Fox News is Funny

 

On September 1st, Bell ExpressVu’s free preview of the Fox News channel in Canada ended. I really wouldn’t be surprised of the ratings from the free preview were very high. I know I got a lot of entertainment from that “news” channel, and I’m sure that I wasn’t alone.

It’s as though all of Fox News exists in this alternate reality, kind of like what the world would be like if someone went back to prehistoric times and accidentally killed a bug when he was there. The occupation of Iraq becomes the liberation of Iraq, suicide bombers become homicide bombers, and the corporate-controlled structure of Washington D.C. becomes the defender of the common man’s freedoms. News stories of personal matters that would otherwise be mentioned in passing a few times and only when there was more to add to the story get extensive coverage all day long, while big issues get handed off to a panel of pundits who argue amongst each other long enough to completely twist the focus away from any real question, if they get any coverage at all. It’s lunacy.

This sense of surrealism alone would be enough to get me to watch whenever nothing else is on, but they don’t stop there. They add a cast of characters who are so whacked it would make the creators of The Surreal Life blush. You’ve got everything from the dye-blonde eye-candy hosting a town-hall styled midday news brief to the middle-aged white guys ranting about how we should shoot all of the prisoners in Guantanamo Bay so we have room for Michael Moore and his commie cronies, and in between they throw in a seemingly endless supply of field reporters reporting live from somewhere where nothing is actually taking place at that moment. All the while, the news ticker shows you what the terror alert level is every other minute, just in case you needed to plan your day around it.

Then, to make sure your senses are completely overloaded, the Fox News title animations, obviously styled after those cartoons in Japan that give people seizures, pop in and barrage you with fast-moving graphics and giant block-letters spelling out one of their many slogans. My personal favourite one of these has to be the one with the voice that sounds like it would be more suitable answering calls for a sex-chat service saying the words “We’re Always Live” as they appear below the mammoth Fox News logo. What could be more confusing than that after listening to Neil Cavuto?

It would be difficult to point out all of the specific moments that this channel has made me gape, gawk, laugh, or swear at the TV screen, because there are just too many, so I’ll mention what is probably my favourite:
I’m flipping channels with my friend, trying to find something to watch. Since nothing’s on, I decide to introduce him to Fox News. The moment I change to the channel, we see Geraldo Rivera interviewing Bill O’Reilly, who is in the middle of equating drug users to terrorists. I immediately burst out laughing, and my friend turns to me and says “Chris, no, I can’t deal with this shit right now.”

Now honestly, what other channel could produce a moment like that?

cb@chrisbattaglia.com