The Demise of Fox News

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News brings word that the SJW’s have bagged their biggest trophy to date. Bill O’Reilly is the most popular cable news talker in the business and he was just fired for making the girls cry. It is all part of what is looking like a well orchestrated effort to break Fox News on the wheel of political correctness. The screeching harpies knocked out Roger Ailes and now they have taken out the top star, all via the same method – powerskirts claiming to have been done wrong by the knuckle-dragging misogynists running the network.

The claim will be that the advertisers demanded Fox fire O’Reilly, but that is complete nonsense. Cable channels, like Fox News, exist on subscription revenues, not advertising dollars. FNC gets $1.50 from every cable home each month. That’s roughly $1.8 billion a year whether people watch or not. Their ad revenue is less than a third of that number. In the case of ESPN, for example, ad revenue is around one billion, and they have an audience about ten times the size of a cable news operation, even Fox News.

An advertiser boycott could certainly harm the bottom line for Fox, but there is another reality to the cable business. Those companies demanding their ads be pulled from the O’Reilly show would still be running ads on other Fox programs. The reason they choose to run ads on Fox News is they believe there are people watching Fox News who will also buy crap they see advertised. Bill O’Reilly could be strangling kittens on his show. If he gets a valuable audience to watch, advertisers will want to get their name on his show.

The reality is Fox could weather the storm and ride out this thing if they wanted to do it, but they probably have another agenda. It’s tempting to assume that Fox is stuffed to the rafters with right-wing ideologues, but that’s not the case. Fox is just as Prog infested as every other media company.This could very well be part of an effort to make the channel more Prog friendly. It could also be the dream-child of someone in management, to remake the network to appeal to younger, gayer viewers.

Logic says that languishing networks like CNN would jump at the chance to land a huge fish like O’Reilly. Put the Big Mic on CNN in his old time slot and CNN would soon pass Fox in the ratings. In fact, they could put some other popular names around him and dominate the cable news wars. People like tabloid news shows and guys like O’Reilly are good at being just outrageous enough to get your attention, but not so crazy as to make you feel bad for liking tabloid news.

That’s not going to happen, of course. CNN has the same economics as Fox News. They can fully engage in whatever politics they choose, because they get paid even if no one bothers watching. They are tax farmers, relying on an oligopoly to enforce their right to skim a buck a month from your cable bill. It’s why cable bills are over $100 per month and it is also why cord cutting is the new thing. If people could pick the channels they buy through their cable subscription, all of the cable news guys would go away.

As an aside, it is one of the ironies of socialism. The economic philosophy that claims to favor equality of outcomes always turns into a vehicle for self-dealing by the advocates of socialism. American media is universally liberal, and financed by the socialism of cable television. Colleges and universities are madhouses of Progressive jackassery, financed by the socialized student debt system.  American health care is looking like a cynical bust-out because of socialist economics championed by the Left.

As a further aside, the companies pulling their ads from O’Reilly were not doing it for economic reasons. The ratings were through the roof and few Americans care about who is playing grab ass with whom at the TV station. These companies were pulling their ads in order to curry favor with the Cult. In many cases, their management teams are infested with Progs and powerskirts too. It’s like a virus for which there is no known cure. It controls the host and will bring about its demise in order to promote the cause.

Anyway, a good lesson to recall in all of this is the story of Time Magazine. Henry Luce founded the magazine, as well as Life, Sports Illustrated and other famous publications. He was also involved in radio, newsreels and eventually television. His company was the first multimedia corporation. In his heyday, he was considered the most influential private citizen in the country. The reason for that is his publications reached almost every American. He was an arbiter of the news.

Luce was also rabidly anti-communist and regularly used his media outlets to do battle with the Progs of his day. He opposed most of what FDR tried to do in office. It was Luce who came to the rescue of Whittaker Chambers, when the the Progs had him at the top of their enemies list. Chambers worked for Luce, not only earning a paycheck, but writing for his publications. Luce helped Bill Buckley get started, thus helping the post-war conservative movement come to life. Henry Luce’s media empire was anti-Left.

