Americans Want the Truth
The author of this piece from the Los Angeles Times is scratching his head over the fact that Fox News ratings crashed on Tuesday (Manafort/Cohen Day) vs. MSNBC and CNN.
Here’s a possibility. Fox News viewers want a constant stream of good news about and support for U.S. President Donald Trump….to a point. Beyond that point, they want the truth.
Yes, they know they can tune into a channel that will tell them, at any hour of the day or night, that Trump is a stable genius and a great public servant–that he’s honest, brilliant, principled, admired, innocent, and, of course, the victim of a witch hunt perpetrated by the liberal, anti-American deep state. But apparently they have an inkling that they’re being fed a steady diet of pure bulls**t, and occasionally, they find it necessary to get a check on that, as disturbing as that might be.
Without that check, they could be hearing that pouring toxic waste into our rivers, Space Force, trade wars with China, parent/child separation, condoning Nazis as “fine people,” and subsidizing coal are all great ideas…at the precise same time as the architect of these ideas is being led out of the White House in handcuffs.
Understandably, they’d like to avoid that.
Just a theory.
Craig,
Truth ?
Hmmm… let’s see how about the Washington Post who published the opinion of a number of mental health experts under the headline, ” Doctors say Trump mentally unfit for office”
The article explained this was the first time mental health professionals were so concerned they felt justified in committing such a serious breach of medical ethics.
The twenty-seven mental health professionals then published a book (published and distributed by a Washington Post post affiliate0, titled “The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump”.
The concluded: “We warn that anyone as mentally unstable as Mr. Trump simply should not be entrusted with the life-and-death powers of the presidency.” . (never mind these “professionals” diagnosed Trump without ever meeting him) !
The “lie” , is not the cheap tabloid “diagnosis” but that this isn’t anything new. Indeed it’s just a rehash of the 1964 Washington Post article about the 1,189 psychiatrists who claimed Republican candidate Barry Goldwater was “psychologically unfit” to be President.
(again, not one of them had ever spent even one minute with the Arizona senator, a reserve Air Force Major-general who routinely passed annual physical and psychiatric examinations as and active jet pilot).
The lie is taht the Washington Post knew it was a rehash, but pretended it wasn’t.
Nor is the media very truthful when it describes the President as the “Prince of liars” (CNN) or the NYT when it claims President Trump tells more lies than any other President.
All previous President’s lied, and lied continuously, usually about far more serious matters than President Trump.
In fact, since FDR (a cunning and persistent deceiver) every President has lied about far more serious things than Trump’s possible embellishments about his wealth, his dalliances of decades ago, or the size of his inaugural crowd.
But the biggest, most cunning dissemblers of the truth are the media themselves.
Take your little bit of propaganda, designed to portray all the President’s supporters as angry, aggressive fanatics. It this a true, objective or even fair depiction of the President’s supporters?
Obviously not, but you feel justified in distorting the truth. So does the media, and so the lines blur between opinion, propaganda and the truth.
Until the truth is no longer the truth, lies are no longer lies, it’s all a matter of frustrated perception and confusion.