Look- Morning Joe is bad. CNN in the morning is a little better. Neither, however, are worth spending any time watching at all. But compare that to this clip (via Dave Wiegel) of the Fox morning crew:
If you mated Red State with PJTV, this is what you would get. And notice the willingness to pus the Republican line. D’Ippolito has been known nationally for an hour, but the anchors are already cribbing the meme that she is being forced out of the race by party leaders.
How do people watch this crap without wanting to vomit?
valdivia
I have no idea. Even regular tv news makes me want to poke my eyes out with a fork.
Kryptik
Good gag reflexes from the ideological fellatio on their ‘Founding Father’ as Pam Atlas would call him.
Emma
Because there is a certain kind of person that will do anything as long as he or she gets the salary and perks, whatever those may be. But your question was rhetorical, of course.
Cat Lady
I don’t watch that crap cuz you do so I don’t have to. Same goes for reading Broder and most of the other stuff in Hiatt’s Fish Wrap. Also Red State, Human Events, FDL, anything by Joe Klein, Dick Morris, Marshall Wittman, Roger Cohen, Mort Zuckerman, Joe Scarborough, Bobo, Chunky Bobo, Reason, TNR (except for Chait, mostly) and a bunch of other crap I don’t read because it’s all crap and makes you stupider for having read it or watched it, x a bazillian for anything on Fox.
Midnight Marauder
From Wiegel:
Really, it is a wonder.
beltane
Watching Fox News kills twice as many brain cells as LSD, but is only half the fun of a bad trip.
The people I know who watch this crap on a regular basis are not only misinformed about national politics; they are misinformed about most things.
Napoleon
And to think my media market use to be blessed with Gretchen Carlson as a local newscaster.
Zandar
Your average FOX viewer stopped caring if they were lied to daily about 2002.
Sly
CocainAnything that reinforces preconcieved notions is a helluva drug.Ruckus
And notice the willingness to pus the Republican line
I know that it’s a misspell but really, it is appropriate.
Zifnab
But… but… but… if that Democrat could have swung the FOX News voting moderate left-wing Indiana voting bloc…
Damn the Democratic Party and it’s insidious liberal trickery! I blame Barack Obama. And ACORN. And George Soros! WHERE’S THE BIRTH CERTIFICATE?!
beltane
@Cat Lady: Last week I watched a few minutes of Charlie Rose interviewing David Brooks. So much urbane and civilized wankery. It made me want to drink a glass of Chardonnay-and then puke.
fraught
John Cole used the word meme. Breathing easier.
licensed to kill time
__
Was that intentional? Because, you know, pus = Republican line = Fox News = ooze was the track my thought train started rolling down..
bemused
It’s difficult to watch Gretchen Carlson trying to hold a thoughtful, intelligent look on her face.
dmsilev
I think I speak for many when I say “Ewwwwwwwwww”.
-dms
Bret
Anyone know if she actually met the filing deadline? I understood she’d been working since like October to get 4500 signatures, and was still a thousand shy.
Emma
Oops. I thought you had asked “why do people do this?” My bad. Also something I wonder about. I can’t imagine ever being so bereft of anything passing for decency as to become a Fox “newsperson.”
flukebucket
When I read this I thought of the proverb, “a dog returns to its vomit”
Fox news serves up warm puke every day and judging by the ratings the dogs keep coming back and begging for more.
Ana Gama
Jesus.
The woman had a total of 22 signatures out of 4500 needed to get on the primary ballot. Some force-out.
Da Bomb
@Zifnab: IN LONG FORM!!!
spudvol
When shit is all you have ever been fed you don’t realize how shitty it is.
Genine
A lot of Fox viewers are dead inside.
Tommy
gypsy howell
I love how they just assume — assume — that she’s running for US Senate to cut government spending, stop “big government,” cut the deficit, etc. (And what does it say about Bayh that he’s being praised by Fox?) Didn’t sound to me like she was swallowing that BS — she was talking poverty, health care crisis and low paying jobs. Funny, I didn’t hear “tax cut” in there once.
