Fox News is in a Very Interesting Place

I guess the thing I want to start with is that the cable news corporate entity formerly known on this blog as "Fox Mushroom Farm" (a moniker I am retiring as an actual Fox Farm that grows mushrooms exists, and I have decided I wish them no ill will at all and think both foxes and mushrooms are great, anyway) is a great part of my study of what Trump support is made of.  The kind of atmosphere that this network has created, by regularly demonizing Muslim people or immigrants, or black kids wearing hoodies, primes a particular kind of pump-head for Trump's act.

And this is why the idea of the Trump White House collaborating with Fox News as a propaganda outfit makes a certain kind of sense.  This outlet made Trump and sunk their credibility in him, and even if it shakes out that Trump is the most unfit person to have ever taken office--it behooves Fox to try the "Seth Rich murder was about the DNC hack" lie to let Trump off the hook, even if they are also letting Russia off the hook for hacking various US enterprises. They might be flying in the face of what actual national security experts or law enforcement officials might say, but they can just wave it off with their new line--that's the "deep state" talking! 

But since when was Fox News about national security? They are about insecurity. So when Lou Dobbs claims "the Left" is carrying out a "coup d'état" against Donald Trump, or Jeanine Pirro calls for civil war if Trump is ousted, we are seeing an insecure atmosphere being created by the "news" outlet. What fascinates me is that this is dynamic of dysfunctionality seems to mirror internal dysfunctionality.

See, the Fox News milieu is pretty damn sexist. I know this is true because of the sexual harassment that has apparently been part of the corporate culture for a very long time.  We can talk about O'Reilly and consider that Steve Doocey was also problematic,  and note that Francisco Cortes, got suspended for the same thing.  As did CV Payne, just recently.  And now Eric Bolling has been accused of sending dick pics.  This is a sign of a really messed-up culture. Harm was perpetuated because of loyalty to certain figures in the organization--which has resulted in multiple lawsuits and settlements and firings. 

Astoundingly, some Fox News fans might even think this recent disappearance of personalities due to their legal problems, might just stem from "deep state" interference, as if somehow, government agencies years or even decades back seeded the cable network with agents who would deploy sexual harassment charges at selected periods in order to "silence" the brave journos at Fox. It's sad that people are ever that far into denial that stupid media being stupid is never enough reason for why untrue things become the news of the hour. But of such is Fox News.  They aren't about informing, as much as disinforming or deforming culture. How they are doing it has become the news.