Fox News hits the panic button
Just when you thought it was safe to wear a tan suit again … In a segment clearly intended to fashion a mountain of counterfeit outrage out of a molehill of inconsequential rubbish, a Fox News host called out President Biden (between chuckles of derision) for wearing his mask ten seconds longer than he needed to. You read that right.
President Biden came outside Tuesday to announce the new CDC guidelines that masks were no longer required to be worn outdoors and in certain settings by people who have been vaccinated. On his way to the podium he wore a mask, then took it off to make the announcement. According to Fox News, it’s the thing that’s got “all of social media talking.”
Trump can rape women, announce at Helsinki that he’ll believe Vladimir Putin before he’ll believe eleven of his own intelligence agencies, tell 35,000 lies while in office (that we know about), spend his days hate-tweeting about American citizens he doesn’t like (and thus put their lives in danger), insult our allies, praise monstrous tyrants, and mock people for wearing masks while hundreds of thousands of Americans die, and Fox is okay with that. But Biden wears a mask a little too long? Scandalous!
I suppose many of us naively thought that the era of deploring tan suits as a fashion choice and Dijon mustard as a condiment choice was over. How young we were then! Now that the one-term, twice-impeached felon is gone, Fox is back to the same nitpicking they subjected President Obama to, seeing scandal where none exists and provoking outrage where it would never occur to anyone to be outraged.
Naturally freedom of the press is protected by the Constitution and Fox has the right to carp about the President for setting a good example by wearing a mask a few seconds longer than he needs to. But that same freedom also allows me to call them unbelievably chickenshit for doing so. And so I am.
I’m going to go even further than that. Because Fox News has used their own version of a bully pulpit for disseminating anti-mask propaganda, people have died. Part of the responsibility for the deaths of more than half a million Americans rests squarely on the shoulders this “pro-life,” right wing, propaganda-spewing hate machine laughingly disguised as a news outlet.
Fox News has killed Americans who would be alive today were it not for them. It’s a thing that is both obvious and infuriatingly impossible to prove in a court of law. But everyone with an ounce of common sense knows it to be true.
It’s one thing to laugh at the stupidity of this clown car called Fox, but we must never forget that behind their relentless promotion of human stupidity lies a monstrous evil. Anyone who works for or promotes this engine of hate has blood on his or her hands. I don’t know whether or not Hell exists, but at times like this I wish it did. And, as ever, ladies and gentlemen, brothers and sisters, comrades and friends, stay safe.
Robert Harrington is an American expat living in Britain. He is a portrait painter.