Martin
@Zandar:
Fixed. They’ve been shitting their pants hourly since that day.
I had a nice long chat with my conservative mom about terrorism. She was in the ‘terrorists don’t deserve rights’ camp with hesitation. I think she knew it was the wrong position, but hadn’t thought it out, so we talked it out for an hour or so and I brought her around.
Bottom line was that she had swallowed the meme from the right that you can’t trust the justice system. Everything from the war on trial lawyers to death penalty arguments, she felt that subjecting criminals caught red-handed to the court system somehow risked them being let off. Once we got her past that thinking, she quickly came around. But you really need to dig down to that base assumption that has been slipped into them in order to shake it all loose.
AhabTRuler
beltane@6: LSD doesn’t kill braincells and has no known lethal dose.
Dr. Morpheus
@Ruckus:
Dammit! I was going to point that out. Rained on my parade!
Cat Lady
@beltane:
That would have been a terrible waste of Chardonnay. You want to wait until you can puke on Bobo, then tell him it must have been something you ate at the Applebee’s salad bar.
El Tiburon
I have vomited for a lot less.
mr. whipple
@Sly:
That’s the whole balllgame, right there.
Dr. Morpheus
@Zifnab:
Makes me want to buy a billboard ad for Central Indiana that reads:
“Once you go black, you never go back”
With a giant picture of President Obama on it.
Maybe a slew of them all across the south, concentrating on Texas.
Sentient Puddle
@Bret: Reports I’m reading from TPM say that she isn’t even close. Quote from shortly after noon:
Which…yeah, is a few short of what she needed, not to mention all the other districts.
lol
Sounds like Indiana voters forced her out of the race, not the party machine.
beltane
@AhabTRuler: Fox News may not have a lethal dosage either, but it kills the soul as nothing else will.
JenJen
The only time I ever see that trio of dipshits who host “Fox And Friends” is when Jon Stewart is skewering them.
As much as “Morning Joe” annoys me and tends to put me in a ratlike mood for the rest of the morning, at least you get the occasional Lawrence O’Donnell or Matt Taibbi on MSNBC. I’ll take it over anything Fox is dishing up for breakfast.
Rathskeller
@Ana Gama: I really was startled to see those numbers. I personally could get many more than 22 signatures for me to run as Senator, as I imagine most adults with friends could. She must really come off as a loon.
geg6
I, a certified born and bred news junkie, have completely given up watching any national news programs with a pair of exceptions: 60 Minutes and the first hour of the Today Show. This is of a piece with my giving up any and all newspapers (with the single exception of the Sunday paper) and news magazines. I’m just glad my mother isn’t alive to see what has happened to her once proud and vital profession.
I watch the 11pm and 6am local newscasts. That is mainly for weather and sports, though local news is still something I feel obligated to know.
But, man, national news and media outlets are the very definition of suckage.
Zifnab
@AhabTRuler:
I imagine the dose where you trip out so hard you forget how to feed yourself for a few days could conceivably be lethal.
Please don’t get on the “LSD neva’ hurt no-bady” train. It ends in tears.
Ash Can
@Bret: According to the Indianapolis Star, she “fell far short.” The ball’s in the state Dems’ court now.
YellowJournalism
That’s because it looks like she had her eyeballs botoxed.
geg6
@Bret:
No, she did not meet the filing requirements for the signatures:
http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/2010/02/dems_dodge_a_bullet.php?ref=fpblg
Kryptik
To be fair, Bayh’s dick move didn’t exactly give much time at all to gather signatures.
However, characterizing this as being ‘forced out’ by the party is just pure grade Z wankery.
dino goposaur
well, there’s your morning dose of “wriggling in excrement”.
Sentient Puddle
@Kryptik: Nah, don’t think that really applies. She was attempting to primary Bayh, so she had plenty of time to collect signatures.
geg6
@Dr. Morpheus:
Dude. That would be totally awesome. I’d kick in for that.
Gag Reflex
@ John – “How do people watch this crap without wanting to vomit?”