It was not, however, explicitly right-wing. After Luce died, his media company was slowly infiltrated by lunatics. By the 60’s it was unrecognizable. By the 70’s it was fully refashioned into a weapon of the Left. Even though its over the top Progressive bias slowly killed its circulation, the people running it did not care. What mattered was promoting the one true faith, even if it destroyed the institution from which it was broadcast. Time Magazine is gone now and the Luce company exists in name only.

That’s the fate of Fox News. Rupert Murdoch was never a man of the Right. He was just a guy who loved tabloid news and was a genius at making money on modern media properties. His kids are Kool-Aid drinking Prog loonies, who will piss away the family fortune trying to buy status within the Cult of Modern Liberalism. As a result, Fox News will slowly be converted into a megaphone for the one true faith. We’ll sooner see a trans gender-fluid lesbian of color in prime time than another Bill O’Reilly type.

90 thoughts on “The Demise of Fox News”

  2. Cut the cable!! I just did too. F’ing BS everywhere now. Too many people trying to break through all the noise in order to get eyes/ears/attention. The din is now just plain annoying to tune in to. The media has become a sh*t-funnel, collecting every manner of anger and stupidity, amplifying it, then pouring it into the brains of the American consumer/addict. I turned it off… and have been happier as a result. Ignore the bastards, and starve them of the oxygen they need to keep operating!

  3. Carlson’s first guest – the thing formerly known as Bruce Jenner. Goodbye and good riddance, FOX News.

    • Fox delivers entertainment not news. Tonight at 10.00 Fox circus BYO bread.

      Actual news that is found elsewhere.

  4. re: “Then he had a very attractive spokeswoman on for the Mexican invasion.” Thorn

    As soon as she appeared, my wife became agitated and within sixty seconds the TV was off. She was not on long but it was enough for me to see a short, fat mestizo in twenty years bussing tables. Gold-in-Sacks indeed.

    Dan Kurt

  5. OK, except for Tucker Carlson, who is hard-right bordering on AltRight has replaced him in the time slot. Watched his show lately, Zman? Last night he had a black woman on who is supporting free tuition for blacks at her state university. He asked her if we should do blood tests to determine who is black enough.

    Then he did a segment on the invasion of Italy by Africans that included footage film that was straight out of Camp of the Saints.

    Then he had a very attractive spokeswoman on for the Mexican invasion. Her claim to fame is that she is now a director at Goldman-Sachs. His first question: did you use a stolen Social Security number to gain employment on your rise to the top? Imagine that simple question being asked by Bill O? Hell would freeze over first.

    It’s damn close to pure far right agit prop, and mostly it’s done by deconstructing leftists, much the same technique you use, only he does it on prime time, and he (amazingly) gets them to come on and crucify themselves with their own words over and over.

    In the long run you are probably right about the fate of Fox drifting left. But anyone who morns the loss of the cuck O’Reily without noting and celebrating the ascension of Tucker is missing the good news. :And some really fun right wing TV. Best thing since Buckley on Crossfire.

  9. Fox’s vaunted conservatism was largely a myth. It’s always been at best moderate socially and neoconservative on foreign policy. The only reason people even noticed Fox was because the other outlets were so solidly left-wing that any deviation stood out like a sore thumb. O’Reilly’s milquetoast politics, ironically, perfectly mirrored FNC.

    Fox carved out a huge niche because of its minor heresies. With those gone, so will be the raison d’etre of the network. The Social Justice wing of the Clan Murdoch will push the network Left and destroy what made it relevant and profitable. As you pointed out, Z, we’ve seen this movie many times.

    Overall, linear television is dead as it is. The left-wing’s stranglehold on information has grown weaker each year since the advent of talk radio (remember that?). The loss of the propaganda monopoly has unhinged the Left as much as the rise of Trump, and actually will prove just as important in the near future.

    I hope O’Reilly, actually a vile person, spends millions on hot young women, good Cab, and exotic beaches. Bad things can happen to bad people, too, but seldom do they have the jack to enjoy the aftermath. Bill does.

  10. “Colleges and universities are madhouses of Progressive jackassery ”

    Awesome !!! Wish I could write like that 🙂

    O’Reilly could have easily survived this. If Clinton can get a blowjob and Letterman can bang an intern Fox should have surrounded the wagons and rode it out.

    Why do conservatives bow to the liberal-left every time ? They are complete hypocrites .

