GOP Attack Machine Knows Misinformed Intensity of Emotion Wins Against Reason and Fact: FOX News Best Year Ever

BUZZFLASH EDITOR'S BLOG

By Mark Karlin

Haven't we seen this before? The majority of Americans support progressive policies, such as the public option in healthcare reform legislation when stated factually, but oppose them when the false perceptions fostered by right wing media and GOP politicians take root in their heads.

For all the comaradarie and mutual indignation of the net roots -- including BuzzFlash -- at the failure of the Obama White House to aggressively push the public option (not to mention single payer), they are up against the same corporately and wealthy individual finance propaganda media dissemination machine that Clinton ran into. In this sense, little has changed in 30 years, since the right wing misinformation infrastructure started to fully take root in the Reagan years (although FOX "News" came later).

Indeed, much to the dismay of progressives, FOX "News" viewership is up 11% over last year according to Nielsen Media Research, as cited in an AP article ominously entitled "FOX News on Pace for best year ever."

Yes, MSNBC is picking up and has surpassed CNN as second in cable news -- and David Shuster, Ed Schultz, Keith Olbermann, and the superstar of the progressive perspective in journalism -- Rachel Maddow -- are a distant third to FOX, but maintaining a viable audience, as long as MSNBC's parent company -- GE -- don't see its larger corporate interests directly threatened.

But FOX and its cohort right wing hate shills ignite and incite its audience with misinformation; Rachel Maddow and the MSNBC night shift inform and string together the facts. It's the classic difference and dilemma for secular progressives: reason vs. deceptively kindled emotion.

The hysteria that FOX, with its increasing viewership, has set off with its lies has led to a British correspondent calling the GOP a cult.

As George Lakoff, the specialist in framing issues, recently noted, the WH has done a poor job of communicating and marketing healthcare reform. Obama has not embraced language that appeals to Americans with health insurance, he has shifted his sales strategy several times, and he hasn't successfully conveyed a sense of urgency. In addition, Obama has made the mistake of thinking that logic prevails against misinformed intensity of feeling.

I campaigned for many years for gun control. And if anyone has shown what a small minority of highly energized, angry, and emotionally threatened voters can accomplish -- egged on by the propaganda of the NRA -- it is a relatively small group of gun owners. Legislators, besides being beholden to big money for the most part, also want to flee out the back door when confronted with angry constitutents. Many, if not most, will vote with the group that has the highest intensity of feeling over the restrained reasonable advocates.

The GOP figured this out a long time ago. And that is why in quick succession we have seen the teabaggers, birthers and Town Hall lobbying-groups organized terrorists. And that is why FOX, a gift of Murdoch to the GOP and to protect his corporate interests, has been lighting the bonfire.

Furthermore, the more people who get upset from lies that threaten them, the more who join the movement. It's like a lynch mob walking through town and gathering a larger crowd as people hear that "a black 'boy' raped a virgin white girl and we're going to hang him" and join the vigilante group (most likely based on a rumor, just as FOX is.)

Rachel Maddow is our Godsend, because she has the ability to be Rhodes Scholar smart and not threaten viewers who might disagree with her. She has a reassuring presence even as she dismantles the GOP attack machine.

But Maddow is successful -- to a certain degree -- for just the opposite reason of FOX. She is reasoned and at one with herself; FOX is irrational and a firebomb thrower that is incendiary.

Remember that: because recent polls show that FOX viewers are the most misinformed in relation to facts. The same was true during the height of the Iraq War. And it will always be true, because FOX is a propaganda station, an arm of a demagogic machine to incite and divert the economically pressed working and middle classes against scapegoats, while preserving the economic rule of the corporate and the wealthy.

BuzzFlash gave its Wings of Justice Award to ColorOfChange.Org for organizing the current effort to get advertisers to boycott the Glenn Beck show. They have done a fantastic job.

But as successful as the effort has been, mark our words, Glenn Beck will be back (he is currently on a one-week "cooling off" vacation). In three decades, the right wing media has only grown stronger, abetted by a corporately owned mainstream media.

FOX "News" is growing, and so is the potential for armed rebellion and assassination in the United States. Already, followers of the right wing hate hosts have committeed individual shootings around the nation, because the right wing validates victimhood and justifies outrage.

None of this will stop, despite the fine work of sites like mediamatters.org, until pro-democracy Americans start owning big chunks of the media.

But after three decades, that doesn't appear like it will happen anytime soon.

BUZZFLASH EDITOR'S BLOG