I don’t have much time to post but I found this fascinating (via The Impolitic). This is Major Garrett, formerly of Fox News:
“For a certain amount of marketing points of view, Fox actually wants to keep that polarization and say, look, we’re different. …That is an embedded part of the marketing that surrounded what happens at the news division at Fox that’s been incredibly successful. …Keeping America divided through media polarization is FNC’s brand strategy.”
There’s a lot of things at once here that hit me: (1) Garrett’s not a hack even though he worked for Fox, (2) even though Republicans may hurt themselves by causing violence on election day, it’s probably good for Fox’s ratings (I am worried about violence happening this election day, I hope I am wrong), (3) I think this *is* different from what RedState etc. want. Let me elaborate on on point (3): given his druthers, Erick Erickson would turn the United States into Taliban-ruled version of Galt’s Gulch, but I think he’d do it by passing a series of insane constitutional amendment. The Fox agenda is general craziness and anarchy, which might also lead to a Taliban-ruled version of Galt’s Gulch, but…it doesn’t really matter what it leads to, as long as the ratings stay high.
But liberal media does this too. None of this is any different from the Colbert/Stewart rallies, when you get right down to it.
beltane
“Keeping America Divided” would have been a good name for Stephen Colbert’s portion of Saturday’s rally.
eastriver
“The liberal media does it too?” Um, no?
WyldPirate
This is true, but I would submit that Colbert/Stewart are at least funny.
Still, Juvenal was right in Satire X…it’s all about placating the rubes with “bread and circuses”.
MattR
I think it was Steeplejack who came up with “The only thing we have is fear itself”. It was intended as an idea for a poster at the rally, but I think it works better as Fox News’s new slogan.
beltane
@eastriver: @WyldPirate: I think Doug is being sarcastic.
DougJ
People, adjust your snark detectors.
EDIT: Thank you, beltane.
freelancer
@beltane:
YES.
@DougJ:
One of these days, Laura, I’m gonna
punch you in the face!stomp you on the head!I’m a regular, and this was almost a little too inside baseball for me to get. Just sayin’.
WyldPirate
@DougJ:
I’m not so sure that the “liberal media” isn’t doing something very similar, but for different reasons. How else do you explain the fact that “equal time”/”both sides do it” is given to ideas and actions that are clearly not similar? Perhaps they have been cowed into this position to some extent through years of conservative branding, but still, they look for the add dollars as well. A simple rhetorical brawl/he said she said is much simpler for people to understand than in depth analysis.
I’ll give you the Colbert/Stewart snark point. They’re still doing a lot of it for the Benjamins, though.
JoePo
As to the possibility of violence, I think Tea Party people are typically most angry at imaginary people (recent events notwithstanding, though that may perhaps be a screaming rejoinder to my point). My hope is they mistake windmills for socialists.
DougJ
@WyldPirate:
It’s all about the Benjamins, I’ll give you that much. But I don’t think those rallies are causing division.
Martin
@eastriver: Oh, fuck yes they do! Is there any other show like Olberman? Maddow? Hell, they aren’t even like each other.
Differentiation of product is a big part of marketing. I generally can’t stand Olberman or O’Donnell, but I love Maddow. I’m sure others take these shows another way around. By having different shows, with different gimmicks and formats and goals, they get different audiences. That’s the point.
News is nothing more than laundry detergent when you get down to why the networks offer it.
That doesn’t mean they don’t do good news, or that news on the left isn’t more factually accurate than news on the right, but don’t ever lose sight of the fact that these are products being sold to us and to advertisers.
CaffinatedOne
Well, sure.. they want ratings, and increasing polarization allows them to set themselves apart more easily. That’s true enough, but it seems that News corp is quite a bit more involved in the guts of the political process to simply be seen as stirring the pot here. They’re essentially running one of the two major parties and act as a 24×7 propaganda outlet. That seems to me to suggest that there’s a bit more of an agenda here than simply pulling in ratings (not that they’ve not been quite successful on that front).
I don’t even get where the gratuitous “they all do it…” bit with Comedy Central comes from. While Stewart and Colbert do well by highlighting the stupid in politics, they’re not driving any of this dynamic you speak of so far as I’ve ever seen.
WyldPirate
@DougJ:
You got me there, Doug.
I don’t have a very sensitive snark detector. I’m getting pretty weary of all this shit that’s been going on. The insanity has been freaking me out since Ronnie Raygun days at least.
In other words, I’m having a hard time laughing about the crazy anymore, because some of these motherfuckers are serious.
Jewish Steel
I recall reading somewhere (The New Yorker?)Fox’s value to it’s advertisers is for the particular kind of viewer it attracts. It’s demo is the type of old person who has the teevee on ALL BLOODY DAY.
I imagine advertisers like this because they can truly saturate your cortex with their rubbish products and bogus claims.
I guess if you barrage this kind of person with ginned up outrages against the republic, they don’t change the channel.
But Antiques Roadshow does it too so…
jl
Even I won’t fall for this one.
I think DougJ was ‘change’ earlier today.
Well, he’s a math guy. Probably starting to go insane already. Usually the sanity holds out a little longer, but in this case…
Cat Lady
DougJ said liberal media heh heh.
