What Opinion Polls
…and the show has reached a new low. ~ Will Ferrell as Alex Trebeck, Celebrity Jeopardy SNL
Without equivocation, this most recent month of May has been one of the worst in memory, which has left yours truly with a lingering sense of disassociation with the establishment, something that hurts even more because I hadn’t realized such a cancer had formed on my own particular idiom, let alone taken enough root to cause such feral throws once removed. At any rate, as with any feelings of self-loathing, a general fortification against those powers that be must be undertaken. Therefore several nights this week have found me at my local watering hole, surrounded by dank smoke clouds, veterans of any war that still has living survivors, and a sometimes silent jukebox that only gets unplugged for karaoke night or Ms Wendy’s Ipod. It is here that I find well-gin out of a plastic cup can taste just as good as a twelve dollar martini.
It is due to all of this that I was watching The O’Reilly Factor a few nights ago. Normally, Bill and I don’t hang out, that is to say, I don’t really watch his show. But when I do I am usually… intrigued. I do enjoy ol’ Bill’s ability to note the subtle inconsistencies within our society and daily political theaters. Sometimes I agree with him, sometimes I don’t. However, most of the time I don’t agree with how much he carries on about every issue as if each small point and irregularity of life was cause for calamity. In my mind, and perhaps the rest of the waking world, if his responses were more editorialized and measured and less sensational and attacking he would be far more validated overall. But then that wouldn’t fall in line with FOXNew’s aggressive level of info-tainment disguised as actual news… so I digress…
As I was saying, I was watching The O’Reilly Factor and I noticed a familiar face. Mrs. Megyn Kelly, most notably the co-host of America’s Newsroom on FOXNews, was appearing as a legal pundit for Mr. O’Reilly and proceeding to pass her judgment out upon several smaller and non-effectual pop stories of the day. Now, in all fairness, I have remarked in the past upon Megyn Kelly’s occasional opinionated affronts to daily headlines on America’s Newsroom. Snide comments that have just a pang of right-wing judgment tend to slip out from time to time leaving me wondering if it was just one person’s unmuzzled opinion on a giving matter or a whole station so rife with conservative sediment that it couldn’t even be contain by their news anchors. Nonetheless, I still prefer to watch Morning Express on CNN with Robin Mead… because she’s hot as Hell.
So as I sat there, alone in that smoky bar, I thought to myself – has the FOXNews channel, like the Republican Party, really become so self-infatuated and convicted in its correctness that it has begun excluding any possible creative thought or outside view, so much so that it is willing to take the baseless opinions of female news anchor who is solely paid to look sexy and read a teleprompter? I mean, I know the economy is tanking, but there are somethings that it’s still okay to outsource off the payroll.
However, let it not be said that I was wrong… and least a little bit. Megyn Kelly, as it turns out, actually received a J.D. from Albany Law School and practiced as a litigator in New York, Chicago, and Washington DC for becoming a journalist in 2004. I stand corrected. A woman of this background does have some clout to be giving her political and legal savvy on the air.
Still, the whole thing didn’t sit quiet right. Something was still amiss… as it usually is with FOXNews. Then it struck me. On a station that is touted as being “Fair and Balanced”, how then can a legal and political pundit be the voice of the AP headline news show?
I have had to laugh several times as I bring this up to friends of mine who are either staunch watchers of FOXNews or general conservatives or both because across the board none of them can refute this observation as anything more than what it is: spin. Agreeably, it throws the whole station’s slant into question even further than it ever may have been. One might be able to argue that you’d rather hear your news from someone who has a higher education on relevant fields of study to the news that you are receiving. To be fair, I did check on Robin Mead’s credentials and she holds a masters in programming and performance from Ashland University, has served as an anchor/reporter for several local television stations throughout the Midwest and Florida, and was a Miss USA top-ten contestant in 1992. So if you wanted to say that you’d rather get your news from a lawyer rather than a trained anchor and orator, I could see that… I guess.
As a side note, I don’t think that I have to point out to the vast sea of viewers that both of these ladies are incredibly attractive. What is a bit striking to this writer is that these women are forty and thirty-nine years old. Well done! Their ability to defy aging is likely a major reason why these 24-hour news stations have the ratings and audience that they do. But what I love is that despite all these women’s advanced degrees, experience, and ability to do their job, it’s their tits and ass that keep them employed. You’ve come a long way, baby…
And we still love a little T&A !!!
Yup. We sure do…
It’s compelling how many of us unknowingly filter the information provided to us, whether through mass media or everyday encounters, through the complex system of our egos. Bill O’Reilly, Rush Limbaugh, and the rest of the pundits sitting to the right of the aisle are ravishingly entertaining, but seem to be lacking something…..perhaps a soul. Some people eat that shit up, others, like myself, prefer the banter of folks like Keith Olbermann and Rachel Maddow. I think it is important to recognize our own biases when trying to view the news objectively, but this is made increasingly difficult as you consistently find that your views, ideas, and the people that you chose to listen too, are, well, always right, and the other side is always wrong.
Well said, JO. I would agree that not only do we as a society increasing find ourselves comfortable in glass houses but also in mirrored rooms where our own ideals and points of view are echoed back upon ourselves in the most conforting and agreeable manners. What is sadder still, however, is that those who seek to challenge their own points of view some sardonic attempt at a closer or philosphical truth become labled as assholes or muck-rackers. Such is the lowered social statis of objectivity.
We do find ourselves in glass houses. I think “spin” news has replaced AP statements. However…look at the history of journalism in this country (and I am hard pressed to consider either one of these ladies ‘journalists’ ) there has always been tainting. there has always been a bias. Within this age of instantaneous tweets and feeds, we just notice it more, because we have the ability of comparison — and the camera…hence the tits.
We always had the camera… and tits for that matter. But Connie Chung didn’t have tits. Moreover, no one is calling either of these ladies journalists. We are calling them what they are: anchors… which are supposed to be literally just that: dead weights that keep the free-floating flotsum and jetsum moored to a common, literal core.