"Faux"

I'm sure this happens all across the country. I know it happens on college campuses. It definitely does here. I know. It just happened to me.

Lady I work with. I've known her for 12 years, and I know her political views quite well. I hear them all the time. I keep mine quiet around her because I know they differ drastically from hers and frankly, I don't think much of hers and I'm afraid it might come out. We're friendly toward each other -- we have some other stuff in common. Like a greater than average interest in weather-related things.

So she comes over to tell me about Geraldo Rivera and how she can't stand him and she saw him on the news at the gym reporting from Galveston and he got knocked over, mid-report, by a wave. And she loved it. It was like the hand of God slapping him down. I said it's cool that we have some people down there reporting on it so that we can see some of what it's like, because I know better than to be down there myself right now even if I could go. And she said well if someone's going to get killed, better him than anyone else. I politely said I wouldn't wish that on anyone and that I wasn't going there.

Then she went on a rant about her completely dismissing him when he went to "The Dark Side" by going to "Fix" or "Faux" News, and how they watch CNN. But they turn to "Faux" News occasionally just to see how "The Other Side" thinks, because "they're the ones that are screwing everything up for everybody".

"Know your enemies", she said.

Talk about uncomfortable. I was stunned. She was talking to me as if "of course" I agreed with her. This is often the case especially at college. But liberals often believe that everybody but the hicks and Big Business is a liberal, and nudge, nudge, chuckle, chuckle.

I thought she should, by now, at least have an inkling that I'm not a liberal. But maybe not. I do try to keep it quiet because of where I work and I don't like confrontation. Especially with someone who works in the cube next to me.

Now, frankly, I did watch Fox News for a while after 9/11. I went there from CNN et. al. because I got tired of the Blame America First navel-gazing going on there. If you ask me, Fox is at least as fair as anyone else. Everyone knows they have a conservative editorial take on things -- so naturally I'd like their editorials better. Most (not all) of their conservative commentators usually even try to play devil's advocate with themselves. Their news is pretty straight.

Even so, 24 hour "News" channels eventually just turned me off, and I turned them off. I haven't watched them other than very occasionally for years. Everything is over-talked, over-analyzed, and on the "panel" shows, they're not interested in anybody presenting a full, coherent argument, and the other guy's counter argument. They want to air a fight with people shouting over each other. All of them. I have no use for that. Which is why I prefer to read my news. There's no shouting over each other, and the writer gets to complete his thought and I can see for myself the full arguments and decide which makes sense.

That being said - typically when I do watch cable news, it's gonna be Fox. Their editorial arguments are often too emotion-based for my tastes (kind of like MSNBC, CNN, etc), but their hearts are in the right place and at least most of their conclusions match up with mine.

Incidentally, if you've been following along in your readers... yes, it was the same woman who prompted this post.

And it pisses me off sometimes that in the name of politeness we have to sit quietly and hear ourselves called all kinds of names to our faces and the person standing there has no clue that they're insulting me and calling me their enemy, while pretending to be my friend.

Kind of like the Massechuttes liberals sitting next to me at a Charlie Daniels show at HEUG a couple of years ago in Nashville looking for a pat on the back from me when they said "Yeah, we're proud liberals! We're Dixie Chicks fans." Yeah, bet they'd never heard of the Dixie Chicks until Natalie opened her pie-hole. And I had to wonder if they had any clue what Charlie Daniels was singing about.