Fox News has always been the enemy to many on the left. The place where "fair and balanced news" is often tilted like a broken pinball machine. Where talking point memos are created as marching orders for conservative America. A network that we assume to be evil, yet what is hard to often swallow is they are sometimes right.
This week I ran into two young assistants to Fox News host and former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee at a restaurant and got into a very intense conversation about gay marriage. As a strong supporter of marriage equality, I argued my points, but they were having none of it. One of them agreed that gay people should be allowed to wed, just don't call it marriage... call it something else. The other one was adamantly against the idea all together. These two kids did not get angry, they just disagreed. And not only did they disagree, they went to sleep that night thinking they were right. Just like every night when Sean Hannity or Glenn Beck or Bill O'Reilly or Mike Huckabee get on the airwaves and think they are right. And you know what? They are right. Just right to them.
A few weeks ago, I phoned Sean Hannity after I called him a gangster in the news and the first thing he asked me was why did I believe he was more gangster than any rapper? Let's see... you are quicker to go to war when you think you are threatened. You are against gay marriage. You are more homophobic. You are less likely to allow people to have sexual freedom. You believe men have a place in society, that's separate and somehow better or more powerful than women. You are not really racial integrated in this world. So as far as I am concerned, he is more gangster, more sexist, more homophobic and more racist than the average rapper. (I later took back racist.)
So as we were talking he explained that all of these things are not true. He never dated black women for instance, because he's married to his high school sweatheart! Never had a girlfriend. When I said that he thinks gay sex or gay relationships are an abomination in the bible, he said that that man has a role to protect women and do certain things and God created a certain order and we must follow it. When I argued about the 300,000 innocent Iraqis or Afghans that have been killed during Operation Freedom, he used that lovely term: "calculated loss." He is conservative in the true sense of word. He lives by his book and for that I have to respect him... but I don't believe that everyone else has to be made to live by HIS book. People really believe in a strike-first foreign policy... it protects our country, so they say. They bully us and push us around, so we bomb the shit out of them and wipe their country off the map. They really believe that.
And while they believe all of this, they stomp on us. And while they are stomping, they smile as we just get angrier, with them and with ourselves. So, we turn them off, tune them out and call them evil. That is where they win and we lose. We play on their battlefields, in their costumes and in their language. And we forget that that they may not be good for America, but they are really, really good for TV and that is what the genius and my friend Roger Ailes is selling. TV.
I don't think that Roger wants to do harm to America, I actually believe he wants to make this country a better place. But if that means that Fox News goes out of business, forget about it. I know that Sean Hannity believes in what he is saying. Instead of being the angry left, maybe if we took a moment and listened to them, there could be some common ground, more compromise, more bi-partisan voting.
As progressives, one of the things it means is that we are open-minded. One of the things we stand for is a lack of rigidness. We have always led with compassion, while conservatives lead with values and safety. But if we don't listen then we are no better than they are. We will end up walking out of meetings with the vice president just like them. Cause at the end of the day Sean Hannity and his boys think they are right. And we think we are right too. All patriots want this country to be more perfect. We all believe in our hearts that our way is right. I didn't say turn on Fox News, as you know my politics are to the left of Dennis Kucinich, but when it's on and you walk by and you hear their rhetoric, don't assume they're wrong. A great yogic teacher said, "You have two ears and one mouth for a reason." You don't have to agree with them, you just have to listen.
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I really think that you have disgraced yourself with this post.
Hannity uses EVERY CHANCE he gets to denigrate the President's efforts to get anything accomplished.
For example, he has trashed Obama for:
1. Supporting and signing into law a Health Care Bill which will eventually cover tens of millions of Americans who had been uncovered before.
2. Signing into law a bill that would put some teeth into a strong oversight of Wall Street to prevent another financial meltdown.
3. Signing the bill that would allow gay Americans to serve their country's military, the way gay British, gay French people and gay Canadians could already do.
Hannity vigorously OPPOSED the President on ALL of those things, Russell !
It's not that we don't listen to him, Russell.
It is that we HAVE listened and we that know he is a conservative robot who does anything he can to damage the chances of Obama getting reelected. Hannity does that by mercilessly and relentlesslty criticizing just about ANY initiative of the President's.
And Russell, you say that you are to the left of Dennis Kucinich ?
If that is true, then you should be cutting Sean Hannity absolutely NO SLACK at all !
