Getting a RW-er away from Fox News for a week does wonders

[scheming daemons]

My dad is a right-wing conservative. Very tea party-ish.

Watches Fox News every day.

Talking politics with him has become unbearable over the last several years, so I just bite my lip when he makes his comments and either ignore him or change the subject.


My family, my brother's family, my sister's family, and my parents all went on a week-long vacation together this past week. We rented a 6-bedroom house on the beach and I dreaded the evenings when I expected he'd put on O'Reilly and Hannity and snark away.

But a cool thing happened. The cable TV wasn't working in the house.

Forced to go a week without Fox News telling him what to think actually led to some interesting and informative conversations in which the heat/light ratio was much lower than normal.

Fox News gets his blood boiling up to a point where he'll refuse to listen to any other point of view on the subjects of the day.

But take it away for a week... and force him to defend his position using his own thoughts and words... and he becomes almost persuade-able and the conversations become civil.


Fox News is poison for the brain. It's a drug for the lazy intellect.

[Initech]

1. It is. It's incredibly difficult to have civilized conversations with Fux Noise/Glenn Beck fans.

[roguevalley]

26. I blocked it at our house because my dad was getting upset and

confused. He had just had strokes and he couldn't square their shit with the truth that he knew so I blocked their asses. They will stay blocked until I am dead.

[CaliforniaPeggy]

2. Perhaps he will change...

And be less inclined to watch.

We can hope...

Recommended.

[stevedeshazer]

3. I had to tell a coworker that Fox News and Limbaugh were rotting his brain.

His response was that I "listen to the wrong people".

[Not Me]

4. Did you remember to reconnect the cable before you left?????

[TheCowsCameHome]

6. Leave it disconnected.

It'll do wonders for everyone.

[Catshrink]

5. Faux News is the opiate of the people.

[tabasco]

7. Mass propaganda is remarkably efective.

Mega-corporate ownership of the mass media is a real problem.

[gratuitous]

9. All those billions aren't spent on advertising because it doesn't work

But isn't it interesting that without 24-7 input on what to think, Fox watchers don't have a lot to fall back on.

[Historic NY]

8. They have a clear methodology in how they broadcast & present the news..

watch it, you'll catch on.

[struggle4progress]

10. It's just wrong to turn a brain into a foxic waste dump

[AnArmyVeteran]

20. I like that! Perfect!

[ChoppinBroccoli]

11. You Know What's Scary? I Could Have Written This Very Post

A situation almost EXACTLY like the one you describe happened to me. And sometimes it happens, to a certain extent, in small doses. My Bush-can-do-no-wrong father-in-law, who never allows the TV in his house to leave Faux News (and he's retired, so all he usually does is sit around watching Faux News and getting mad about stuff--except when he has to go somewhere, and then he listens to right-wing radio the whole way there and back), is the kind of person that you can't have a civil political discussion with. He's unable to handle the idea that someone disagrees with his point of view and will react almost violently when his beliefs are so much as questioned. He used to absolutely HATE me, because I was the dirty liberal who infiltrated his family and turned his daughter against him (she was a Republican her whole life until she met me and started hearing the other side of the issues--now she's a liberal Democrat--but the point is, he thinks I brainwashed her, which is incredibly insulting, because it's essentially saying that she's not smart enough to make up her OWN mind on any given issue, so I must have done it FOR her). But we can always tell which days he's been out working in the yard or doing other things and which days he's been sitting cooped up in the house watching Faux News all day.

I would LOVE to see some sort of study done on this effect, because I guarantee the results will show that exposure to Faux News makes people angry, insufferable A-holes. I fully agree with the OP. It IS poison for the brain. And the body manifests it by becoming angry and borderline violent. Faux News is like the slime in "Ghostbusters 2." It's like liquid concentrated hatred.

[NC_Nurse]

19. Me too.

[mikeysnot]

21. Read the first few chapters of

Naomi K book Shock Doctrine.... it all makes sense.


m

[defendandprotect]

25. It's a bullying, authoritarian form of "journlism" . . .

and IMO those most susceptible to it are people who continue to cave to

religious authoritarianism -- religious dictates???

And, needless to say, it also reflects the attitudes, beliefs and behavior

of the ruling class --

[DemocracyInaction]

34. ChoppinBroc....

You have hit the nail square on the head. It's the poison that all these RW dribble out bit by bit and their victims cannot see it building up in their bloodstream/brain! And in the end they will walk into a voting booth and vote time after time for their own economic extinction! This is the true "drug" problem in the USA.

[Blue Owl]

12. Zombie Commander Murdoch

has been disabled -- excellent!

[Ramulux]

13. Some more info would be nice

Like what did you talk to him about and how were you able to get through to him. I am interested in you went about bringing up questions.

[Kablooie]

14. I don't know how we can ever compete.

I'm sure Fox, Limbaugh and the like don't actually believe all the crap they spew. They've just hit on a type of broad propaganda formula that pulls in a hell of a lot of money. It's based on fear, flattery, selfishness and ignorance, four things that America has in overabundance. It's easy to light a match under these traits and watch the flames flare -- and the money roll in.

Attempts at liberal retorts usually have a modicum of reality thrown into the mix with the selfishness turned down and altruism turned up. This will never be able to compete emotionally with unfettered fantasies that pander to pure self centeredness that is broadcast 24 hours a day.

It's appalling that divisive propaganda has overrun the airwaves but I don't have a lot of faith that reason and knowledge will ever be able to effectively compete.