    Rush Limbaugh is one of the few that ignored the left and seems to be just as popular as he was before. Not that i’m a huge Limbaugh fan , but at least he stood up to the left

    • Re Limbaugh:

      I’ve only come to like–no, admire–Limbaugh recently. He seems to have ditched cuckery and to have been red-pilled. Limbaugh was the primary media target of SJW’s for years and still is standing. No small feat, that. When I do listen to him now, there often is very incisive analysis. It may have always been there (I don’t think it was) but only now do I notice and appreciate it. Limbaugh is an important and substantive figure and never did I think I would write such a thing. Odd the appreciation only came near the end of his and talk radio’s run.

    • That Limbaugh survives is a function of his medium: Daytime AM Radio. I saw several years ago that a large percentage of his listenership are captive: workers in small to medium independent businesses where the owner, who sure as hell isn’t going to play NPR, is providing some basic entertainment to those doing repetitive tasks.

      One assumes this is a declining listenership.

  11. Bill got off easy. Back in the day, the men would hogtie the targets, then deliver them to the powerskirts. Those women would get to skinning and flaying, and cast lots for the honor of wearing the balls and fingers as trophies.

    It is interesting that being the better killer these days is just invoking statistics/body counts.

  12. Could the Murdoch’s be of the tribe? An exceptionally large number of media owners are.

    “Biographical details of [Rupert] Murdoch’s past are sketchy and often contradictory. One reads that his grandfather was an impoverished Presbyterian minister who migrated to Australia from England, that his father was a low-paid reporter for a British newspaper in Australia, and yet, young Rupert divided his time between his family’s suburban home near Melbourne and the family’s sheep ranch in the country. He was educated first at the fashionable Geelong private school, and went on to the elitist and aristocratic Oxford University in England.
    “Rupert’s father Sir Keith Murdoch attained his prominent position in Australian society through a fortuitous marriage to the daughter of a wealthy Jewish family, née Elisabeth Joy Greene. Through his wife’s connections, Keith Murdoch was subsequently promoted from reporter to chairman of the British-owned newspaper where he worked. There was enough money to buy himself a knighthood of the British realm, two newspapers in Adelaide, South Australia, and a radio station in a faraway mining town. For some reason, Murdoch has always tried to hide the fact that his pious mother brought him up as a Jew…”

    • I can assure you young Rupert spend most of his youth on a crappy sheep station on the outskirts of Geelong, which at that time was one large sheep station (and crappy). He has worked assiduously to hide that detail of his life, too. Murdoch reinvents his biography constantly.

      • Candour [British journal edited by A K Chesterton] said in its June 1984 issue (vol. XXXV, no. 6)

    • Murdoch’s mother was, indeed, one Elisabeth Joy Greene.
      But she doesn’t sound remotely Jewish.
      Wikipedia :

      “Murdoch was born in Melbourne on 8 February 1909, the third daughter of Marie Grace de Lancey (Forth) and Rupert Greene. Her grandfather, William Henry Greene, was an Irish railway engineer (later one of the three Commissioners of Victorian Railways) who emigrated to Australia and married Fanny, the fourth of the 10 daughters of George Govett.[1] Her mother’s ancestors were Scottish and English; one of her maternal great-grandfathers was a lieutenant governor in the West Indies.[2] Elisabeth was educated at St Catherine’s School in Toorak, and at Clyde School in Woodend.”

      And there is nothing to indicate she brought much, if any, money into the marriage. Her recent ancestors were respectable, mid-level civil servants, but hardly rich. It was Rupert’s father who made the family rich.

      Read:
      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elisabeth_Murdoch_(philanthropist)

      The following website has taken a stab at tracing Rupert Murdoch’s ancestry back to the 1700s. No one on this list sounds remotely Jewish, either.

      http://www.wargs.com/other/murdoch.html

      I’m afraid Candour (AK Chesterton) simply isn’t a reliable source on such matters.

      • And yet, someone can be Scottish, English, or Irish, which are designations of dirt they are on, and also be jewish. Right?
        I find it amusing that you denigrate Candour but then use Wikipedia as a source. Your second source says this:

        “The following material on the immediate ancestry of Rupert Murdoch should not be considered either exhaustive or authoritative, but rather as a first draft.”

