Tuesday, November 30, 2021

Lara Logan's Grotesque Agenda

 


Fox News has amply demonstrated over the years that they don't give a fuck if what they put out into the ether is even news: they exist as a propaganda racket, and their decision to give a berth to Lara Logan after her 60 Minutes Benghazi debacle demonstrates their concerns regarding journalistic integrity. (No one escapes whipping regarding how Benghazi was covered, but Logan's failure to vet was very concerning.) 

They gave Lara Logan a show and let it be called Lara Logan Has No Agenda in the po-faced tradition of feigning "fair and balanced" coverage. 

You know, unlike those "mainstream media" assholes that unload whackadoodles like Logan after fuckups. (But to be fair, Fox News eventually unloads whackadoodles too, and they go to OAN or Newsmax or whatever. It's the circle of life.) After all, Fox's claim is that the other guys are too liberal and you should get the real news from straight-talkers like folks at Fox who, I guess, don't bother checking facts if a story is too good not to pass on. 

Now, I'm not calling Logan batshit because I have respect for what she used to be, and I get that she has been through some shit. I'm calling her a propagandist because she's given up on journalistic standards entirely and has decided to be no better than one's wine-sotted Facebook aunt forwarding bottom-of-the barrel conspiracy theories about antifa and now Dr. Fauci

Look at the language she's using--comparing Fauci to an actual monster of the Holocaust--what actions is she talking about? What research, what actual practices have put people at harm? Holocaust analogies are intentionally incendiary and also insulting to the real victims of that horror. She is using inflammatory language to liken Fauci to a person who did known, documented horrific things, but she never says what exactly Fauci did that she has a problem with. And she says people "all across the world" are saying this. Who? And why are they saying it, and why is she so emphatically co-signing? 

Or are these "people" as meaningful as the "some people are saying" that fabulists like Trump use to back up their nonsense? 

Here's the grotesque thing: the Republican Party wants to consider the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic as a failure on the part of the current Democratic presidential administration. They are fully comfortable slandering legitimate scientists and demeaning legitimate science to do this. Take the case of Two-Faced Nancy Mace, who went on Fox this Sunday to tell us that she thinks natural immunity (i.e, catching COVID-19) is best. It's not, and it isn't what she said elsewhere. 

I mean, who is actually fighting against people getting vaccinated?  And Fox News has been right there with them, being entirely full of shit. And who even knows the damage they have done and the lives lost because they have a grotesque agenda--that might require some sacrifice (human lives to Covid-19) in the service of a greater good (Republicans get a narrative that Biden can't fix Covid-19 by ensuring that the problem stays very real). 

People can ask what ever happened to Lara Logan, but I don't. Shit certainly has happened to her, but what she's doing now is a choice, and you can take it to the bank because as wild as she sounds, she's serving the Fox News agenda.  And I don't have to compare her to Goebbels to point out that lying so casually about life and death matters leads to more death--should it have to be said? 

She hasn't lost her mind--she just sold her soul. It's hardly news, these days. 

UPDATE: Witness: 


It's Vast Right Wing Conspiracy. And they are okay with their own folks dying from it. I can't pretend it doesn't disturb me. But I also can't pretend it isn't real when I'm looking right at it. 


7 comments:

brettvk said...

I don't want to twitticize her because she experienced a lot of trauma that might partially explain her behavior. But trauma survivors have a responsibility to seek out treatment and at least attempt to repair themselves; you can't abuse other people and get a pass because you were abused.

Vixen Strangely said...

I get what you're saying. I don't want to judge her too harshly on the grounds that her POV might have been affected by her experiences, but it's only the truth that other people have experienced trauma, and did not become paid propagandists spreading fact-free dangerous lies on Fox. She can get therapy to address herself, but her professional issues should be addressed by the ethics of her profession, and her current outlet has barely any. Or they wouldn't have Tucker Carlson, etc.

Ten Bears said...

Sounds to me like you're giving the devil the benefit of the doubt.

Before you can recover from anything you have to tell the truth about what you're recovering from. And your part of it. There's a whole industry, arguably the oldest industry, built up around victimization ... there are Cliff Notes.

Giving the devil the benefit of the doubt is a bit like giving the devil his due ...

Art said...

Seems to me that journalism, as practiced, has gone from information with intelligent analysis, helpful to good citizenship, to a replacement for the barroom/ water cooler rumor mill and vicious/ catty over-the-back-garden-fence gossip. The main difference seem to be that of scale. The rumormongers get paid millions beyond the power and personal satisfaction of slinging manure, and their audience is in the millions.

I know it's wrong, but I sometimes feel there needs to be a liberal equivalent structure to the wingnut Wurlitzer. With the end result being David Brooks on Meet the Press being asked, out of fairness and because inquiring minds want to know, that, given his marital issues, whether reports of him having sex with goats might be something he might want to comment on. And hilarity ensues. As the joke goes: I want to see him, deny it.

If anyone can just make shit up I feel we should be able to take advantage of liberalism's inherent lack of squeamishness. Most liberals seem to have their feet on the ground and have no major issues, outside a basic sense of decorum, talking about the messier realities. Bestiality, menstruation, and gay sex are facts and while you wouldn't want to broach those subjects over dinner a rational and adult discussion is not impossible. In contrast, those on the right are much more likely to take offense and blanch. They generally limit their nastiness to insults and jokes and are entirely out of their depth discussing the actual realities and related issues as adults.

Grung_e_Gene said...

That Lara Logan was raped does not give her license to call Dr. Fauci a Nazi and the most infamous torturer since Torquemada.

Vixen Strangely said...

It bothers me that so much of the commentary I see on Twitter and the like is "unhinged rant". Oh, the sweet children....it's calculated. She isn't crazy--she's shameless. A lot of what passes for "crazy" in MAGAland isn't people having lost their mind, they just found their hustle.

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