Last Call For The Big Lie, FOX News Edition, Con't

Washington Post columnist Greg Sargent argues that with the recent revelations involving the network's defamation case, it's well past time for Democrats to stop treating FOX News as anything other than the propaganda arm of the GOP.

 

For years, Democrats have been deeply conflicted about Fox News. At times, they’ve shunned the network as an irredeemable source of disinformation, boycotting it or banning it from covering Democratic presidential primary debates. But such efforts have been temporary: They have tended to resume appearing on the network and have reverted to treating it as more or less a news channel, albeit a hostile one.

Now, however, it’s becoming clear that interacting with Fox News as a news outlet in any sense is no longer an option for Democrats. In light of the news that network personalities knowingly deceived viewers about the 2020 election for cynical pecuniary purposes, Democrats plainly have to take on Fox News in a new way. And some of them know it.

“I don’t think we’ve ever had a moment like this, where a major news network has been exposed as deliberately deluding its viewers or readers,” Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) told me. “This is a seminal moment in the history of mass media. And we need to treat it that way.”

But what should that look like?

This week, Senate Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries signaled an aggressive posture in a letter to Fox News founder Rupert Murdoch. The two New York Democrats demanded that the network get star anchor Tucker Carlson and others to recant their lies about the 2020 election on the air. The letter said:

Though you have acknowledged your regret in allowing this grave propaganda to take place, your network hosts continue to promote, spew, and perpetuate election conspiracy theories to this day.

This might be the first time that the Democratic congressional leadership has formally labeled Fox News content “propaganda.”

The term is entirely apt. As newly revealed texts from Carlson and other on-air personalities and executives demonstrate, they feared that telling their audience the truth about the 2020 vote could cost them a disastrously high number of viewers. Instead, Fox News personalities kept lying about it while executives looked the other way.

Carlson even rage-texted that a Fox News reporter who fact-checked President Donald Trump’s lies about Dominion Voting Systems and the ballot count should be fired for “measurably hurting” News Corp.’s “stock price.” The texts, which emerged in Dominion’s defamation lawsuit against Fox, also show that Carlson and host Sean Hannity agreed that the channel’s accurate call of Trump’s loss in Arizona threatened its “brand.”

Murdoch himself admitted in a deposition that Fox News had failed to do enough to prevent its personalities from pushing lies about the election. In short, the network deliberately sought to keep its viewers captive in its propaganda bubble to keep ratings up — and revenue flowing.

Given these revelations, doesn’t that oblige Democrats to adopt an approach commensurate with the reality that Fox News is systematically and concertedly deceiving millions of people about the most fundamental workings of our governing institutions?

 

It does, and Democrats should stop going on FOX News completely. The White House should boot FOX News from the White House Press Room, and the White House Correspondents' Association should toss FOX to the wolves.

None of this will happen of course, so We go back to trying to beat them at their own games instead of dismantling the problem.

Should Democrats again refrain from appearing on Fox News? They have long been conflicted about this, with some arguing that Democrats shouldn’t forgo the opportunity to reach right-leaning voters wherever possible. But in light of the new revelations, there might be a better way to think about it.

Dan Pfeiffer, who was senior communications adviser to President Barack Obama, says Democrats should remember that their appearances on Fox News will never reach many conservative voters in unadulterated form. A Democrat’s quotes will inevitably be diced into incriminating bites and fed to a larger conservative audience via high-rated opinion shows and right-wing social media.

However, Pfeiffer says, because a Democrat’s appearance on Fox News will intrinsically generate media interest, party members should appear if they want to — but with eyes wide open, expressly to create viral moments that will reach the Democratic base and independent voters.

“Go on looking for a fight,” Pfeiffer advises. “The press will cover what you say on Fox.” As a result, he says, this will facilitate “reaching people outside of the Fox audience.” Similarly, strategist Simon Rosenberg is urging fellow Democrats to confront Fox News’s mythmaking by “getting loud” themselves, to displace right-wing agitprop with Democrats’ own media-conscious messaging and theater.

