So I got to Ann Arbor, which is nice except it’s suffering from a flu epidemic. Inevitably after a few days of holding out heroically, including the giving up of smoking which I had slipped back into since New Years, (Prize for anyone who can tell me how many times I’ve given up smoking since starting this blog thing last July!) I caught it, so the last couple of days have involved sitting around the apartment feeling a little hot and confused and sleeping an alarming amount. What has also happened is that I have watched an even more alarming amount of Fox News Channel. If you get Sky through a dish in the UK then you are lucky enough to be able to watch this too.
Since I have been typing this the following 2 phrases have caught my ear as they talk about Europeans attitude to their war on terror;
1. “Pervasive anti-americanism”, you all hate Americans, yes you do, you’re just in denial.
2. “Two faced, lying, weaselness on the subject of Iraq”, that’s the trait that you have. I’m not convinced “weaselness” is a word but you show it.
48 hours in the company of Fox News Channel is scary. Scarier still is the fact that it’s the US’s most watched news channel. Yeah I know I could turn over to another channel, but being here I feel a kind of responsibility to soak up the populist media to get a feel of the place I’m in. Ted Turner, the guy who invented CNN isn’t keen. He said the network is the propaganda tool for the Bush Administration. “There’s nothing wrong with that. It’s certainly legal. But it does pose problems for our democracy. Particularly when the news is dumbed down, leaving voters without critical information on politics and world events and overloaded with fluff,” he added.
Why do you care?
Because Fox News is the biggest news channel in the US.
Because Fox News viewers are more likely to believe the following ;
* That evidence of a link between al-Qaeda and Iraq had been found;
* That weapons of mass destruction had been discovered in Iraq; and
* That the U.S. had received wide international support in its decision to go to war.
(all of which were labelled as “misperceptions” by the Program on International Policy Attitudes).
Because the Republicans run the largest most powerful country in the world.
See what happens when I get ill? I rant.
Someone get me some flu drugs fer fox ache.