Fox News at its finest

By Michael J.W. Stickings

Jon Chait says that this clip "captures the essence of the network so perfectly that you need never watch anything on it again. It's all here. At the center, you have an old conservative white guy who is enraged about a fact that exists only in his addled brain [namely, that President Obama hasn't proposed any specific spending cuts]. At his side, there's a blonde sidekick who nods along with him but doesn't get in the way. And ready to absorb his anger is the network's Emmanuel Goldstein figure, feebly attempting a rebuttal that quickly devolves into a sniveling plea for civility."

He's right.

Everyone here is playing their appointed role. Colmes is pleading with O'Reilly to stop yelling at him and whimpering things like "we’ll just have to disagree." Crowley is affirming O’Reilly's correctness and cheerfully allowing him to interrupt after a couple of seconds of talking so as not to yammer on in a way that annoys him. And O'Reilly himself, after finally calming down, reaffirms his own white-is-black claim with such conviction that viewers have probably already forgotten that he is feverishly denying something that they witnessed with their own eyes. The segment has achieved such Fox News perfection that it can never be reached again. Roger Ailes should simply loop it endlessly for the rest of time.

Watch the clip and wallow in its greatness. (And then pour yourself a stiff drink when you remember that this asshole is one of the superstars of the most popular cable news network and that millions of Americans swallow Fox News's pro-Republican right-wing propaganda without so much as a speck of doubt.)