Fox News Hosts - Who is the worst?

willfully misinterpreting what i wrote, replying with sarcasm <- get one (1) new style of argument, this one is already taken by approx 1 billion people on the internet

oh okay, I will look for a new one

it's just aggravating, i don't know why do that.

I'm just O_o over fox news apologism. an edgy position to take I guess?

but...it's still fox news. it is the conservative news channel run by rupert murdoch and roger ailes.

basically i work for a liberal nonprofit so this is why i know so much about fox pushing conservative talking points. i am just fascinated by it from a theoretical standpoint, also it's hard to maintain anger, it's easier to develop a healthy sense of the absurd.

this is why i heart shep, he gets it. also do not have the impression he hangs out with a bunch of other journalists who often seem to regurgitate the exact same ideas at any given moment..

i can't help it, i kind of love fox. it's soooo over the top. o'reilly is absurd. karl rove is going to be on hannity tonight, i'm sure that will be.. informative. i think i prefer to listen to people when you know where their biases are, and you have to actively think about what's wrong with what they're saying. i know lots of people who like olbermann/maddow but personally find it gets dull to be told stories from their POV.

ok cnn international AFAIK is pretty good, i would watch that if we got it.

the problem is that 75% of fn viewers are not watching it ironically, hoping that this is gonna be one of the days that their inside man winks at them.

and I mean, does shep 'really get it'? if we really believe omar's 'forest for the tree's thing, maybe he doesn't?

Who cares if he gets it? Watching anything "ironically" is so tiresome. Shep Smith is just funny sometimes; he's the only one who doesn't take newscasting seriously, and, on that network, it's a huge plus.

"Shep Smith is funny sometimes" is something I can agree with - I just don't see how that translates into this crazy lovefest.

We all want him to officially come out.

he's the only one who doesn't take newscasting seriously

Deep down, I think he does. He wishes all his peers did too, and that he could go back in time and be a 60s/70s journalist. But given the current state of things, he plays the rational objector.

....with lavender lipstick.

they way i look at it, shep has been w/ fox since its inception, before it was the station of o reilly and hannity and the reputation that it has now, but i think when shep says it's fair & balanced it's him being party company man & part referring to his programs and those non-punditry ones that have a bit of a bent but who doesn't? the duo who are on in the afternoon (forget their names always! one has a really matronly name the other is a bumbling dude but i forget) aren't any better/worse than norah o donnell for instance and i think that's where shep is coming from. it's obvious who he has a distaste for in the network.

this feels like excuse-making to me. fox news inception = top republican media consultant gets put in charge of a news channel. shep (and colmes, who says the exact same things in public) probably thinks "they never asked me about my politics, never tell me what to say..." but like...does he not read the marquee text under his face on the screen? does he just forget who karl rove is when he walks by him on the way to the bathroom? is he really just missing the bigger picture...again and again...every day of his life for the last decade?

"Working for the Man seemed really good to me"

like, why not just skip ahead and appreciate the dude

sounds like a springsteen line

One day all of them decided they wanted to put on make-up and hair pieces and read crap out loud in a phony voice in front of a camera.

I think it was important for folks who get all their news from Fox to see that the fed gov's response to Katrina was woefully inadequate and disgraceful. It was important that Joe the Fucking Plumber get taken to task for his completely uninformed & paranoid opinions, and for someone (outside the librul media) to reiterate that a vote for Obama DOESN'T = the "death of Israel." And even though it was done under the guise of good-natured ribbing, Sheppard's clowning surely did more to undermine Beck's lunatic ravings (among those most susceptible to them) than anyone else could.

I'm certainly not suggesting he's deserving of a Peabody award or anything, but a healthy dose of OMG WTF from inside the Fox News family and (hopefully) diffused among the loyal viewership ain't a bad thing at all.

'course the O'Reilly & Hannity fanatics prob think he's a big pussy so eh...

Yeah, Shep is NOT loved by most of those who watch Fox's primetime programming.

iatee, how many people do you know who are going to throw their careers down the toilet because they're unhappy with what happened the last decade (esp when it wouldn't accomplish anything)? i mean one could look at it as, being a journalist who is objective is valuable to the public, perhaps moreso than yet another.. partisan on the air. should new york times reporters quit or stop being objective because their paper ran judith miller's articles re: iraq, and still runs horrible opinion pieces from dowd/rich who trash dems all the time?

re: colmes, that guy - smart of hannity to have a 'liberal' on his show who ended up taking watered-down stands on most issues and losing arguments most of the time. imho hannity is a little sad without him. dunno if his ratings have changed any. there was a lady at my prev job who was a big hannity fan (also used to work for lieberman.. heh) and she was super duper nice to me & all the ppl in the department who'd argue with her about politics. it was so funny, like <whine> 'i like you, but you haaate america! you just dooooo!' </whine>

great user name, daria

is he really just missing the bigger picture...again and again...every day of his life for the last decade?

It's like a Greek tragedy, titled "Colmes." Better yet, a myth, interpreted by Camus. He alwyas hopes that the next time he passes Rove on the way to the men's room, he will acknowledge him. Hope is all he has.

iatee, I take your points, I do. But when I think of TV journalists to hold Shep up for a blistering comparison to, my mind goes a bit blank. Steven Colbert can't really count, can he?

this feels like excuse-making to me. fox news inception = top republican media consultant gets put in charge of a news channel.