Such ideas seem more in tune with the realities of today’s media ecosystem than other tactics Democrats have toyed with. For instance, it has been suggested that Democrats consider steps such as trying to get Fox News expelled from the White House press corps.

Ultimately, that seems trivial and small. Democrats should proceed from an enlarged understanding of the network’s role as a kind of Death Star in the broader universe of right-wing and GOP information warfare. As Brian Beutler notes, when House GOP leaders granted Carlson exclusive access to Capitol riot surveillance footage, this constituted a clear declaration that the party fully endorses Fox News’s efforts to swamp our politics with propaganda, and sees the outlet’s interests as synonymous with its own.

The real lesson from the revelations is that this Fox-GOP synchronization will remain fundamental to Republican and right-wing politics for the foreseeable future. Like it or not, Democrats are in an information war. As they work through their response, specific tactics seem less important than internalizing this baseline realization and allowing it to shape everything they do.

 

I'm loathe to admit it, but loud shouting on FOX in order to throw red meat (blue meat?) to Dems is better than letting FOX draft Dems in their information war. We'll see if any Dems are up to the challenge, and the few who are wouldn't get on FOX for precisely that reason. It's still FOX's network, you see.

Trying to use FOX against the GOP is...a...strategy. I'm not sure if it's the best one. On the other hand, it's certainly better than the current "I'll go on FOX to make my case to right wing white rural voters" strategy, because rural white right-wing voters want everyone involved in liberalism dead or in prison because they don't consider Dems or their voters as human.

So, there's that.

Israeli A Problem Here, Con't

The phoenix-like rise of Benjamin Netanyahu from the ashes of defeat a few years ago really is the defining story of the nation of Israel as it has gone from a state created for the preservation and safety of the Jewish people to one wholly dedicated to the open genocide of Palestinians.

 

Israel’s far-right finance minister’s call for a Palestinian town “to be erased” was harshly condemned by US State Department spokesperson Ned Price on Wednesday, who described the comments as “repugnant” and “irresponsible.”

Bezalel Smotrich, who also leads the far-right Religious Zionism party, said earlier on Wednesday that the Palestinian town of Huwara “needs to be erased.”

The incendiary comment was in reference to the town in the occupied West Bank where two Israeli brothers were shot and killed on Sunday, prompting a rampage through the area by Israeli Jewish settlers that left at least one Palestinian man dead, others injured, and homes and cars burned.

Smotrich was asked Wednesday why he had liked a post on Twitter after the brothers were shot, but before the settler rampage, saying that Huwara should be erased.

“I think the village of Huwara needs to be erased,” he told a reporter at a conference run the Israeli business magazine The Marker. “I think the State of Israel needs to do this, and not – God forbid – private citizens.”

Price issued a strong condemnation from the US State Department podium Wednesday, saying, “I want to be very clear about this. These comments were irresponsible. They were repugnant. They were disgusting.”

“And just as we condemn Palestinian incitement to violence, we condemn these provocative remarks that also amount to incitement to violence,” he said at a State Department briefing.

Price also called on Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu “and other senior Israeli officials to publicly and clearly reject and disavow these comments.”

“We condemn, as we have consistently, terrorism and extremism in all of its forms, and we continue to urge that there be equal measures of accountability for extremist actions, regardless of the backgrounds of the perpetrators or the victims,” he said.

 

Netanyahu built his comeback along with Israel's far-right fascists who want to see Palestinians wiped off the face of the Earth in a precarious coalition of zealots, revanchists and hardliners, so he can't push too hard or it will all come down. On the other hand, the Biden administration is making it very clear that there are big red lines and that crossing them will cost Netanyahu dearly.

Without US support, Israel is in dire trouble. But without his rogue's gallery of a cabinet, Netanyahu is in trouble himself.

Don't expect the situation to get much better here, and for it to get infinitely worse for Palestinians.

The High Price Of A Dollar Store

It really says something that the reason that the retail apocalypse didn't happen over the last three years was because so much commercial real estate went to discount stores like Dollar General, Family Dollar, and Dollar Tree. In fact, one-third of the retail stores opened during the last two years were dollar stores, and while that means thousands of new locations and jobs, some towns and cities are fighting back and sending these retailers packing.