        Guess they never got past the first draft. Anyway, Green or Greene are common jewish names. Not exclusively jewish, but common. Plus, I added this caveat:

        “Could the Murdoch’s be of the tribe?”

        I know it is common for the fringe to see jews everywhere and blame everything wrong on jews. But, it is true so often it might be better to accept it and then find evidence that disproves. Two separate conflicting histories “proves” nothing.

  13. re: cable cutting-
    I noticed one day that i could stick a piece of wire into the cable jack on back of my TV and get about 15 channels. This is in a medium-small city. There is a lot of free video on the ‘net, too – I watch the latest movies free on watchfree.to (just get used to closing pop-ups quickly). If one must occasionally relax and shut your mind off, a minimal amount of channels is less likely to turn into a bad habit.

    Drop cable TV, save 100$ a month. If you don’t have several people downloading different vids, a DSL might be fast enough – save another 60$ on internet.

    I enjoy the feeling of not supporting hollywood, I hope they wither away – big $ productions may be doomed by piracy.

  14. To my point, there is someone driving around the area in a Tesla that has a Bernie Sanders vinyl wrap, the light blue color, with all the “feel the Bern” and “Sanders 2016” script on it. To this day. I would rather give blood than cross paths with that person. What kind of moron would drive around with all of this? I guess the best one can make of it is that these people are good at publicly self-identifying, so the rest of us can avoid them like the plague.

    I would also point out that BOR got a 600k or so viewership, which was double or triple the competition, but that ain’t posting any big numbers. When cable unbundling is a real thing, they all are done. Rupert had a good run going there, but he can go out on top now, and the kids can manage the decline.

  15. No woman who has even hinted at engaging in trade on her looks should be surprised or offended at men who recognise this and begin to so trade on her looks as well.

  16. Haven’t seen anything on FNC for years. It appears that most of the people on the conservative side of things soak up their daily ration of news/opinion/comment for the day, and then move along to live the rest of their lives, whatever that might be. The prog side soaks up their version of the news and comment, and then bangs away about it all day, every day, 24/7. Their lives are all about this stuff, and the rest of the time is just tying up everything in life with this stuff. They don’t back down, they don’t give up, they don’t take a break. Living a real life of sorts, we have a minimal daily commitment to banging around with all of this, even though we have your own set of values and priorities 24/7, but we can’t compete with people who do nothing else with their lives. School, home, work, church, friends, what you buy, where you buy it, all of it has to be jammed into a prog meat grinder. Let’s face it, we can’t compete with that, and who would want to? It’s a waste of a beautiful day. My time is not going to be wasted trying to battle the prog meat grinder, there is no joy in it. Doesn’t change how I feel about things, but I do understand why we always seem to be losing the fight.

  17. Several posts back the idea that SJW takeovers happened mainly after the decline of an institution and we’re markers of that decline. The story of the Luce empire would seem to go against that idea.

    • Different era, I think, but the Left began their march through the media when the mass media was at its zenith. Newspaper circulations began to nosedive in the 70’s. Many papers closed or were merged into single entities. Still, I think the SJW as canary in the coalmine is probably a rule of thumb, more than a transcendent rule of nature.

  18. A couple of days ago, the pot reached enough of a boil for me to research this a little. I watched Dr. Wendy Walsh tell her tale of woe. It went something like this:

    She meets O’Reilly over dinner to discuss becoming a paid regular on his show.
    They leave the hotel restaurant. He heads towards his room. She refuses to follow.
    They actually become separated for a moment.
    They reunite. He makes a weak effort to get her to come upstairs. She insists on going to the hotel bar. He agrees.
    O’Reilly becomes pissier as the night goes on. Eventually he tells her that she will not be a regular and that she has an ugly purse. He leaves.

    I think that quid pro quo offers involving sex are illegal, but in Walsh’s account, O’Reilly never seems to make an explicit pitch. He beats around the bush but never quite comes to the point. This is supposed to be the smoking gun that got him fired?

    If this was my wife or daughter, I’d be pissed, but not enough to recommend legal action. I’d just tell her to be a better judge of character and stay away from jerks like that in the future. If Walsh’ case is representative, he’s a cad, but not a criminal.