I don’t know how people vacuum out port-o-john’s for a living either, but somehow they manage. Frankly I’d rather do that then have to inhale the fumes off of Rupert Murdoch, but then to each his own.
Ana Gama
@Rathskeller: A loon indeed. Except that she says she is in favor of health care reform.
danimal
@Dr. Morpheus: Considering the topic, shouldn’t that be “oozed on your parage?”
GregB
I always tell my wingnut friends that they cannot be trusted to judge whether a news outlet is liberal or conservative because they are so intellectually polluted as to believe that Fox News is fair and balanced.
rootless_e
i want john mellencamp to run and anyone who disagrees is more evil than hitler times a bazillion to the power of Palin.
bemused
@YellowJournalism:
lol, that has to be it. She looked like a deer caught in headlights. I don’t watch her. Do her eyes always look bugged out like that?
neff
@bemused:
“I wasn’t sure what a ‘petition’ was, so I googled for it, and it turns out it’s a letter you circulate to get people to sign their signatures on to show their support! I found out you can even make them on the Internet! Ms. D’Ippolito, did you think about putting your petitions on the Internet so people could sign them online and we could link them from foxnews dot com slash foxfriends?”
rootless_e
@Ash Can: She was sabotaged by Rahm. Call Hamsher and Grover.
Chad N Freude
A note on vomitlessness: The people who get their information from Fox News believe that they are getting real information (kind of like believing in rainbow ponies) because they want it to be that way because it caters to their prejudices and fears.
Kryptik
@Sentient Puddle:
Ah…well, that’s different then.
Mike E
@Martin: Yeah, now try the death penalty topic next. I had that ‘talk’ with my mom who worked as a sec’y at public defender, of all places. DAs and Govs are always trying to look tough to their future constituents when
padding those execution #srunning for higher office. Law ‘n order lovin’ folk love this shit.Omnes Omnibus
@Gag Reflex:
It’s an honest day’s work and it needs to be done. That alone differentiates it from working for Fox News.
jenniebee
She’s inarticulate, offers no specifics, she’s angry at Washington and she’s disenchanted with Democratic party politics. Looks like the Republicans have found their ideal candidate!
Update: I am aware that she is actually running in the Democratic Primary. That is one of the internet traditions.
bemused
I don’t know how my state MN produced these idiots, Gretchen Carlson, Michele Bachmann & Tim Pawlenty. Sigh.
AhabTRuler
@Zifnab: Still doesn’t work that way. I recommend Dr. Hofmann’s book rather than a vague (and untrue) hypothetical.
GambitRF
The quintessential Fox and Friends clip is the one from a few months in to the Obama administration which The Daily Show did a bit on at the time and Jon Stewart brought up again in his O’Reilley interview, where whatever the woman’s name is says: (paraphrasing, but not much) “Obama has been appointing a lot of czars. I looked up czar on the internet and it turns out that it’s actually the Russian word for king!!”
Darkmoth
@Dr. Morpheus:
OMFG. I’m going to be chuckling about that the rest of the day.
I’m trying to imagine the outrage on Fox. Not having much success unless I picture an entire network of faces like The Scream.
satyr9us
I’ve been trying to figure out what the hell Bayh was trying to refer to when he spoke of the need for the Democratic Party to learn the lesson of the Scott Brown victory/Martha Coakley loss, and whether whatever he perceives that lesson to be has played some role in his timing here.
This is not to excuse what is patently a “dick move”, from someone who’s been consistently undermining his party’s agenda in pursuit of some Neverland notion of “bipartisanship”. Indeed, to the extent that he’s articulated anything about what he thinks that lesson of the Brown victory/Coakley loss might be, it’s that we aren’t striving hard enough for “bipartisanship”. Which is nonsense, of course.
But isn’t the basic consensus here at Balloon Juice, re: the Coakley defeat, that the Democratic Party shouldn’t assume the outcome of a given general election to be a foregone conclusion and so nominate duds who can’t connect with voters?
