Skip to main content

The Mouse that Roared

By


It would seem that the boys at Fox have thin skin.  First, Bill O'Reilly apparently told Gabriel Sherman to "drop dead, man!" at a little soire held by the Hollywood Reporter at the Four Seasons Hotel in New York, leading Sherman to offer his account of the evening.  Of course, it goes a long to plugging his own book on Roger Ailes, The Loudest Voice in the Room, which seems to have set Big Bill and everyone else at Fox off.  O'Reilly hulked over the diminutive Sherman to the point the young writer thought Bill might take him out.

But, this is nothing compared to the verbal fist-a-cuffs we have seen between O'Reilly and Stephen Colbert in recent weeks, as "Papa Bear" got notably upset over Colbert mocking the auction of his notes from the Super Bowl interview with President Obama.  Then came an unflattering segment on Bill's tough stance opposing equal pay for women.  

Colbert has long adopted a conservative persona that he has said is modeled on the O'Reilly Factor, which he holds up as the paragon of conservative values.  This endless mocking seems to have taken its toll on Papa Bear, who got visibly snippy with Colbert and vented his rage when he heard Colbert had been tapped to fill David Letterman's seat on the Late Show.  O'Reilly vowed to lead a boycott against Colbert when his "protege" takes over the Late Show.

All this would be highly amusing if Fox News didn't take itself so seriously, but apparently it still regards itself as "fair and balanced," even after the Cliven Bundy fiasco. Its pundits, notably Sean Hannity, were forced to tone down their support of the Nevada cattle baron.  Jon Stewart had a field day with this brazen partisanship, taking the pious Fox pundit to task for his effusive support of Bundy.  Hannity got very upset and devoted a segment of his own to Jon Stewart, only to be taken down again the following day.

For most of us, we only watch Fox News via Comedy Central, but this network has a sizable viewing audience, albeit a rather elder one, and still appears to be highly influential in the Republican Party. This was the subject of Sherman's book, noting how Ailes worked his way up through the Republican ranks and then hatched the idea of a propaganda news arm of the GOP to Rupert Murdoch, who provided $200 million in seed money back in the mid 90s.

In its nearly 20 years on the screen it has never steered very far away from the conservative fold, although it has lured a few liberal types like Juan Williams and Bob Beckel over to the dark side to create the illusion of being non-partisan.  

Stephen and Jon plotting their strategy
You would think that with all this clout, Fox and its pundits would shrug off the endless jibing from Comedy Central faux news programs, The Daily Show and The Colbert Report.  However, O'Reilly and Hannity view Stewart and Colbert as part of a young liberal conspiracy designed to undermine their programs, and the thought that Colbert is now moving up to CBS has O'Reilly literally squirming in his seat.

All this reminds me of that wonderful Peter Sellers' movie, The Mouse That Roared, where a tiny country threatens the hegemony of the United States.  It seems that Comedy Central is now a network to be reckoned with.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire

By
  Welcome to this month's reading group selection.  David Von Drehle mentions The Melting Pot , a play by Israel Zangwill, that premiered on Broadway in 1908.  At that time theater was accessible to a broad section of the public, not the exclusive domain it has become over the decades.  Zangwill carried a hopeful message that America was a place where old hatreds and prejudices were pointless, and that in this new country immigrants would find a more open society.  I suppose the reference was more an ironic one for Von Drehle, as he notes the racial and ethnic hatreds were on display everywhere, and at best Zangwill's play helped persons forget for a moment how deep these divides ran.  Nevertheless, "the melting pot" made its way into the American lexicon, even if New York could best be describing as a boiling cauldron in the early twentieth century. Triangle: The Fire That Changed America takes a broad view of events that led up the notorious fire, not...
230 comments
Read more

Team of Rivals Reading Group

By
''Team of Rivals" is also an America ''coming-of-age" saga. Lincoln, Seward, Chase et al. are sketched as being part of a ''restless generation," born when Founding Fathers occupied the White House and the Louisiana Purchase netted nearly 530 million new acres to be explored. The Western Expansion motto of this burgeoning generation, in fact, was cleverly captured in two lines of Stephen Vincent Benet's verse: ''The stream uncrossed, the promise still untried / The metal sleeping in the mountainside." None of the protagonists in ''Team of Rivals" hailed from the Deep South or Great Plains. _______________________________ From a review by Douglas Brinkley, 2005
293 comments
Read more

The Searchers

By
You are invited to join us in a discussion of  The Searchers , a new book on John Ford's boldest Western, which cast John Wayne against type as the vengeful Ethan Edwards who spends eight years tracking down a notorious Comanche warrior, who had killed his cousins and abducted a 9 year old girl.  The film has had its fair share of detractors as well as fans over the years, but is consistently ranked in most critics'  Top Ten Greatest Films . Glenn Frankel examines the origins of the story as well as the film itself, breaking his book down into four parts.  The first two parts deal with Cynthia Ann Parker and her son Quanah, perhaps the most famous of the 19th century abduction stories.  The short third part focuses on the author of the novel, Alan Le May, and how he came to write The Searchers. The final part is about Pappy and the Duke and the making of the film. Frankel noted that Le May researched 60+ abduction stories, fusing them together into a nar...
123 comments
Read more