    Some people who are familiar with Muslim societies will tell you that it is the women folk who are the most invested in the public morality aspect of the religion. Once they are married and have children (male children especially), it gives them tremendous power over the men.

    I think that this is the convergence point between the progs and the Islamists. It’s a girl power thing. The burkas are maskirovka, literally and figuratively.

    • That’s the whole story? In her words?

      A mean Irish guy had a few drinks and tells her off?

    • I’ve known of two cases where a women setup a man this way. She flirted her way to a “dinner meeting” and then later claimed he tried to put the moves on her. The only reason I know about these examples is the man was wise to this game and had someone shadow him and witness what happened, just in case.

      It’s why you never allow yourself to be alone with a female co-worker and never ever be alone with a female subordinate. I don’t feel sorry for O’Reilly. He’s an old fool.

      • Admittedly my last private sector job was McDonalds in high school, so perhaps after-hours dinners are how business is done in real world .. but my experience suggests your advice is spot-on. Frankly, Mr Pence’s proscription about social events with women/booze seems completely reasonable, from a career-preservation perspective.

      • I agree. I had a powerskirt boss once who used to fly into my office, shut the door, and start emoting. I would argue loudly with her for several minutes, saying that I wasn’t going to talk to her about every day business behind closed doors. She wouldn’t back down, but at least my partner in crime knew to listen in and I had some insurance.

          • That kind of wisdom usually comes from having been burned before. The political tricks stay the same, only the price (consequences) goes up!

  19. O’Reilly is an elitist wannabe, who was dying to be accepted by the upper-crust idiots at CBS, etc. One of his heroes was Peter Jennings, an empty suit if there ever was one. His “let’s not speculate” shtick was painfully self-righteous. He thought his Kennedy School “degree” might get him in with the Pulitzer crowd, but he was just an Irish kid who didn’t have the discipline to chase women outside of the Fox News biosphere. Did you know he went to Harvard? Pride goeth before a fall, karma’s a bitch, etc.

  20. Z Man;
    You can add Col Robert R McCormick (1880 – 1955), of the old Chicago Tribune, WGN Radio, WGN TV, etc. to the Prog pile of old-right media skulls. Same story outline as Luce: 1. Conservative from the turn of the 20th century (whatever conservative means now-a-days); 2. Strong (Taft_?) Republican; 3. Enemy of FDR & New Deal; 4. Media empire starting tilting Prog as soon as the top managers he hired in the 40’s & ’50’s departed the scene in the late ’60’s, fully converged by the early ’90’s (paper endorsed Clinton, IIRC), etc. Only big difference was that he had no heirs to direct the process in exchange for elite female social butt smooching.

    McCormick actually served in WWI (hence the Col), set up a military museum on the site of his then county estate and private golf course in the Chicago burbs and a foundation to fund and run them. By the looks of its website that foundation is now also Prog converged.

  21. It’s almost like Murdoch is some sort of media oligarch with an eye on the bottom line.

      • You may have a point. That’s the internet for you.

        I have come across some of them personally. Apart from Rupe they are not political at all.

        This blog is not, like, canonical or anything. It’s just a blog.

        • Famously, Rupe had a bust of Lenin on his mantlepiece in his Oxford rooms in the 60s

          • I have a bust of Lenin up on the shelf. It’s one of the late-1960s ones, so highly stylized it bears only a cursory resemblance to Vladimir Ilych.

            On rare occasions someone will ask who the bust is of. I tell them it’s a Romulan from an obscure Trek episode. They’ll shrug and conversation moves on…

  22. The sexual harassment allegations about O’Reilly are old news … so why now? My guess is that FNC management leveraged the allegations to clean house and rebrand the network. “Let’s make FNC more like CNN!” can only be explained as an exercise in religious devotion, or perhaps a desire for social respectability among the Manhattan scene. When FNC flounders, they like all good leftists will fall back on the defense of their good intentions.

    If FNC is looking to clean house, look for Sean Hannity to be shown the door soon. Personally, I never cared for his shtick (more vehemence than coherence) but he’s the poster child for FNC as GOP cheerleader.

  23. TV is bad on many levels. Fox was always garbage.

    Luce was a Skull and Bones guy (Wikipedia says his nickname there was “Baal”).

