I woke up one year ago to a Washington Post headline: “Ron Paul wins CPAC straw poll.” About two weeks ago, I woke up to the same exact headline in the same exact column. It shouldn’t have been a surprise considering the growing libertarian movement, but I was happier than ever.
No one really debates that MSNBC works for the Democrats and Fox News works for the Republicans.
Unfortunately, while the libertarian ideology polished the reputation of Fox News during the past two years, Fox decided not to reciprocate the favor.
They seem to have forgotten that libertarians and true conservatives won the House of Representatives for Republicans in 2010. This win didn’t occur because of the erroneous foreign policies and outrageous spending bills of the neoconservatives over at their own station.
Fox’s programming content had consisted of small-government talk throughout President Barack Obama’s first two years. But after Republicans had won the House, it went back to the promotion of fake Christianity and aggressive war.
It all started on Feb. 14 when Fox ran an opinion column on their website. Kevin McCullough, the author of the piece, criticized the top three winners of the straw poll: Rep. Ron Paul, R-Texas; former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney and former New Mexico Gov. Gary Johnson.
McCullough then went on to describe Johnson’s presence as “stoking the flame of immoral libertarianism that actually advocated legalized pot and the redefinition of marriage.”
But we should all know that wasting money on a failed drug war and forcing social values on others are the best ways to make everyone happy.
I stopped reading when McCullough went on a man-crush rant regarding former President George W. Bush’s unending appreciation for the Constitution. He then described Dick Cheney’s chickenhawk-oriented patriotism in his commitment to protecting us from our trillion-dollar problem in the Middle East.
The straw that broke the camel’s back came when Fox News took the audio from CPAC 2010 and dubbed it over the video of Paul’s win at CPAC 2011.
CPAC 2010 was full of Romney supporters who booed Paul’s first straw poll victory, so Fox News swapped the audio in order to make Paul look bad. The real reaction to Paul’s win of CPAC 2011 was screaming and applause.
They should be ashamed of themselves for their deliberate deception of viewers. But, then again, mainstream news sources these days are soon to be overtaken by real journalists like the ones at Al Jazeera and antiwar.com.
Aesop’s story “The Fox and the Grapes” parallels these events so well and with such irony.
Fox News pretended to support true conservatism for a while. But when they discovered that libertarians and conservatives alike will never respect their neo-conservative tendencies, they tried to convince everyone else libertarians probably didn’t taste too good anyway. I have bad news for you, Fox News. Everyone loves grapes.
Reach Brian at brian.p.anderson@asu.edu
