?
@ 29.robro :
Not sure if that bit about their personal opinions is true or not – whether they actually believe and personally agree with the lines & ideology they are being scripted to read or are just reading a script whilst privately disgreeing with it but doing it just for the job. On the one hand, it’s would be interesting to know if they actually don’t think the way they came across and are smarter and better than they seem but on the other hand its a moot point in terms of the harm they are doing being the same. I’m not sure which is really worse. It would be kinda interesting to know but not sure it really makes a significant difference whether they are sincere or insincere Murdoch tools.
One of the reasons that our oldest daughter chose California Institute of Technology for her undergraduate work was the fact that when she visited, she found that there was a resident dorm cat living in several of the dorms. (BTW, some dorms were cat-free for students with allergies).
She called me while sitting with a cat on her lap to tell me that she had found her “home”.
FOX bimbos would hate her. Today, she is a neuroscience PHD, with Masters degrees in neurobiology and computational neuroscience and a BS in electrical engineering.
@37 John Morales :
Well, I was meaning “civilisation, society and culture” -as hard to define and broad as it is to be our global western-for-want-of a better-word (“Northern?”) one. There’s a lot of Anmercianisation in that which is shared by particularly here in Oz but also the UK and parts of Europe, Asia and other places from the Falklands to even Germany as the Rammstein sonong Amerika sings has it.
I do like a lot about the USA’s culure and stuff growing upontheir SF especially and yet I also see a lot of huge flaws witha lot of it too FWIW. Fanboi? Dunno bout that.
Also of course, the USA has a huge amount of socio-political and cultural influence so it does matter I think what happens to it – and why is why it is extremely scary to think of it slipping into outright fascism and possibly civil war and collapse.
Are we that “resilient” as a global culture? Are we? Dunno. Really not sure but recent trends and signs seem very worrying.
Of course just defining the terms here is problematic in itself..
^ Fixing : I do like a lot about the USA’s culure and stuff growing up on their SF especially and yet I also see a lot of huge flaws with a lot of it too FWIW. (I am not uncritical or unabashedly a fan of all American culture etc..)
& so it does matter I think what happens to it – and why it is extremely scary to think of it slipping into outright fascism..
For clarity.
StevoR:
Yes, I am well aware.
Point is, even were Fox news quite literally seeking the “[destruction of] civilisation, society, culture” as claimed, it’s just a media network.
Our culture may not be, but wherever there’s any sizable population, there will be a culture. And a society. And a civilisation, however primitive.
Meh. That’s happened before, and it shall probably happen again.
Civilisation, society, culture nonetheless remain.
A perfect example: Russia as I write this, which pretty much matches every functional criterion of fascism.
—
Have you ever noticed how I react to facile hyperbolic doomishness?
Fox bloody News is just a media outlet.
A pimple on the skin of society, which perhaps suppurates somewhat.
No more than that.
(Look on the Murdoch press as a similar pimple)
[meta for StevoR]
Ever considered the term ‘fascism’?
Comes from the word ‘bundle of sticks’ (‘faggot’ in English).
Reason for it? I quote Wikipedia:
Or: “Together we stand, divided we fall” as Pink Floyd put it.
(Remind you of anything?
Nevermind, probably too obscure. “E Pluribus Unum”)
@ ^ John Morales : Actually I did already know about the etymology of fascism and its stick-y ‘fasces’ symbol there and that “E pluribus unem’ was the USA’s old national motto and a much better one meaning from many one.
David Brin had some interesting observations and points on that in his SF novel Earth FWIW.
Not quite sure what you are getting at here though, sorry. Fascism is uniting? Fasicsm unites one group – the fascists by scapegoating and demonising others and is ultimately an utterly divisive and destructive. Obvs I thought? So ..?
Fix for my #40 . this song was the one I meant to link there. Dóh. Hopefully this time..
StevoR:
(sigh)
So by “Not quite sure” you mean you’re all at sea.
So it’s hopeless.
At least as far as you grasping the concepts at hand, or the purpose of my interjection.
I know better by now than to try to elaborate.
Do you even get that even were the USA to go de facto fascist, civilisation, society, culture would still remain? Fascism is culture, after all.
