In the "what else is new" department...

[yuiyoshida]

Fox News “brainwashed” so many dads: “People are being bamboozled on a massive scale”


Filmmaker Jen Senko noticed a disturbing phenomenon. Her father, Frank, was a goofy, fun, non-political dad who treated people with respect when she was a child. However, when she was older, she noticed her father would rant about “Feminazis,” listen to Rush Limbaugh and watch Fox News. He became the family pest, forcing one-sided discussions of conservative politics and becoming enraged and unreachable after watching Fox News.

Senko investigates the reasons for this transformation in her stirring new documentary, “The Brainwashing of My Dad.” She interviews activist Noam Chomsky, author David Brock, who penned the article “Confessions of a Right-Wing Hit Man,” and Salon’s own Matthew Saccaro (“I Was a Teenage Fox News Robot”), among others to emphasize the invasiveness of Fox News. She even includes Skype interviews with ordinary people whose Fox News-loving family members shut them out of their lives.

The documentary, co-narrated by Senko and co-producer Matthew Modine, traces the history of the insidious ways the conservatives gained control of the media and how the Republican Noise Machine sustained such wide influence and impact, even as Fox News propagates lies, by bleeding false stories.

Senko spoke with Salon about “The Brainwashing of My Dad.”

You noticed this transformation with your father. What tipped the scales that you decided to make a documentary feature about the topic of how folks are swayed from liberal to conservative thinking, by Fox News in particular, but also talk radio and other media?

http://www.salon.com/2016/03/20/fox_news_brainwashed_so_many_dads_people_are_being_bamboozled_on_a_massive_scale/

[pfitz59]

1. I've seen it in so many friends and relatives...

Rupert Murdoch and Roger Ailes shall burn in Helll. Deliberate sabotage of the 4th Estate and critical thinking. Bunch of angry zombies inhabiting flesh-colored shells...

[Warpy]

2. My parents started down that road

when Limbag had his mercifully brief TV show. I visited them once during this period and when they'd start to rant, I'd leave and go for a walk. When I got back I'd ask "are you done?"

They had a little more upstairs than most people so they got the point fast. They knew I had motel money and a return ticket.

My dad's last vote was for John Kerry. I have no idea what provoked the change, he'd never admit the reason.

[Spitfire of ATJ]

3. The fact that propaganda works is why cheap ass money grubbing corporations pay for it.

[PATRICK]

4. Emotion precedes thought

The con hook goes into ones misplaced trust in one's judgment when confronted with a "fellow feeler" who leads you by the nose, builds and "shares" your emotions, guides the ruinous resulting "thought-logic". And takes your freely given money, allegiance, soul.

This also happens with less villainous allegiances, people enamored of heroes with extra clay feet. The honest man will disappoint the naifs far faster and suffer at their hands more than the one who has made complete fools of them(something they dare not face).

[Fumesucker]

5. A long commute listening to talk radio will do it

I listened for about a decade but I'm enough of a contrarian that all conservative radio did for me is make me more liberal. Not everyone is wired like me though to be always looking for the flaw in any argument.

When we are driving propaganda is particularly insidious because we are very distracted doing a mundane and boring yet life and death task so our full concentration is not available to critique what we are hearing.

[Doctor_J]

6. Worked on my dad

Fox and hate radio turned a union/JFK/LBJ democrat, the most kind hearted man I've ever met, into a scared old racist for the last twenty years of his life. It's difficult to describe how much damage they have done to the country over the last twenty five years.