Just gotta say, this blog has kicked some ass today. KICKED ASS.
Chris
“Keeping America divided through media polarization is FNC’s brand strategy.”
So, when CNN moves right to copy Fox and chase their viewers, they’re actually being fundamentally subversive? Weird…
slag
Aha! Fair AND balanced. I get it now.
Oh wait. No. Still makes no sense.
Mark S.
A couple of months ago, I might have disagreed, but this kind of wackiness makes it pretty apparent Fox is more about ratings than ideology. I think you’d get your ass fired at most companies if you said the second largest shareholder was a terrorist, but Fox needs to keep those teabaggers protesting mosques.
Mark S.
@Jewish Steel:
That makes sense.
kdaug
@WyldPirate: Hang in there, champ. We’ll all be OK (unless we’re killed in some right-wing bomber’s plot).
Seriously. The teatards scare me a hell of a lot more than any “Jihadis” – they’re a lot less likely to get caught in advance. No funny name, and all that.
But I reckon living well until you die isn’t the worst philosophy. You don’t get to call how you go, just how you live.
Jewish Steel
@Mark
Oops! That should be *its. Don’t tell my gf. She’s a proof reader.
morzer
@Jewish Steel:
And you know who else liked antiques, don’t you?
Mr Furious
At the end of the day, the Teabaggers are mostly bluster, and I don’t expect violence on Election Day. Their intimidation tactics will be employed only in areas where they feel perfectly safe—like in their own lily-white precincts.
They’re pussies. The lot of ’em.
slag
@Mr Furious: They seem happy enough to beat up on girls, though.
Jewish Steel
@morzer: And arks of the covenant! Omigod, you’re right!
DickSpudCouchPotatoDetective
Hey, stirring up shit worked for William Randolph Hearst.
Maybe you’ve seen the swell house he built on the California coast.
Who knew that selling fear and jingoism and stupidity could make people rich?
Jeff Fecke
Tonight, Brian Williams led into a story on the Florida governor’s race by noting that Alex Sink got a text message during the most recent debate, and also Rick Scott had some baggage from a company he used to work for. So you know, both sides have ethics problems.
Alex Sink got a text message she wasn’t supposed to. Rick Scott was chairman and CEO of the health care provider that committed the worst Medicare fraud in our nation’s history. On his watch.
Potato, po-tah-to. Both sides have their problems.
I need a drink.
Viva BrisVegas
There is a difference.
The Fox media, which is larger than just Fox News, both feeds into and feeds from the general wingnut insanity in an ever expanding positive feedback loop.
Colbert/Stewart and co, feed off the wingnuttery, but don’t add to it.
If there wasn’t a hugely profitable media machine built to amplify right wing craziness, liberal sarcasm would probably actually act to dampen wingnut insanity.
AB
meh, watching the daily show for the last couple has me thinking it should be the rally to restore High Broderism more than anything else.
2th&nayle
@Mr Furious:
I don’t disagree that by and large, individually, they’re mostly chickenshits. But don’t bullshit yourself. There ain’t nothin’ more dangerous than a bunch of wantabee toughguys when they think they’ve got you outnumbered. A pack of wolves got more honor
Bob L
Look at the whole Tea Party thing, the very name chose of Tea Party is mean to be divisive. The people who chose it knew perfectly well what “tea bagging” is and knew it would further isolate their followers from the rest of society because it would make them look ridiculous and add to the tea baggers felling of victim hood.
priscianus jr
@Viva BrisVegas:
matoko_chan
@DougJ
The rightside oligarchs have an excellent, unimpeacheable, mulitpurpose argument that works in any situ.
They can tell their base with absolute truth–
I just got my comments deleted and banned again at The American Scene again.
Happens with some regularity. :)
I pointed out that what Ross Douthat and Reihan Slam feared in their 2008 book Grand New Party has come to pass– stratification by cognitive ability. Their approach, that “commonsense” == intelligence and education, has resulted in the perfectly horrible slate of conservative candidates, like COD and Palin. Last year Charles Murray previewed part of his upcoming book– the only elites left on the right are business class elites– the intellectual elites and the cultural elites have left the building.
That is the widening chasm between liberal and conservative americans.
Stratification by cognitive ability.
The teabaggers are more wealthy and more educated than average americans– taken over ALL americans, sure– they are also OLDER and WHITER.
And they would gladly see the world burn before they would admit they just arent as smart.
matoko_chan
i should say, this is the FIRST time i have gotten banned there for just quoting Ross and Reihan and Charles Murray.
matoko_chan
Actually, Dr. Manzi, says “commonsense” is GREATER THAN intelligence, education and skill.
Manzi, you dumbass. That is teabaggerese.
“commonsense” and the “innovation” of the market just led to the Econopalypse that Ate Americas Jobs.
“practical experience concerning the organization of human society” is the dumbass socon values that led America to think it could terraform +99% muslim societies into tame little brown judeochristian client states by sending missionaries with guns to rain death and destruction on them– yeah, duh that didnt work out too good either.
Why do all my heroes have feet of clay?
brantl
@matoko_chan:
\
Maybe you need higher standards?
Oscar Leroy
Nice title, DougJ :)