The rise of the Fox News/conservative radio network has challenged the traditional assumptions about the standards for political discourse and the very concept of facts as a basis for political decision-making. The most astute observers of this phenomenon have been comedians like Jon Stewart on “The Daily Show” and Stephen Colbert on the “Report.” Colbert famously coined the term ‘truthiness’ which captures the essence of the epistemological emptiness of the conservative media. The Founding Fathers understood that democracy requires an informed public, who rely on the Fourth Estate (journalism) for that critical information.
Fox News and conservative radio have created a fully immersive 24/7/365 alternative media that tells the ditto-heads that the conservative media are the only trustworthy source of information. Any appeal to facts, science, or reason is rejected as biased, if it did not come from Fox World. Who makes a statement is more important than the truth of the statement itself. Facts don’t matter.
Of Senator Ted Cruz, Sophia A. McClennen has said “That means that for those who think like Cruz, there is virtually no amount of data, reality checks or facts that can persuade the deluded citizen to give up their false ideas. This is the mindset of the Tea Party, the Koch brothers, and many on the far right. People who are attached to falsehoods perceive any correcting information as partisan and flawed. So conservatives don’t perceive science as information. To them, it’s just a liberal agenda. In other words, they don’t believe the truth.”
That’s a pretty clear analysis of the problem. We have defined political deviance downwards with the “both-sides-are-the-same” mind-set. Progressives need to take on the dispensers of conventional wisdom like David Brooks (New York Times and NPR), Chuck Todd (NBC), George Stephanopoulos (ABC), Andrea Mitchell, aka ‘Mrs. Greenspan’ (NBC), Wolf Blitzer (CNN). We can demand real journalism from the MSM, which is vulnerable to our pressure and our consumer dollars.
The climate denialism is just the most visible promontory of an entire continental shelf of alternative reality conservatism. They have created their own versions of history, science and religion. Conservatives can pass the entire day inside their own hermetically sealed media bubble and then be surprised and outraged when the world of ‘facts’ hits them in the face after they step on a rake that they could not see, because it was not on Fox. That’s what happened to Romney in the debate with Obama in the 2012 election, where moderator Candy Crowley actually committed an act of journalism by fact-checking Romney on a patently false claim. His ‘facts’ were common knowledge in the Fox bubble, they just happened to have not been actually ‘true’.
No one is immune from the ‘Fox Effect.’ Watch out for the conservative backlash when Pope Francis issues his encyclical on the environment, in which he calls for the human race to serve as caretakers of creation and take on the civilizational challenge of climate change. Already, culture war conservative Catholics are quietly starting up the line that “this Pope” is not legitimate. Sound familiar? Even the dean of the Catholic culture warriors, Rick Santorum, is telling Pope Francis (who has a degree in chemistry) that he needs to stick to his knitting and not get involved in scientific questions. The Koch Brothers are sending a delegation to try to get him to shut up on the climate protection issue. Next thing you know, they’ll be demanding his birth certificate and insisting that they get a voting bloc at the next Papal conclave. The conservative M.O. is the same in religion as it is in politics.
On the local front, we have had a political bombshell go off in the county with the defeat of Measure A (the road tax). This will take a lot of work to unwind. In other big news, the Board of Supervisors will vote this week on the county Living Wage ordinance. The Jobs with Justice Sonoma chapter, who initiated this campaign, will be watching closely to see who votes with them on this core issue. As they say, this vote will be scored.
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