[progressoid]

15. It's like a cult

And Fox News is Jim Jones.

[Klukie]

16. "Fox News is poison for the brain. It's a drug for the lazy intellect."

I like that......mind if I use it sometime?

[vanlassie]

17. Exact description of my 83 yo dad, too. I finally refused to

eat at his table if Fox was on. My sister had to convince him that I was serious. Now we watch "Cash Cab" over dinner and we are much happier and enjoy each other's company. He knows a lot of answers to the quiz questions, allowing him to "Know" something other than his ugly politics. Republicans really have a strong need to be "right." Hahaha.

[Xenotime]

18. All the more reason it needs to be shut down and silenced.

[Dinger]

22. KNR :)

[abelenkpe]

23. Good fo you!

You clearly have a better relationship with your family if you are able to rent a vacation home together. My parents, brother and sister are all tea partying FOX news watching Rush fans. They sometimes pout and wonder why I don't bring my two kids across country for a visit, but hey if I wanted to be berated, belittled and hear FOX news talking points 24/7 it's right there on TV so why bother? We tried to vacation once and my Dad called me an asshole liberal in front of my one year old son. I will never ever visit him again. I have literally put it in my will that my children are to have no unsupervised visits with my family until they are adults. I cannot have a ten minute conversation with them without them spouting some kind of hateful bigoted FOX news garbage at me.

I blame FOX news. They were once far more reasonable people. I wish FOX news would go away but I'm not holding my breath.

[Roland99]

24. "Fox News is poison for the brain.It's a drug for the lazy intellect."..Not just Faux.TV in general!

Two months with no cable/sat TV and running!


(and 2 weeks of no soft drinks/aspartame, too!) :)

[MedicalAdmin]

31. Congratulations.

Especially on the soft drinks. I haven't had a soft drink in about 20 years and the last time I watched TV was about the same. More time to read, putter in the garden, fix the house up, work on my truck (it's got 500,000 miles on it and still running - I'm shooting for 1 million but it's getting harder to push that rock up that hill - on the other hand I have owned it outright for 15 years (20 year old truck) the insurance is about $50 a month and it gets about 40MPG (diesel).

Keep swimming. The water just gets better the farther out you go.

[Enthusiast]

27. Fox and right wing radio

are almost completely responsible for the ruination of this country. Their propaganda enabled the corporations to take control.

[Orsino]

28. There's a reason the Two-Minute Hate is a daily thing.

Stop shouting and your brain may start working.

[Populist_Prole]

29. Sounds like my father too

Always a very forward, pushy sort, has become even more so and as far to the right as one can get. Tea party fox news junkie all the way. Even has a setup where he can record /download all the fox talking heads shows to watch later. Really tough to spend time around now. We used to share many common interests and still do, but anymore, when I visit he finds a way to politicize EVERY subject of discussion and tries every which way to "convert" me to his viewpoint ( he honestly believes most of the country agrees with him ) from flattery/cajoling, really bad/lazy/reaching analogies, and then finally gets downright nasty and insulting when I don't take the bait.

I wish his Tivo and TV would break and PC hard drive would crash. It's about what it would take. Totally squandering his otherwise healthy "golden years" consumed with constant rage. Goddamned shame.

[classof56]

30. Good for you! Recommended and by the way...

I just wrote down "Fox News is poison for the brain. It's a drug for the lazy intellect." Hope that's not copyrighted, 'cause I intend to use it soon and often!

Blessings.

[w00dslight]

32. I'm thinking of making it a diagnosis

I'm a family doc and was seeing a 50ish lady for a physical when she confessed to me that she couldn't sleep. She was so worried about the country and the President that she was literally beside herself. I said, "Ma'am, do you watch a lot of Fox News? "Oh yes", she said, "all the time."
"Stop watching Fox." I said. She asked me about supporting the Republicans and being politically active. I told her to go right ahead, support whomever she wanted, be politically active, that's her right. But Fox News was making her crazy. A month later she told me she was sleeping better than she had in years.

[MedicalAdmin]

33. Way to go Doc.

Good diagnosis.

[JHB]

41. Welcome to DU!

:hi:

Great advice. Glad she took it.

[Demoiselle]

35. That's good news...

I'm sure your dad's been exposed to other bullshit...but Fox is clearly the most energy efficient portion of a right wing mind-bending battering ram that's working at this since Reagan and earlier. And it's all about how much money they've been willing to spend all these years. All those mouth pieces, Coulter, Limbaugh et al are well financed. (If not, they might have been stockbrokers and disk jockeys. I wish the Left could organize the money to counter it all. The old rule about a lie repeated becomes true is ...well...true.

[TheKentuckian]

36. Glad to be able to shoot you a rec. There's a whole lot of truth in this OP

[Capitalocracy]

37. So it requires constant reinforcement

And withdrawing that reinforcement could actually change things.

Interesting information.

[whathehell]

38. Wow....What a great happening!...If only we could make that "go viral"! n/t

[AsahinaKimi]

39. Imagine what could happen

If some day TV disappeared and people only used the world wide web. Hmmmm :think:

[LAGC]

40. Regarding that heat/light ratio...

I really do wonder what the Republicans would do if they ever lost Fox News or their talk-radio.

Without the constant stream of hate and discrimination, scapegoating and finger-pointing, its doubtful the Republicans would ever see a majority ever again.

[scheming daemons]

42. I don't want to "force" anything off the air.. I just wish they had to uphold journalistic standards