a thoughtful web.
Good ideas and conversation. No ads, no tracking.   Login or Take a Tour!
comment by NotPhil
NotPhil  ·  4111 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: FOX calls Westboro Baptist Church "Left Wing Cult"  ·  

Fox News, mainly, just exploits a mind-set which existed long before Fox News was around. It certainly does do propaganda effectively, but its effects are limited to those who are predisposed to see things their way in the first place.

I think that some of us don't understand that when they say things like "liberal" or "left-wing," they aren't using those terms to mean the same thing that we mean. For them, these terms mean "the Others" or "the Dangerous" not "liberating" or "progressive." So they can say that Westboro Baptist Church is left-wing and really understand that to be the case. There's no sense of irony or double-talk.

I know this is the case because I belong to a public-speaking club that had several Tea Partiers in it. I heard them (mis)using terms like "liberal" so often that one day, when I was in charge of the impromptu-speaking portion of our meeting, I showed them the dictionary definition of the word "liberal" and then asked them to speak about the concept using the term that way. Not only could the Tea Partiers not do so, try as they might, they also disbelieved that the term was defined that way in the dictionary.

It's one of the things that's so strange about public discourse in America. We're speaking past each other, in part, because we aren't even using the same language as each other, even though it may sound like it.





thenewgreen  ·  4111 days ago  ·  link  ·  

    It's one of the things that's so strange about public discourse in America. We're speaking past each other, in part, because we aren't even using the same language as each other, even though it may sound like it.
I would agree with that statement, I would add that FOXNews tends to be the organization writing the definitions for the Right. That's what makes them brilliant, they're the ones molding, shaping and directing an entire group of individuals. They understand the language from both perspective, thus they know exactly how to push the buttons of the Left while fueling the pride of the Right. Brilliant. One group watches(listens) for guidance, the other to keep an eye on the enemy. All of this equals enormous ratings and control.
theadvancedapes  ·  4110 days ago  ·  link  ·  

What I want to know (since I am not an American), is whether this type of thinking and "talking past each other" existed pre-FOX News? Do you think it has always existed in America, and one major news organization capitalized off of it?

NotPhil  ·  4110 days ago  ·  link  ·  

America's always had a strain of anti-government, conspiracy-theory thought running through it. Fox News just capitalizes on the most recent varieties of this, which were popularized in the '50s and '60s, during the Cold War and the counter-cultural movement. The ideas of people like John Birch, Ayn Rand, and Jerry Falwell became very popular among some segments of the American population during this time. News Corp. apparently thought there were still enough people around in the '90s who thought like this to support a cable news channel which would present these views as "news," and, it appears, they were right.