Again, I do get your point, but I don't think you're fully taking into account what a frighteningly debased institution our fourth estate is right now.

This clip isn't just about a bunch of idiots sitting around saying idiotic things, although it certainly is that; it's about them saying baseless, probably libelous things about someone who (gasp) was once a JOURNALIST for CNN.

(Ok, slanderous. Not libelous. Put that correction on the record.)

"By the name of... I think it's... some fucking mexican shit, who can be bothered, god people with hispanic names are beneath contempt, amirite?"

Add to this the serious (I think more serious than people realize) problem of large newspapers going out of business, who are the only institutions who can (under the current system) pay for serious investigative journalism, and... look. If Shep and his little pisstakes are all I'm left with, I'll take it. It's something.

Glenn Beck really dropped some knowledge tonight:

more useful things to remember

By that I mean, things that are more useful. Not an addition number.

additional

Some quibbles with Glenn Beck's latest attempt at an uprising-to-no-particular-end:

Ranting sarcastically about the "politics of fear" looks a little less ironic when he has Nazis on the green screen behind him. I know subtlety doesn't sell, but really now. Nazis? Does he even understand what Nazis were? Scarier still, does he understand EXACTLY what they were?

He mentions G20 riots... "People once again are feeling oppressed by an out of control state." The STATE? Are you fucking kidding me? Is that why they're smashing up banks? Because of the state? How fundamentally can you misunderstand something? These people WANT the state. They want their respective states, all the states in the world, to enact trade agreements that somehow (and I'm fuzzy here myself) make sure no one ever gets hurt by capitalism again. And I feel bad for them, and I wish I could believe in something as fervently and uselessly as they do. I'd be less depressed most of the time, for sure. But my point is, they're not feeling oppressed by the STATE.

I shouldn't even listen to this shit, but I do, and I'm still trying to hear it through my dad's ears. He swallows this stuff whole. I suppose I am encouraged by the fact that both of us have come around to believing that "too big to fail" will be inscribed on our little's empire's headstone.

That Glenn Beck clip reminds me of the televangelist show that Otto's parents were watching slavishly in Repo Man.

Glenn Beck reminds me of one of the President's monologues in Fallout 3.

holy shit glenn beck fucking a.

That clip is amazing. Wow. I am now a fan. The sound he makes at 1:15 is jaw-dropping.

i remember beck's radio show oh, pre 9-11 perhaps? I thought he was pretty funny (for quasi-right wing radio) at the time. but i think in general political stakes seemed much lower to me back then. overall, thought, he seemed pretty harmless and goofy and the show was kind of enjoyable depending on your tolerance for that sort of thing.

I'm wondering if these paranoid leanings were present then, but i cant remember. is this a relatively recent development for beck?

He was a lot less unhinged when his team was winning, and his bank account was flush. Back when he was working on his film adaptation of his book/play "The Christmas Sweater."

i remember listening to his radio show one time back when subprime mortage crisis mania was going mainstream and he seemed fairly reasonable. goofy, sure, but he at least seemed to know who the bad guys were.

lolz lil Glenn Beck vs the nazis

love his non-college-degree-holding ass insisting that people need to read and educate themselves bahahahaha

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51AsGwrXEcL._BO2,204,203,200_PIsitb-sticker-arrow-click,TopRight,35,-76_AA240_SH20_OU01_.jpg

Last year I got so goddamn tired of looking at displays of this book every time I went into Borders.

ok that new 'fascism' clip is brilliant. incoherent and unproductive, but that bit where the screen goes black and there's just a miniature Beck yelling at you from the bottom of the screen for a minute, to slowly fade up on aged film stock of Lenin-Bernanke...

Beck's show is now reminding me precisely of the work of documentary film maker Alex Jones. Who I describe to people as someone who saw Craig Baldwin's 'Tribulation 99' and thought it was all real. Except instead of having to special order his ranting direct from his DVD company... it's on a major network.

http://infowars-shop.stores.yahoo.net/endgamedvd.html

http://infowars-shop.stores.yahoo.net/videos.html

did i mention that i love shep? he just asked the panel on his show about the reaction to obama in europe, such a turnaround, after bush was so hated. so this fox business guy started off, explaining that europeans hated george w bush so much because bush is so christian, so overtly wearing his religion on his sleeve, and europeans just hated any displays of religion.

shep: "also.. the war?"

^^^yesssss - he has been on fire today

"he's a socialist"
"a... what??"

Beck is totally insane, so when he falls, it will be spectacular. Trust me.

yeah that GOP consultant started in on how obama was a socialist & shep was like "what???" but she kept on it - he cut her off after that & said to the dem, ok, now it's your turn to talk

that was great - i was genuinely shocked when the britishes guy from fox business (varney) immediately launched into this diatribe on how europeans hated bush because they religion. it was so bizarre. i mean, who believes that? (OK doubtless a LOT of people do, but dude should've known he wasn't on hannity)

for a lot of british people, bush's religosity/religion/cultural background doesn't exactly help.