DESPERATION

I KNOW WHAT THEY WANT


It’s a plot! A PLOT I tell you! I have finally uncovered the plan behind it all. It’s a SECRET PLAN that THEY don’t want you to know about! I’m sure my life is at risk, but I have to impart the knowledge I have uncovered. I have been unable to get a full night’s sleep for the past week. I’ve found myself wide awake at 4 o’clock in the morning… tossing and turning… but THEY are out there, and they are conspiring against us. Big Government! The second cousin twice removed on your mother’s side of Big Brother! They want to take all our money. They want to spend all our money. They want to give all our money to the sick, the needy, the unemployed, and then more to the sick… and once they have put our children’s children’s children’s children into massive debt… then they are going to kill us all.

Okay… I was not joking about not being able to get a full night’s sleep all this week. Almost every night, at around four o’clock in the morning, I found myself wide awake. I am at the end of my second or third full week of my FOX NEWS diet—could my sleeplessness be pure coincidence? Maybe, as a friend suggested, I might be the victim of a nighttime vampire visitation, or I could be the subject of alien abduction/experimentation—hmmm? How far off is that suggestion?

The reality is that this past week was the most trying. I felt beaten down by the incessant negativity that was beaming out the television. I found it impossible to blog, and have not really wanted to turn the TV on—not to watch Fox News, and haven’t even been tempted by any other source of news. Fine! I’ll admit that I wanted to watch the all day marathon of DESPERATELY REAL AND SURGICALLY ENHANCED HOUSEWIVES OF ORANGE COUNTY, but I resisted! Fortunately, Deb is addicted to the Olympics, and it has been on in the background whenever she is home. I would leave the room whenever any news updates appeared on screen.

I just have not been able to bring myself to watch FOX News this week. MY DVR is overflowing with shows that I have recorded—and the prospect of watching all that I have recorded is making my fingers tremble over the keyboard. I have stuck with my original plan for the month—Fox News or nothing. Nothing seems to have won out.

So, could this be the insidious plot of the evil overlords at FOX NEWS? Could the ranting, the attacks, the derision of anything resembling progress all be smoke and mirrors? Maybe it’s not just about ratings and enraging the masses to take action against the current administration. Maybe they are attempting to numb our brains to point of apathy. It seems to be working on me.

Really… can any sane individual absorb the massive amounts of negativity transmitted by FOX… be lectured to by Bill O’Reilly…listen to the repeated diatribes of Glenn Beck… the cutesy/snarky asides of Fox & Friends… the plasticized sneers of Greta Van Susteren… could anyone do this day after day and not have their minds warped on some level?

FAIR AND BALANCED?

I expanded my FOX NEWS diet beyond Bill O. and Glenn B. in search of NEWS.

First up was Bill Hemmer, who I remember from back in his CNN days. Now he is the co-host of America’s Newsroom with Martha MacCallum. There is some actual news scattered through their show, but Hemmer seems to struggle with barely containing his disdain for Obama administration and its policies. I found the show less informative than I hoped for one with such an illustrious title.

On the record with Gretchen Von Susteren has come CLOSE to pissing me off as much as Sean Hannity’s show, but not so much. I find her reporting style to be relatively one sided, and find it incredibly distracting to look at her non-moving face. She spends most of her shows interviewing the right, and is clearly giving them a platform to take shots at the Democrats.

Here is the tricky thing about FOX NEWS—something unknown to the progress liberal elitists like me—there is actual news coverage buried in the middle of their day long right wing propaganda. I am not kidding, have not been brain-washed (yet), and I do not think this a false-memory implanted by alien abductors. FOX NEWS BROADCASTS NEWS!

This was a genuine surprise to me. Fox News network is not ALL about Bill O’Reilly, Glenn Beck and Sean Hannnity. I begrudgingly stumbled across some actual NEWS programs, and—dare I say—some real REPORTERS. I came across at least two reporters who are unwilling to just blindly report inaccurate quotes, even when coming from the right side of the aisle, as facts. This stunned me.

Fox Reports with Shepard Smith was the real stunner for me. It is an hour long newscast at 7pm that seems to do a decent job of—covering the news! Shepard Smith—who’s radio announcer voice bugged me at first—does a decent job of keeping his own opinions out of the reports for the most part. He covers national, international, political and human interest stories with—dare I say—a fair and balanced style.

Smith covered everything from Healthcare, to the New Orleans Saints super-bowl win, to a pretty touching tribute to Jack Murtha , and he did with a fair-handed style I had not seen on Fox up until now. There was some pretty straight forward reporting of BOTH sides of the aisle by Catherine Herridge and Major Garrett. Both of these reporters refuted erroneous comments by Republican members of the house. Again, I was stunned. This is a show I could see myself watching in the future—beyond this month.

So, maybe it is not an overarching plot by the FOX OVERLORDS, and maybe I am not having my life-force drained through vampirism or alien experimentation—OR maybe the overlords ARE alien vampires, and I am just the first victim to come to the realization?

Help me before I watch again!!!