Tuesday, December 27, 2005
Has the Fox News Channel jumped the shark?In all the recent talk about the "War on Christmas", Fox has definitely been the lead player. From Frank Rich's I Saw Jackie Mason Kissing Santa Claus: (excerpts, emp add) In Salon, Ms. Goldberg noted that fulmination about supposed Jewish opposition to Christmas dates to Henry Ford's infamous "The International Jew" of 1921. That chord is sounded in the very first anecdote in the book by the Fox News anchor John Gibson, "The War on Christmas: How the Liberal Plot to Ban the Sacred Christian Holiday Is Worse Than You Thought": a devastated father discovers that his 4-year-old son has brought home preschool artwork showing a Hanukkah menorah and Kwanzaa candles, rather than a Christmas tree. But Mr. Gibson goes on to add ecumenically that "not just Jewish people" are out to kill Christmas. As he elucidated on Christian radio, all non-Christians are "following the wrong religion," though he reassures us that they will be tolerated "as long as they're civil and behave."< It would seem that Fox was making more of a fuss with Christmas than the Christian Broadcasting Network. Could it be that Fox went too far and is now seen as something of a "Christian news" channel? That would, in the long run, be good in that it will be self-marginalizing. Nobody cares what Pat Robertson has to say, or what's on his network. Maybe Fox will have foolishly discarded whatever "news" identity it still has as they pursue a more religious angle/audience.
posted by Quiddity at 12/27/2005 08:20:00 AM
5 comments
Intresting article. The following quote stood out to me...
"Maybe Fox will have foolishly discarded whatever "news" identity it still has as they pursue a more religious angle/audience."
I stopped watching fox in the morning some time ago because I just could not stomach it. I even renamed them "Fox and Fiends". I still watch for "late breaking news" at times but have found myself so many times going to CNN's headline news just so I can get the morning news without all the hoopla. That quote up there of yours....I keep asking myself why does fox news want to persue a more religious angle? I see exactly what your saying, just don't understand why....do you have any thoughts on why?
Anon:
My best guess is that in the initial stages of waging the war on the "War on Christmas" they saw improved ratings along with greater viewer intensity (plus, it dovetails neatly with the us-vs-them mentality). And they just stomped on the gas pedal, amping up the whoe affair, not thinking about the long-term consequences.
It must be a weird time to be a "believing" Christian.
On the one hand, you have a "news" network go all religious (how can a non-Christian still watch Fox"news" at all?).
On the other hand, infamously simple-minds like Rick Santorum are running away from their previously-stated support for Intelligent Design.
What are the followers of O'Reilly and Robertson to do?
If Fox went religious, it would be "religious", not the sort of religious that most people associate with, um, religion.
Actually Faux is becoming more and more Branch-Davidian than anything.
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