The Fox May Grow Grey, but Never Good

Many moons ago, I would often tell people that I didn’t think that Rush Limbaugh believed the things he said.  “This guy,” I would tell anyone who asked, “is just performing for the audience.  Oh, he might believe something he’s saying every once in a while, but it’s almost accidental: believing or not believing is completely irrelevant for him.  He makes a lot of money with this act, and he will literally say anything for the money.”

Now, Rush’s popularity faded, and eventually he died, and younger folks today might not even remember who he was.  But the sad thing is that there was always someone coming along behind him, trotting out the same old act—some even priding themselves on taking it further—saying the same old bullshit, and making the same old bank.  First Bill O’Reilly, who has himself come and gone by this point, then Glen Beck (gone but trying to stage a comeback, I’ve heard), Alex Jones (fading fast), Sean Hannity (still around), and current star pupil Tucker Carlson.  Not to imply that right-wing douchebaggery is only a man’s game, of course—folks like Laura Ingraham and Jeanine Pirro are fighting to break that glass ceiling, for some reason—but it’s mostly been the men, hogging the spotlight, as men are wont to do.  But the point is, there’s always been someone, and usually several someones.  And, for every single one of them, I’ve said, repeatedly, I think it’s all an act.  I don’t believe for one second that any of those motherfuckers believed a single word of the shit they were spewing, except maybe by accident.  Many of them are very well educated, and it’s quite simply not logical to believe they’re that stupid.  ‘Cause, you know, they’ve said some stupid shit.  Limbaugh once said that “firsthand smoke takes 50 years to kill people, if it does” (he, of course, died of lung cancer).  Jones once said “the majority of frogs in most areas of the United States are now gay.” Megyn Kelly (who is not Laura Ingraham, but is a credible imitation) once said “Santa just is white.” Not only do I not believe that any of these people believe what they’re saying, I think they’re engaged in a competition to see who can say the most ridiculous bullshit and make it sound credible.  I imagine a Victorian-style English gentlemen’s club where Hannity, wearing a long walrus moustahce, is slapping Kelly on the back and saying, “oh, good one Megyn! ‘Santa just is white’ ... bally good show, eh wot wot?”

And, for all the decades that I’ve been saying this, people have been telling me I’m full of shit.

Not just conservatives, mind you.  Most liberals also seem convinced that these folks are true believers, which of course is more dangerous.  Though ... is it?  Would it be more dangerous if someone truly believed the hate they were shoveling, or if they were cynically manipulating people into a hate they couldn’t be bothered to feel?  Perhaps an academic question.  Point being, I’ve been ridiculed for having this view just about every time, by just about everybody, from just about every point on the political spectrum.  I’d like to say that I kept saying, “just wait: one day you’ll see.” But, the truth is, I didn’t actually hold out much hope of this.

Oh, I’ve had some glimmers of hope along the way.  In 2017, Alex Jones was involved in a vicious custody battle; his wife, unsurprisingly, said she didn’t want her kids being raised by someone who routinely made homophobic comments and indulged in outlandish conspiracy theories.  Jones’ lawyer claimed: “He’s playing a character.  He is a performance artist.” Kinda sounds like what I’ve been saying for years, right?  But of course people said he was just saying those things to get out of legal trouble (which was probably true).  In late 2016, Glenn Beck did an interview with Samantha Bee of Full Frontal wherein he said: “As a guy who has done damage, I don’t want to do any more damage. I know what I did. I helped divide.” Sure sounds like he not only wasn’t drinking his own Kool-Aid, but had rather come to regret ever selling the stuff.  Still, people said that Sam Bee and her people had edited the interview to show the narrative they wanted to show (which, also, was probably true).

But now, my friends, I have achieved total vindication, thanks to Dominion Voting Systems, and their more than one billion dollar lawsuit against Fox News.  See, because what we’re learning now is not what Fox News people are saying in court; no, what we’re learing now is things they said, to each other, in private, which is now evidence in court.  And I don’t think anyone believes that the court is editing the information to fit a narrative ... in fact, if anything, Fox is the one doing the editing.  Just this week, the judge in the case sanctioned Fox News for withholding evidence.  Plus, as law professor RonNell Andersen Jones pointed out in an interview with Jon Stewart, there’s still a lot of information that is redacted in the court filings.  The stuff that we know about is the stuff that “either they thought that they could let it go or ... they lost in an effort to redact it.”

So what do the texts and other messages say?  By now you’ve likely heard the worst of them.  Tucker Carlson describing Trump as “a demonic force, a destroyer” and writing of the ex-president’s lawyer “Sidney Powell is lying by the way. I caught her”; Ingraham replying “Sidney is a complete nut”; Hannity saying of Giuliani “Rudy is acting like an insane person” and calling Powell a “fucking lunatic.” Not only do the messages show that the on-air personalities didn’t buy the bullshit they were peddling; they also tell us exactly why: it’s all about the money.  When the New York Post asked Trump to stop claiming the election was stolen, they started losing readers; Rupert Murdoch (owner of both the Post and Fox News) messaged the Post’s chief executive “Getting creamed by CNN!” When a Fox reporter tweeted that “there is no evidence” of voter machine defect or fraud, Carlson texted Hannity “Please get her fired.  Seriously what the fuck?  Actually shocked.  It needs to stop immediately, like tonight.  It’s measurably hurting the company.  The stock price is down.” None of this is controversial.  None of this disputed.  None of this is paraphrased or edited in any way.  All of it has been reported multiple times by reputable outlets (the links I’ve included above range from ABC News to the Guardian in the UK to Rolling Stone magazine), and they’re direct quotes from court evidence.  And this, as Andersen Jones points out, is what they couldn’t get suppressed.  There’s like a lot worse out there waiting to be unredacted.

But, hey: this is sufficient for me.  This, I think, proves my point to a T.  These idiots don’t believe what they’re saying.  What’s worse, they don’t care how much damage it does, as long as they keep making money.  At the end of the day, that’s really all it’s about.  So is it more dangerous that they might all be true believers?  I’m not sure.  I think the truth might be even more dangerous than that: that they are all cynical, performative, money-grubbing assholes who care more about lining their pockets than they do about the state of our democracy.  They are, in many ways, the ultimate expression of late-stage capitalism: fuck ’em all, let the world burn, as long as I get my nut.  That’s plenty scary enough for me.

[A side note on today’s title.  Wiktionary refers to it merely as a “proverb,” and says it basically means the same as “a leopard cannot change its spots.” Now, if you ask the Internet, it will gleefully tell you that this saying derives from Benjamin Franklin, and one source (which I refuse to link to) even has the balls to source it as being from Poor Richard Improved.  But, see, here’s the thing: the entire works of Mr. Franklin are available on Project Gutenberg, including Franklin’s Way to Wealth; or, “Poor Richard Improved", and the only thing it says about foxes is that “the sleeping fox catches no poultry.” In fact, after some diligent searching, I have concluded with a decent degree of confidence that Franklin never said any such thing.  So, you know ... don’t believe everything you read on the Internet.  If you want more musings on quotes, I got you covered.]