Rammstein – Amerika. Never heard of this until now, won’t bother with listening.
(I did note that Amerika with a ‘k’ is duly semiotically suggestive)
PS
I’ve been following his blog for a few years now, so I’m well aware of that.
(Obs, as an author, he tries to monetise his blog and promote his stuff; e.g. all references to stuff are via Amazon)
@ 45. & various John Morales :
Well, yes, I guess Fascism and Trumpism are kind of cultures, kinda. But its NOT our culture though and it is a culture that would make life oppressive and miserable and deadly for most of those living under it and facing it.
From what I gather, even many animals have their own versions of culture – but again I was talking about our global “Western” culture here as questionable in its resilience. Seems we could well be talking different things and across each other here. Also as noted the terms themselves are vague,problematic and hard to define as I think I’ve noted already.
Why not? How do you ever learn or see anything or find anything new that you might like if you aren’t willing to look at & listen to things you hadn’t heard of?
A “pimple” that has rotted and corrupted (to use a type of tautology) millions of brains with its toxic propaganda discharge and been a significant factor in influencing who holds political power in at least three nations – Oz, the USA & Britain – for many decades. A media outlet that has pushed the Overton Window ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overton_window ) so far to the reich wing that it long ago left the house completely crossed the road, raced up the hill and into the badlands of uttermost tinfoil hat teritory. A media outlet that has done untold, incalculable harm to the entire planet through its Denialism in multiple areas most notably Global Overheating, pushing antivaxxer bulldust and Trump election denial and installed the likes of Truss, Trump and Scummo.
Well I don’t think its “hopeless”, I just think you’re bad at explaining your points and views. We do seme to be confusing ourselve sand tlaking about difefrent things and passed (past?) each other though.. But if you do elaborate then maybe I’ll understand and even agree whilst if you don’t I’m certainly not going to get what you’re trying to say and argue for here.
PS. Am I the only one who fails to grok what John Morales is getting at here?
Fascism is culture, after all.
Yeah, that’s what Joseph Campbell said back when the Nazis were systematically looting or destroying all aspects of their own culture that they considered “decadent.” Just like today’s fascists are doing wherever they get enough power to do it. I guess it all depends on what you mean, or think you mean, by the word “culture.”
StevoR: I’m not slogging through all of Morales’s pathetic meanderings, but from what I’ve seen it kinda sounds like he’s given up on defeating fascism and is working toward accepting it and rationalizing his capitulation, and trying to pretend it won’t really be THAT bad. Which is sad and pathetic, but also a normal response of many humans to brutish authoritarian abuse.
Rage Bee:
Be aware I never started “defeating fascism”, so I have most certainly not given up on “defeating fascism”. Perhaps read what I write and dispute it or not, but trying to psychoanalyze me is quite pointless, and when people try they well and truly do the opposite — that is, they reveal the manner in which they think.
But hey, you carry on “defeating fascism” all you want. I have not given up on stopping you from so doing, either. ;)
(Also, such a slog to read a few short comments!
Some sort of chronic mental fatigue condition, is it?)
StevoR:
It takes a special kind of stupidity to fail to get what I’ve written, in short declaratory sentences.
Well, my dog doesn’t get boolean algebra, either.
It would be as hopeless to try to explain the concepts to him, and surely it means I must be bad at it.
(Doesn’t mean he’s not a good dog, but)
—
Here is another obscure point that I reckon will make no sense to you: Fox News itself is part of USA culture, and USA culture is part of (as you write) “our global “Western” culture”. So cheer up, when it destroys it (and civilisation too!) it will perforce be destroying itself. No more Fox News!
Why not? Because I’ve already had friends and acquaintances try to make me listed to that band. German pop is not my thing.
Be aware that I do in fact look at and listen to things with which I am hitherto unacquainted.
But OK, for you, I will invest the time if you care to specify what you imagine to be the merits of that song by that band in relation to the subject at hand.
Care to try?
BTW, I have done due diligence: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amerika_(song).
According to that, it’s “satirizing Americanization”. It’s from 2004.
(Gotta love the z there — playing up the parody factor)