{"id":45561,"date":"2019-10-15T10:55:12","date_gmt":"2019-10-15T14:55:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/lovejoyfeminism\/?p=45561"},"modified":"2019-10-15T17:58:24","modified_gmt":"2019-10-15T21:58:24","slug":"fox-news","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/lovejoyfeminism\/2019\/10\/fox-news.html","title":{"rendered":"Fox “News” or Fox Propaganda?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

Like many people, I like to spend time on twitter. I don\u2019t tweet much. Or any, really. Mainly, I follow a number of people who tend to say smart things. One of them is Kevin M. Kruse, a historian by trade. Yesterday, Kruse offered a burning summary of Fox News\u2019 attempts to assuage concerned staffers that the network\u00a0really will<\/em> still do news. \u201cFox News: Part of What We Do is Journalism,\u201d he summarized.<\/p>\n

https:\/\/twitter.com\/KevinMKruse\/status\/1183894602593513472<\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cFor *most* of that hour,\u201d he added. \u201cMAYBE.\u201d<\/p>\n

Kruse\u2019s point is fairly clear\u2014no news network should have to assure its staff that it will spend the 3pm hour covering news. If you\u2019re a news network, covering the news is simply\u00a0what you\u2019re supposed to do.\u00a0<\/em>I wouldn\u2019t have blogged about this\u2014I would have just nodded along, and maybe shared the tweet with a friend, and then left it at that\u2014if I hadn\u2019t also noticed a tweet Kruse retweeted.<\/p>\n

Donald Trump tweeted 10-minute video excerpt from Fox News\u2019 Mark Levin Show, which he summarized as \u201cThe Democrat Party has hijacked the House of Representatives.\u201d Corruption watchdog Robert Maguire responded to Trump\u2019s tweet, writing: \u201cSure, if by \u2018hijacked\u2019 you mean they won resounding victories in the 2018 midterms and took back control of the House.\u201d Kruse then retweeted Maguire\u2019s tweet.<\/p>\n

But what hit me was the video, which autoplayed. The first 13 seconds of the video consists of the standard video intro to Levin\u2019s show. I don\u2019t have a TV and I don\u2019t watch Fox. I had never seen this opening before.<\/p>\n

https:\/\/twitter.com\/RobertMaguire_\/status\/1183870386875838464<\/a><\/p>\n

My first reaction was what the blazes was that<\/em>. It\u2019s like watching a propaganda video. It\u2019s like watching a Stephen Colbert parody of how a right-wing show would open. What the heck did I just see? I looked up the show. It turns out Life, Liberty, & Levin is\u00a0a weekly hour-low show in which Mark Levin, a lawyer and conservative commentator, interviews guests he brings onto the show. \u00a0I have questions.<\/p>\n

To start with, the show is titled Life, Liberty, \u2026 and Levin.<\/em> Say what now? When I titled my blog \u201cLove, Joy, Feminism,\u201d I knew I was being edgy. I was doing it on purpose<\/em>. The whole point<\/em> was to parody the fruit of the spirit<\/a>. The fruit of the spirit is \u201clove, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness,<\/span> gentleness and self-control,\u201d and I<\/em> turned it into love, joy,\u00a0feminism.<\/em>\u00a0The whole point<\/em> was to get Christians to ask who does she think she is?\u00a0<\/em>And, of course, for progressives already familiar with the passage to nod at the subversion.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

What the heck kind of parody is Life, Liberty, & Levin?\u00a0<\/em>Is he making fun<\/em> of the opening of the Declaration of Independence? I guessing not? Or at least, he thinks he isn\u2019t. But really, the whole<\/em> opening sequence<\/em> looks like a parody of patriotism. Patriotic imagery, patriotic word, patriotic imagery, patriotic word, patriotic imagery \u2026 and then abruptly sub in \u201cLevin\u201d for \u201cPursuit of Happiness.\u201d Funny, right?\u00a0But it\u2019s not\u00a0a parody<\/em>.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

With that out of the way, let\u2019s take the Levin intro screen by screen, shall we?<\/p>\n

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What box of patriotic bingo does this intro sequence\u00a0not<\/em> check? Let\u2019s see, it\u2019s got Abraham Lincoln, multiple war monuments, the Statue of Liberty, a bald eagle, a marine with his weapon, Ronald Reagan, the Blue Angels, and lots and lots of American flag imagery and vague script from the Constitution. That seems pretty comprehensive to me. Wait. It doesn\u2019t have amber waves of grain.<\/p>\n

Remember how the Colbert Report originally opened?<\/p>\n