A brief, yet helpful, guide to deprogramming friends, neighbors, and loved ones who have become Fox News Zombies. While there is no real cure for the infection, relax! There is hope that a little love, intervention and a dose of reality might restore them to the smiling, well-adjusted, Palin-free people that you remember.
Derek Thompson in The Atlantic reports:
According to a new Bloomberg poll, six in ten Americans think most of the money spent to rescue banks will be lost forever. Six in ten think the economy shrunk over the past year. One in two think federal income taxes have gone up in the past two years.
This can largely be attributed to the increasing number of Fox News Zombies running amok. So get yourself an uncomfortable chair, a gooseneck light with a 100w bulb, some rope, and a Flat-Screen TV.
Set up the light to shine in their eyes, and tie your zombie to the chair, carefully making sure that they do not regurgitate on you the mash of decaying cut-out copies of Glenn Beck's "Common Sense" which the Koch brothers didn't buy up. It's a common Fox News Zombie trick to turn you into one, too. (Should you get any on you, immediately seek first aid by liberally rubbing Keith Olbermann's petrifying hair gel over the affected area. It is the only thing that will stop the spread of the infection.)
First, resort to reason. Here are a few things to tell _________________ (Fill in your loved-one zombie here):
All Democrats Want to Do is Raise My Taxes
Those fixated with this bit of spin usually were bitten by Haley Barbour, often in bars where someone slips a Fox News flat-screen in between ESPN's coverage of Ostrich Races on ESPN-2 and Ice Road Truckers. Fox News renders the victim motionless during the topless-girl car chase footage, and allows Barbour to inject his venom. Tell them:
- Democrats gave you a few hundred bucks at the bottom of the Bush-era Wall Street meltdown to tide you over and keep the liquor store over in the wet county next door running.
The Economy is Shrinking
Get out your props, and tell them:
- There is no doubt that there is a lot of pain out there, and that, _______________, we can alll probably look down the row of single and double-wides and see where our neighbors, with dreams of no-money-down investments in the state-of-the-art, formaldehyde-free mobile home living, are no more. Sure we found out that the fella telling us that we could be millionaires kind of lied to us, but he really wasn't a Liberal Obama-loving Jewish elitist. He used to work the 7-11 the county over not that long back. You just fell asleep listening to Bill O'Reilly reruns once too many times, which is almost as bad as when you fell asleep with the cig in your hand.
I know that it looks a bit like a liberal bandanna, but that's what's known as a "bar graph." All the stuff below the line is the economy shedding jobs faster than Sarah Palin jumping out of a governorship.
All of the stuff on the right, above the line, is private job creation. That means Obama's actually been creating jobs, not losing 'em.
So when you got all upset and wouldn't eat your fish sticks and Cheez Whiz that night, because Sean Hannity told you that all of those extra jobs was just census workers like the fella that you shot a while back when he came to the front door, all of that was for NOTHING, ________________.
I Want My Country Back
At this point, it is always good to bring in the father, if you can find him and/or he is sober and not incarcerated. He should tell ___________________:
"Son, I know we raised you right. We didn't raise you to hate black folk. As long as they keep to their side of town and don't get elected to the White House, they're just like you and me."
- Any man, woman, or child who can waltz past the Border Patrol, ride with a bunch of TV sets in a container, or put a dry foot on a sunny Florida beach is welcome to dry clean my laundry, drive me around in a taxi, or wipe down my restaurant table.
Health Care Reform is Just Another Way for the Government to Take Away My Freedom
Here you may find yourself struggling:
- That's right, __________________. It's great to be free of the government, and there is nothing worse than letting the bureaucracy tell you what to do. Okay, we lost grandma to cancer because the Blue Cross was more of a double-cross when they told us she'd cost them enough and they weren't paying more, but at least Barack Husein Obama didn't make her shovel-ready. That's the private sector's job, right?
I'm Tired of Being Told What to Do By the Elitists
- __________________________, people who use big words with more than a couple of syllables aren't elitists. They're just smart.
It may seem like them Tea Bagger folks who saw you watching Fox at lunch in the diner, and recruited you into running for office, pitched a great idea for you to be a United States Senator, but it's probably better to let folks smarter than y'all run things.
I liked George W. Bush just fine too, and I'd have a beer with the man, but Dick Cheney owned that sonofabitch and had more strings attached to him than Pinocchio. The Decider my ass.
You know what to do if you spot Osama Bin Laden working at the DQ Brazier, selling soft-serve to little kiddies laced with ground up bits of the Q-Ran so they'll turn into card-carrying Muslins? Damn straight you do not.
Now comes the easy part: Tie their head back, and prop their eyelids open. For full instructions, watch Clockwork Orange a few dozen times. Pull out the flat-screen TV and set to MSNBC. Make sure that you turn off Morning Joe after the first two days!
Within a week, your Fox News Zombie should be as good as new.
My shiny two...