I never see Hannity cutting the President any slack. On just about any issue
Can you not see what Hannity's main objective is ?
Are you politically tone deaf Russell ?
Hannity's main goal is to defeat Obama in 2012.
Just about everything he says is geared
And to people who are outside the sphere -- people who haven't chosen sides, and there are a LOT of them -- it is very telling when someone simply refuses to answer a straight-up question; a question free of snark and sarcasm will go a long way with those folks.
I listen so I can show other people how wrong they are.
However, I had one question regarding "not playing the Fox News game". If we listened and tried to understand the likes of Sean Hannity, they would not starve out for lack of confrontation. Instead, they would re-define their game to make it more "purely conservative" and confrontational, and proceed to villainize even those with the politest of disagreements.
That being said, I'm still at a loss as to how progressives may prove to the Fox News watchers that progressive ideals have a great deal of merit. In the French play, Tartuffe (by Moliere), the titular character is a charlatan who claims false moral superiority to leech off a rich landowner, Orgon. Orgon is roped in nearly completely, but is finally able to see the truth when Tartuffe attempts to seduce his wife.
However, I don't see a conservative audience as a bunch of Orgons. Not in this day and age. They are typically a crowd of Tartuffes-in-training, aware of the disparity between conservative commentary and fact, but too ideological or cynical to question their leaders and personalities. Breaking through that barrier will be the great political project of our generation.
I still look back at the first two years of obamas administration and it's pathetic how little the democrats managed to accomplish with their majority.
Such as Obama EXPANDED the war in Afghanistan.......That unemployment was over 9%......That Obama still has GITMO open.......That Obama and his pals are bombing Libya and that they killed 3 of Gadhafi's grandchildren......That Halliburton and Blackwater have more govt. contracts then ever.....That the Patriot Act is still around and EXPANDED. That now they put GPS's on people's cars and wire-tap without having to get a warrant, and grope people at the airports.......That there tapping into the oil reserves......That there going to drill in some places in Alaska......That we're going to keep a contingency of troops in Iraq for a long, long time........That we're still NOT talking to our enemies such as Iran........That after the govt. took over GM, that 2 of its Plants were built in China and Toluca, Mexico......And too many OTHER lies that I have no time mentioning.
Good thing we got HOPE and CHANGE. They had me worried for a while.
We must stop these lies and make sure that everyone believes the correct truths.
When Ronald Reagan ran for re-election his theme was, "Are you better off then you were 4 years ago?"....We all can agree Barack Obama can NOT use that theme. Because if he did it would be a big lie.
Unless...
They try to force me to believe as they believe through legislation.
Unless...
Their policies hurt the most vulernable in our society while protecting the richest and most powerful.
Unless...
They try to force me or anyone else to live as they do through passage of legislation.
Unless...
They try to hold down whole groups of people from attaining their constitutionally protected equal rights.
They try to force me to believe as they believe through legislatioÂn. (Like in gay marriage, the right to kill babies,etc)
Unless...
Their policies hurt the most vulernable in our society while protecting the richest and most powerful.
(Like not allowing poor families vouchers so they can send their children to the same schools that the rich limousine liberals do.)
Unless...
They try to force me or anyone else to live as they do through passage of legislatioÂn.
(Like taxing items the left deems unsatisfactory for us like cigarettes, soft drinks)
Unless...
They try to hold down whole groups of people from attaining their constitutiÂonally protected equal rights.
(Like the unborn and most all Christians wishing to pray when and where they want)
2. As long as any school takes a voucher then they must also take the mentally challenged, the behaviorally challenged, must provide tutors at the cost of the school, etc. just like any other school that takes tax payers' dollars. If the private schools can no longer turn away these groups of kids, they will no longer want those vouchers.
3. You can still particpate in your vices. No one is stopping you.
4. As far as abortion, I believe it is a sin. I believe those people will answer for that as God sees fit, not as you see fit. I cannot pretend to know what a woman goes through before making that extremely personal and exquisitely painful decision, and neither can you. Tend to your own sins. I'm sure you have plenty to worry about, as does everyone. No one stops you from praying, ever. You simply cannot pray aloud for solid reasons. I attend a mainstream church, same one for 54 years. I can tell you right now, I don't appreciate other types of mainstream religions forcing their dogma on me. This is America, and it isn't in the Constitution that anyone has to believe. Democrats don't prevent you from praying anywhere or anytime. Just keep it to yourself, as the Bible suggests.