Since 2019, at least 75 communities have voted down proposed dollar stores, while roughly 50 have enacted moratoriums or other broad limits on dollar store development, according to a new report by the Institute for Local Self-Reliance, an organization that is critical of corporate retailers and their impact on communities.

By comparison, from 2015 to 2018, about 25 communities voted down proposed dollar stores while only six enacted moratoriums or ordinances limiting their growth.

Although the number of blocked stores is much smaller than the thousands that Dollar General and similar chains have opened in recent years, the movement against the industry has created an unusual group of allies. On many other issues, they disagree, but they are united in their fight against dollar stores.

Rural, Republican-leaning communities in places like southern Virginia and North Carolina are pushing back against dollar stores. (In 2020, President Donald J. Trump easily carried Morgan, Minn.) And leaders in cities like Toledo, Ohio, and Birmingham, Ala., have also mounted opposition, saying the stores are fueling crime and unhealthy food choices. Across Georgia, 18 cities and towns have restricted dollar store development, according to the think tank’s report.

The stores typically operate with lean staffing, and their employees, by some measures, are paid at the bottom of the retail industry’s scale. According to a survey by the Economic Policy Institute, a liberal think tank, 92 percent of Dollar General workers earn less than $15 an hour, lower than many other companies surveyed, including Burger King, Walmart and Dunkin’. About 20 percent of Dollar General workers earn less than $10 an hour.

At the same time, the company is highly profitable. In December, Dollar General said its quarterly operating profit had increased about 10 percent from a year earlier while net sales had increased 11 percent, to $9.5 billion. Dollar Tree, which also owns the Family Dollar chain, is posting strong results as well. On Wednesday, Dollar Tree said its profit in fiscal year 2022 increased 23 percent to $2.2 billion and net sales rose 7.6 percent to $28.3 billion.

More than one-third of all stores that opened in the United States in 2021 and 2022 were dollar stores. Dollar General alone opened 2,060 locations during those years, far more than any other retailer, according to Coresight Research, and the company now operates 19,000, more than twice as many as Walmart and Target combined.

“As divided as Americans are politically, there’s remarkable agreement that too much of what passes as a legitimate business model is, in fact, fundamentally destructive and unfair,” said Stacy Mitchell, a co-executive director of the Institute for Local Self-Reliance. “Federal policymakers have let big corporations run amok. Cities and towns of all stripes have learned that if you want to protect your community, you have to do it yourself.”

 

Some areas are blocking the stores, some are regulating them heavily, like Dekalb County, Georgia.

When Lorraine Cochran-Johnson was first running for a seat as a county commissioner in DeKalb County, Ga., in 2018, dollar stores were not something she paid attention to. But after a woman at a campaign event warned her about the stores’ impact on Black neighborhoods, she began to do some research online and by simply looking around her district, just east of Atlanta.

The stores were mostly in predominantly Black neighborhoods. She also witnessed, over a two-week span, two brazen thefts at the same dollar store.

She talked with one of the cashiers about the crimes. “She told me, ‘This is business as usual,’” Ms. Cochran-Johnson said. “There was a normalcy to this situation that no one should find normal.”

Ms. Cochran-Johnson, a Democrat, was elected to the commission in 2019. The next year, she persuaded the commission to pass a moratorium on dollar store developments in DeKalb County.

The moratorium ended in December, but the county is putting into effect new requirements for dollar stores, including that they install video surveillance in their stores and parking lots and turn over security camera footage to the police within 72 hours of a crime. A new store cannot be within a mile of an existing store, and 10 percent of a store’s shelf space must be dedicated to “healthy foods,” a category that includes frozen vegetables.

“This is about community and creating the best outcomes,” Ms. Cochran-Johnson said. 

 

So yes, dollar stores are increasingly providing better, healthier options for shoppers, and it's not like huge grocery oligopolies like Kroger and Walmart don't need direct competition. The problem is, both sets of stores have their own problems, and food inflation over the last two years has only made these companies more profit at our direct expense.