Today I was picking up a prescription at my local Kaiser clinic; they had Fox News on the tube, and it was 6:00pm EST. The promo for Special Report with Brit Hume was on. Hume was telling the audience about the upcoming discussion he expected to have regarding the questions Senators have about the Administration’s $87B funding request, and right behind him was a banner which read “Carping, Day 2.”
From Dictionary.com comes this definition of carping: adj. Naggingly critical or complaining.
“Fair and balanced,” huh?
A friend of mine said that when Clark enteredthe race, they ran a banner that said “tenth whiner enters race.” It’s interesting, actually, how since they positioned themselves in opposition to the protest over the looming invasion of Iraq (by running banners outside the FOX news station on the news ticker), they become even more brazen in their dismissive, and typically ad hominem attacks upon anyone who disagrees with them.
I keep thinking that this is somehow connected with the rise in popularity of professional wrestling and the emergence of shows like “Fear Factor” coupled with the celebrity of people like Coulter and O’Reilly. We’re being trained, I suspect, to enjoy cruelty. We’re being trained ot enjoy watching people be mean to one another. And we don’t seem to care all that much whether the invective is justified.
I told someone a while back that the old adage goes like this: “Republicans think Democrats are stupid. Democrats think Republicans are mean.” The difference now, I pointed out, is that the Republicans don’t seem to care. The problem, it seems to me, is that this is so different from the rhetoric of oppression that characterized most conservative discourse that most liberals/democrats don’t seem to know how to respond.
I suspect that this will backfire something awful in the long run.