Good post on Fox News.
Fox News Is Trapped by Its Own Zealotry
On Fox, Democrats are metaphorically devilish. But in the gospel according to QAnon, a formidable force in the GOP, Democrats are literal satanists, with Democratic leaders such as Nancy Pelosi feasting on child sex slaves. As the mass psychosis of QAnon and election denial spread through conservative America, Fox risked becoming the stately Episcopal cathedral in the town center, its spire tall, its pews three-quarters empty. Fox competitors, meanwhile, would be hothouse storefront churches, where services are lively and packed.
MAGA iconography portrays Trump as a Rambo Jesus, returned to wreak vengeance on the libs and the Blacks and the feminists and the gays and the immigrants and the drag queens who have stolen America from its rightful owners. That’s the story that Fox conveyed for years from the electronic pulpits of Tucker Carlson, Sean Hannity and Laura Ingraham. It’s the story with which “Fox and Friends” greeted each MAGA morning. But when Rambo Jesus faltered in 2020, desperation in Foxland mounted. And with business competitors and political allies alike all lying like crazy, what else could Fox do?
The pews needed to be filled, or the collection baskets would be returned empty.
More on Fox (and Tucker) here. The Deep Archeology of Fox News
To whatever extent Carlson had ever really been committed to creating that kind of publishing operation, he quickly lost patience with it and shifted gears to the publication we’ve been familiar with for the last dozen years: a slightly less transgressive and racist version of Breitbart. There simply wasn’t any future or money in that other kind of operation. So, after briefly trying to go semi-legit, he shifted gears and went full-steam-ahead into the white nationalism and lying business.
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