"What I’ve Learned From Collecting Stories of People Whose Loved Ones Were Transformed by Fox News"

[ZiprHead]

Last week, I devoted an installment of my newsletter Welcome to Hell World to a dozen stories from people who, like me, had close relationships that had been strained or ruined by family members who’d become obsessed with Fox News.

The fallout led to failed marriages and estranged parental relationships. For at least one person, it marks the final memory he’ll ever have of his father: “When I found my dad dead in his armchair, fucking Fox News was on the TV,” this reader told me. “It’s likely the last thing he saw. I hate what that channel and conservative talk radio did to my funny, compassionate dad. He spent the last years of his life increasingly angry, bigoted, and paranoid.”

 

[scombrid]

I know a marriage that ended because of AM Radio and Fox. The woman was in the tank hard for Hannity and bought into EVERYTHING. He let most stuff slide but would argue scientific issues when Rush or Hannity would bloviate some Heartland or Heritage bullshit talking point. She got so defensive it pretty much shut things down.

My sister in law and my brother ended a visit to her parents early last Christmas because of some FOX related shit fit that the dad had. They left on Christmas eve. I've been to that house when FOX was on TV and Rush Limbaugh was on the radio at the same time. Her parents are at a point now where they won't leave their house because of all the "blacks" in the neighborhood. Guns? They are city people. My brother and I were the redneck kids with the guns back in the day. G and P never had guns. Shit, there's a damned loaded hand gun under ever pillow in that house it seems these days. Their twilight is very dark.

 

[TSwizzle]

LOL, what a crock of shite.

"Fox didn’t necessarily change anyone’s mind, so much as it seems to have supercharged and weaponized a politics that was otherwise easy for white Americans to overlook in their loved ones. "

So predictable.

 

[James Brown]

I've posted this elsewhere, about a cable repair technician's stressful job. She relates dealing with a man on the verge of a full-blown ragefest because his cable was out and couldn't be fixed instantly. The man's wife then spoke to the repair tech alone:

She said she was sorry about him. I said, “It’s fine.” I said there really wasn’t anything I could do. She blinked back the flood of tears she’d been holding since God knows when. She said, “It’s just, when he has Fox, he has Obama to hate. If he doesn’t have that ...” She kept looking over her shoulder. She was terrified of him. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I just need him to have Fox.”

I'll bet her husband used to be a decent fellow at some point early in their marriage. Now she's terrified of him when he doesn't have his Fox Fix.

 

[ZiprHead]

LOL, what a crock of shite.

"Fox didn’t necessarily change anyone’s mind, so much as it seems to have supercharged and weaponized a politics that was otherwise easy for white Americans to overlook in their loved ones. "

So predictable.

And yet you didn't predict it.

 

[zorq]

My parents divorced at least partially because my father got sucked into a Limbaugh/Fox delusion. Eh... What are you going to do?

 

[steve_bank]

FOX is propaganda in the true sense. There are 2 or 3 anchors who try to be objective, the rest is scripted repeated messaging.

Hannity is a vey effective communicator. Him and others like him on FOX speak directly to people as peers in plain language and it connects with people. They come across as regular people.

CNN is a condescending east coast intellectual outlet that presumes to talk down to people who are just not bright enough to understand without them. Over dramatic. I have a decent vocabulary, but I have to look up words I hear on CNN.

IMO that is why FOX is the most watched media.

 

[AirPoh]

LOL, what a crock of shite.

"Fox didn’t necessarily change anyone’s mind, so much as it seems to have supercharged and weaponized a politics that was otherwise easy for white Americans to overlook in their loved ones. "

So predictable.

This irony was certainly predictable.

 

[funinspace]

Last week, I devoted an installment of my newsletter Welcome to Hell World to a dozen stories from people who, like me, had close relationships that had been strained or ruined by family members who’d become obsessed with Fox News.

The fallout led to failed marriages and estranged parental relationships. For at least one person, it marks the final memory he’ll ever have of his father: “When I found my dad dead in his armchair, fucking Fox News was on the TV,” this reader told me. “It’s likely the last thing he saw. I hate what that channel and conservative talk radio did to my funny, compassionate dad. He spent the last years of his life increasingly angry, bigoted, and paranoid.”

My dad, who died 2 years ago just shy of his 92 birthday, was definitely warped a bit by Fox News. It got harder in later years to talk sensibly with him on politics, so I let it drop more often than not. He was an old fashioned Repug, but still never became heartless, nor with a kick'em to the curb mentality. But his opinions definitely weren't the same as 15 to 30 years prior to the daily dose of Fox. He really got annoyed when I pointed out that the Repugs health plan ideas (aka NO!!!), is not a plan, and I'd point out that yelling and screaming 'NO' is not responsible. He still was sane enough to realize I was right, but then by the next time I'd talk to him, another 20 hours of Fox would be injected into his brain.

 

[Don2 (Don1 Revised)]

This is how people get TDS.

 

[ideologyhunter]

Where else would we find out that there's a war on Christmas, that Santa Claus is a white man, that the death panels are after us, the Criminal Deep State is after Trump, that Obama bows too low to emirs (too bad we never got to assess his salute to Kim's generals), that the Mooooslims are coming to put us under Sharia law, that the Caravan's gonna get us with Arab terrorists disguised as braceros? Be scared, be outraged, be American.

 

[James Brown]

Be scared, be outraged, be American.

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