Do the Words Matter?

Tags

Cairo, extremism, foreign policy, Fox News, Media, Obama, psychology, Sean Hannity, terrorism

Everyone knows that you don’t watch Foxy Newsless for news. You watch it for comedy, and to discover just how well your favorite politico is doing. (Hint: the more Foxy pundits are yelling your guy is destroying America, the more progress he’s making toward your goal.)

So I am confounded when I see polling that suggests that those who actually watch this pretend news channel are a decent cut above the average in intelligence, education and earnings. I just find that hard to understand.

I would be more inclined to think that regular Fox watchers are knuckle-dragging, drooling barely sentient grunters of a more simian persuasion, but it seems not to be the case. It’s one of those, in a universe the size of infinity, everything that could happen, does happen somewhere. Lucky us that the something is that Fox is actually watched by intelligent humans, and that the place is here.

This fact, and perforce, I am required to accept it as probably true, seems lost on the subject matter, Fox that is. They seem to operate upon the assumption that their “audience” is so low-brow that they depend on Foxy to give them all their news. This would cut against the clear assumption that intelligent people don’t limit themselves to any one source of information, but acquire their knowledge and opinions by sifting through a larger data base.

Perhaps in that I am wrong. Perhaps there are different ways of defining intelligence. You know what I mean. You and I know people, and perhaps we are one our self, who is good at test taking, but not able to much translate that stuff into real life situations. We’re practically dumb if you get my drift. So perhaps our high IQ Foxers actually don’t bother to taste the waters of journalism elsewhere.

That would explain at least why Fox operates in the fashion it does. For it does speak in glaring contradiction of truth a lot of the time, and make wild allegations that anybody, liberal or conservative realize for the utter clap trap it truly is.

Case in point.

President Obama gave a major speech in Cairo the other day. I didn’t read it in it’s entirety, but I saw a rather large chunk of it as it was being given, and later on the news.

As the Contrarian says, this man continues to set the bar to a new height with each successive speech. The GOP quickly gave up trying to attack his speech giving abilities and now try to turn it into a liability, claiming we should be somewhat nervous about a man who has this kind of skilled oratory. Shades of dictatorship? perhaps?

Anyway, Foxy has just been in a tizzy for months now. Sean is chewing his nails to the quick, because frankly nothing works. Talk about your Teflon Ronnie Reagan. This is another step up the ladder.

Fox can no sooner exclaim that the economy is being destroyed by the socialist/now fascist Obama, than the stock market climbs another fifty points. The Contrarian points out that their so-called economic experts are expounding on how “the market is going to tumble, you can be sure, they don’t like this kind of ___________ (whatever Obama has done now), all the while the crawl is reporting that the market has gained 75 more points during this discourse.

So Fox is finding no firm ground here at home, and is forced to turn its sights on foreign policy. It drives them crazy that Obama is well liked around the globe by the people at large. They excuse this of course, and make it sound kind of sinister that they do. Somehow, it expresses Obama’s true colors that he’s not really “one of us.”

So the brilliant minds at the No News is Us station, poured over the contents of the Cairo speech, and lo and behold they found the “smoking gun.” Hold on now, seat belt on, oxygen mask at the ready. . . .you ready now? Obama did not use the word terrorism or terrorist ONCE in the entire speech!!!!

There ya go folks. You can see the tiger now without his stripes. He’s a card carrying Commie pinko Muslim that Fox always knew he was. He was there suckin up to his people, declaring as Sean Hannity said, that Merika was a Muslim country! Holy holy holy shit!

What Foxy didn’t mention was that:

• President Obama condemned the 9/11 attacks and declared that it was unacceptable to attack innocents, people who had done nothing to anyone
• He declared the Holocaust a fact, and said that anyone who denied it was a liar and without a historical leg to stand on.
• He made a case for democracy
• He urged women’s rights be pursued
• He spoke against extremism and called on the world to reject it.

That is in a nutshell what he said. He didn’t use the world terrorism or terrorist, but substituted the word extremism and extremist.

In this he changed the dialog and I think for the better. After all, terrorism means “the use of violence against civilians to effect political, religious or ideological ends.” It focuses on the element of fear. It engenders that emotion in the hearts of it’s listeners.

Extremism on the other hand is the use of violence or extreme measures to effect those ends. It doesn’t evoke the same kind of emotion. And I submit it places the focus more squarely on where it belongs–on the people who hold these views and espouse these methods.

Many in the business of security claim that we can never win a war on terror from a military stand point. We can’t secure our ports and other points of entry. This is a police matter which must be focused on individuals. Terrorism focuses us on security. Extremism focuses us on people.

This of course is always and forever will be lost on Fox. They aren’t journalists. They seek no truth, only political advantage. I think Obama did it exactly right. What do you think?