Friday Fox Follies – Diseased Central

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What’s more contagious than Ebola with absolutely no cure? As we head into next week’s election, Fox “News” has been stricken with a near-fatal form of Obama Derangement Syndrome. Worse: Quarantines won’t work against it — unless you switch off your tee vee.

There was a time — when presidents were White and dubbed Dubya — that any legitimate criticism of the POTUS was called treason. [See: The Dixie Chicks.] A mere 3 years into the Bush Administration — as he started wars in the wrong countries, gave unsolicited back massages to the wrong world leaders, and ignored the flooding of the wrong cities — Fox “News” Icon Charles “Sour” Krauthammer invented a vaccine that immunized Bush for all his obvious failures, past, present and future. It was the funny neologism “Bush Derangement Syndrome.” Hilarity ensued. Within a nanosecond every Progressive was falsely accused of having the malady.

Skip ahead 11 years: Obama Derangement Syndrome, which began as a noticeable election fever on Fox “News” in ’08, has infected the entire channel’s bloodstream. Weakened, they’re not even trying anymore. As Steve Benen notes in Playing the Ebola blame game badly:

A couple of days ago, as Kaci Hickox was on her way home to Maine, Fox News’ Greta Van Susteren had the same reaction to the nurse’s ordeal that many Americans probably had. Van Susteren said on Twitter that Hickox “is not a terrorist, she’s a nurse.” Instead of being thanked for helping treat Ebola patients, the host added, Hickox “was treated like a criminal.”

Van Susteren concluded, “I blame President Obama.”

Gas prices have them exhibiting all the other symptoms. When Bush was president Fox News Explains Why Presidents Can’t Control Gas Prices, In 2008. That was then. This is now: Fox News contorts to blame Obama for gas prices, high and low.

You’d think low gas prices would be a good thing, but Fox News Jumps The Shark, Now Bashing Obama For Making Price Of Gas… Too Cheap. Fox asks: will cheap gas hurt the economy? is not parody. Even Wretched Gretched (I predict she’ll be the next Foxite fired) went there: Fox News Host Implies Obama Is Manipulating Gas Prices To Help Democrats In Midterms.

Gas prices? Check! What else can they blame on Obama? The glut of newly graduated lawyers, with massive student debt? Fox’s Aidala: Lawyers Can’t Find Work, Obama’s Economy to Blame? I blame Obama for Aidala.

For a thoughtful article on ODS: Why Can’t the Media Give Obama Credit for Crisis Management?

IRONY ALERT: Speaking of the deranged always leads to Fox “News” psychiatrist Dr. Keith Ablow. This week he LITERALLY declared ‘Merkin Jihad in the essay It’s time for an “American jihad”. The Ablow Doctrine™ is a New, Improved Manifest Destiny, exported to every corner of the globe — with boots on the ground if necessary.

We would accept the fact that an American jihad could mean boots on the ground in many places in the world where human rights are being denigrated and horrors are unfolding. Because wherever leaders and movements appear that seek to trample upon the human spirit, we have a God-given right to intervene — because we have been to the mountaintop of freedom, and we have seen the Promised Land spanning the globe.

[…]

An American jihad would turn back and topple the terrible self-loathing in our citizens set in motion by President Obama, beginning with his “apology tour” — a psychological plague. It would make American pride not only acceptable, but celebrated, again. And, remember, American pride is nothing more than being proud to support truths that are self-evident, irreducible, elemental and inevitable.

An American jihad would make every tax dollar a tithing and the squandering of those dollars a sin. An American jihad would make every hour spent working in an American company — or founding one — an offering. An American jihad would make every teacher of American history not only a public servant, but a servant of the Truth.

You can’t hide crazy:

Horrible Fox News Employee Calls for an ‘American Jihad’

Fox’s Keith Ablow Calls For An “American Jihad” To
“Spread Around The World” Our System Of Governance

Fox Psychiatrist Ablow Says ‘It’s Time For An American Jihad’

Then he went on Fox & Friends and doubled down. Watch:

Around the time I was calling James Rosen a liar for his book “The Strong Man,” the Department of Justice was labeling James Rosen as an unindicted co-conspirator in an alleged State Department spy ring. As the Attorney General looks to retirement, Eric Holder Admits He Regrets Labeling Fox’s Rosen a ‘Co-Conspirator’, which allowed the writer of Watergate fiction to take a victory lap: Fox’s James Rosen Responds to Holder’s Regrets over Calling Him ‘Co-Conspirator’.

Throughout this ordeal for my family and me, I have tried to keep my head down and continue covering – and breaking – the news. I consider myself blessed to have an employer in Fox News, and a boss in Roger Ailes, who have stood by me and enabled me to remain focused on what matters most to me in professional terms: first-rate journalism. At some later point, I may have more to say about this entire controversy, which – as commentators from across the ideological spectrum have noted – does indeed raise serious concerns about the state of press freedoms under the present administration. Suffice to say for now that the attorney general’s latest comments about my case, like his previous remarks, scarcely address the relevant facts of his conduct.

Two quick points: 1). Holder merely expressed regret for calling Rosen an unindicted co-conspirator, not for investigating Rosen for leaking State Department documents; 2). It was Rosen’s cozy relationship with Nixon’s Media Man Roger Ailes I exposed.

FOX BITES: The Five’s Bob Beckel is a hapless excuse of Liberal, there to add a progressive counter-point to a show which would otherwise be almost nothing but Right Wing memes. Yet, when Beckel isn’t swearing, or agreeing with the GOP, or going off on wild tangential rants, including about his former (?) addictions to drink and drugs, or all the above simultaneously, he acts like a male chauvinist pig:

Fox News Defends Street Harassment As “Nothing Disrespectful”
Fox Host Mocks Anti-Catcall Video: Damn, ‘You’re A Piece Of Woman’

Male chauvinist pigs only want to take the country back to the ’50s. If Stuart Varney had his way he’d take us back to the 15th Century and emulate his King Henry VIII. Just as Friday Fox Follies was going to press Fox’s Stuart Varney Reportedly Hit with Salacious Divorce Complaint and Fox’s Stuart Varney Involved In A Very Smarmy Divorce Case were just 2 of the headlines crossing my transom.

The dissolution of a marriage is not an occasion for joy. However, it’s not hard to see how the details being alleged dovetail into the Fox “News” continuous War on Women.

Headly Westerfield writes. Sometimes too much. No more room. Buh bye.