I’ve been watching Fox News lately. Now I haven’t put aside my unashamedly liberal tendencies and I certainly haven’t become a Trump Acolyte. But, how else will you get - right from the horse’s mouth - a clear-eyed look at what is driving the country.
All right, not the entire country. And, all right again, not a clear-eyed look, but only a little ray of light, shining through whatever crack in the curtain that it’s highly-paid commentators allow to reach their self-selected audience.
But, like the shadows on the wall of Plato’s famous cave - and shame on you if you never learned about it - the glimpses I have gotten in the past couple of weeks are really illuminating.
I’m still learning. The big show continues to play on in Washington - Congress doesn’t actually have to be in Washington for the political turmoil to continue - and you can learn a lot anyway.
You want an example? Well here’s one. Some commentators were debating the other day on whether President Trump’s unpredictability was a good thing or a bad thing.
One of them (and no, I will not increase their public posture by even a single potential viewer by using their names) said that a lot of people wanted him to be unpredictable, and were happy to see he is keeping his promise.
Look at that Obama, they said. He told our enemies what he was going to do, and so they were prepared to react. Trump gives no such warning, which means he is more powerful and gets better results.
Well, it was two to one or three to one for Trump’s unpredictability. The lone dissent came from someone who said that people wanted government they could count on.
The Trump supporters scoffed. They believe the President when he claimed he has stopped China from stealing our industrial secrets because its leaders are scared over what he might do, that he defeated ISIS by not telegraphing his moves ahead of time and has made NATO members pay their fair share.
They didn’t say exactly what that fair share was, or how it was calculated, or what it was paid to. But, that’s not the point. They also didn’t say how ISIS will respond to his order bringing our troops out of Syria. Maybe they will just wait until we leave until they attack.
If so, it will be obviously become the fault of the new Democratic majority in the House of Representatives. Why? They didn’t vote to build a big, beautiful wall across the desert.
So, What Could They Be Missing?
The Fox commentators neglected to say that that Trump’s being unpredictable was causing the stock market to drop like a stone, straining our military alliances to the breaking point, leaving farmers unsure what to plant next year and driving up interest rates.
See how easy it it is to tell what Fox News doesn’t want to talk about, just from the questions they ask and don’t ask. It’s a little ray of sunshine.
Even more important, watching Fox - even briefly - showed me something I never realized before - the Treacherous Crawl.
Now crawl is a term that has been used in the news business almost since cable news was invented. The crawl is that little line on the bottom of your television or computer screen that provides information which may have nothing to do with the show you are watching. Look at the words crawling across the screen.
On Christmas Eve, the Fox commentators were joking about the holidays and showing cute pictures sent in by viewers showing dogs in elf hats, children playing and heartwarming holiday scenes. The treacherous crawl was talking about the hundreds of people killed by a tsunami in Indonesia, but no one was talking about rescue missions or help or where to send donations.
There might not have been room. There are almost as few words in the crawl as in a Trump tweet. Wait. Come to think of it, he didn’t tweet about the tsunami either.
I won’t stay with Fox news much longer. But, if someone else is watching, please let me know who gets the blame for the collapse of the stock market. I want to see if I guessed right.
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