I’m wondering if maybe Bayh does have some shred of concern for whether the Democrats keep the Senate seat in Indiana. Maybe his timing was an intentional move to ensure that we don’t nominate D’Ippolito. This FNC clip is all I’ve seen of her — but based solely on her performance here, she seems even less likely to win a general election than was Coakley.
Also, it was total class of Steve Doocy to ask her why she wanted to represent “the great state… of OHIO!” and then just giggle maniacally for the rest of the interview. If she was no match for that clown, I wouldn’t want to trust her against anyone else.
Ana Gama
@bemused: But they balanced it out with Al Franken.
bayville
Hey, I didn’t know Natural Gas futures salesman Eric Bolling had a morning show as well.
I thought he was just an economics “expert”.
Ana Gama
@satyr9us:
Bayh was trying to convince the Dems to give up on anything that had any whiff of the “progressive agenda” odor.
bemused
@Ana Gama:
True. Now if we can get some more of his caliber. When I think it might have been Coleman…whew.
Montysano
Gretchen Carlson makes me want to punch holes in the wall.
That is all.
Tim in SF
Christ.
This post really needs the tag “I watch this crap so you don’t have to.” I feel dumber after having watched it. It’s so stupid it burns my eyes.
John, I depend on you to protect me from stuff like this, not send me to it.
Mr. Wonderful
“How do people watch this crap without wanting to vomit?”
Who says they do? After all, wanting to vomit, and actually vomiting, are two different things. People don’t watch Fox News for intellectual stimulation, silly John. They watch it to get a visceral jolt. Usually they tune in for outrage, indignation, and “patriotic” self-satisfaction, but nausea’s better than nothing, innit?
Irony Abounds
Well, simply put, if you’re bulimic and seeking treatment, I have no doubt one of the first admonitions that your doctor provides is to not watch Fox and Friends.
At the risk of offending Sarah Palin, well, actually, for the sole purpose of offending Sarah Palin, those people are fucking retarded. I do believe it is all an act with Gretchen Carlson – Jon Stewart exposed her as a dim-bulb poser, but the other two clowns are just intellectually challenged to the max.
HyperIon
@geg6:
aren’t you the discriminating one?
kth
Steve Doocy is so much more representative of the right wing than, say, a monster like Rush Limbaugh. Your typical Baptist church in a town the size of Tulsa or Indianapolis is full of people just like him: genial, tribal, ignorant, incapable of producing an original thought.
Jim Once
@Omnes Omnibus:
FTW. Why I spend waaay too much time here.
deadrody
What, you don’t think the fact that Rahm Emmanuel met with the preferred Democratic candidate before this announcement and the odd fact that Jones already had signatures for a primary that would have been a slam dunk for Bayh – you don’t find that even remotely odd ?
PJTV is at least as good an outlet as there is. At least as good as MSNBC, CNN, etc.
DougL (frmrly: Conservatively Liberal)
@Omnes Omnibus: “That alone differentiates it from working for Fox News.”
There is one other thing that differentiates them: One sucks shit up and properly disposes of it, the other sucks up shit and spews it out everywhere they can.
I don’t think I need to point out which is which. :)
DougL (frmrly: Conservatively Liberal)
@deadrody:
Fix’t.
Chris Johnson
Well, I spent the day wrestling with cartoonists and artists each trying to out-psychotic the other, in the full expectation that I would get crapped all over, and went out to a meeting to which nobody came (it’s all snowed out over here, for a change- finally Vermont gets clobbered) and afterwards, had my Tuesday takeout pizza and decided to eat it in the pizza place. What should be playing on their new TV- but Fox. In one fucking pizza, I had to look at Bill O, Sean Hannity, Ann fucking Coulter! Karl fucking Rove!
This is Ben and Jerry’s country. I don’t get why that was even on. The few people in the place were watching it and being anxious, wary and sad.
What a fucking day. Jesus jumped-up CHRIST what a fucking day.
mark in sj
Dude, the people who watch this crap are made of vomit.
ksmiami
I don’t watch any media noows. IT is a giant clown show and why would I hurt my brain when I can just crib off Balloon Juice brilliance???
p.s.: I blame Canada for all our problems