    He claimed to oppose FDR and his guys (like Stimson, another Bonesman)., but they were actually enacting the same agenda, from seemingly opposed angles.

    Much like Averell Harriman was a senior figure in the Democratic establishment while Prescott Bush was a Republican, or like W. and Kerry were “opponents.”

    • He didn’t go to “the” Harvard. He attended the JFK School of Journalism which is ON the Harvard campus and supported by same. So….. in typical Entertainment Tonight fashion he tells you he went to Harvard, leaving out the particulars. Yep, he went every day, walked right through campus on the way to HIS school.

  25. Good riddance to pompous Bill, but he whole affair is rather sordid. According to Daily Mail, BOR was sacked because Salome, I mean Sarah Murdoch, one of Rupert’s daughter-in-law demanded his head. So, because a SJW powerskirt wished it, the network sacked its greatest star, Way to go FOX, way to go. Equally disturbing were reports that Trump whacked Assad’s air force because Ivanka was moved to tears by sight of dead Syrian kids. Relying on emotions and feelings of spoiled & entitled rich women is a grand way to run(or ruin) business or a country. By the way, Donald is now called Abu Ivanka ( Father of Ivanka) by ME wags.

  26. Funny how it’s Gloria Allred’s daughter, Lisa Bloom,who is representing the “victims” in the O’Reilly matter. On a similar note in the Prog Powerskirt Hall of Fame,remember that Jane Skinner was a FoxNewsBabe. Her husband is Roger Goodell,NFL head honcho,who has said in interviews he “hears what his wife and daughter have to say” regarding the NFL. Really. Pointing out the truth earns the automatic misogynist label,of course.

  27. Maybe this is why cable TV news is gay and getting even gayer if possible. They leave the women alone and don’t mind ‘harassing’ each other so much.

  28. 1. Bolling – Annoying and Boring.

    2. Tucker Carlson – Boring; He should have a Sunday morning show or a PBS show but I don’t think he’s smart enough to pull it off; Maybe if he started wearing the bow tie again; I know his ratings are good but talk to me in a year or two.

    3. Martha MacCallum – Fading beauty due to the ravages of age and plastic surgery; These days she looks to me like she could be John Tesh’s sister; She comes across as nice (who knows if it’s an act or not), but can’t hold my attention for an entire hour; Boring may be harsh, but at the end of the day that’s what she is – Boring.

    4. The 5 – Five stooges with nothing unique, insightful or amusing to say; The fact that they had to bring back Beckel to make the show even moderately watchable proves that; Boring.

    5. Sean Hannity – Annoying, talks all over the guests, but the only show that provides juicy information.

    Say what you want about O’Reilly, but he has the kind of presence that brings a show to life. None of the others provide enough entertainment value or broadcast skill to do that. I would give the job to Geraldo or to somebody else who has the same kind of a theatrical presence as O’Reilly had.

    I did used to like Shep, but he’s been looking a little haggard lately. Besides, he’s a Roger Ailes man so his days may also be numbered.

    The Murdoch boys seem to want to turn Fox into the Milquetoast Climate Change Channel. If they do that, they will find their viewers will slowly shrivel away and they will have killed the golden goose.

    But what is it with conservatives acting this way these days? Doesn’t this kind of behavior go against the entire premise of being a conservative? I know it’s tough when you work around a lot of hot bimbos, but have some self-discipline!

    • Yes, those of us who thought chastity was a basic principle of conservatism increasingly seem like suckers and dupes. Thrice-married Rupert hardly has much standing to judge anyone else, but perhaps he at least has the decency not to consider masturbation and vibrators pleasant topics for ordinary conversation.

      • “Yes, those of us who thought chastity was a basic principle of conservatism increasingly seem like suckers and dupes.”

        I said pretty much the exact same thing a few years ago. I was raised very old school Eastern Orthodox so I hear you on the chastity thing. But at least I don’t have any baby mommas to support.

    • Geraldo? Are you kidding, that old goat reeks of egomania and Liberalism. He belongs on CNN or with the Tingler at MSNBC.

      No one and I mean no one likes the guy and most wonder why Fox would even keep this preening loser on the air. He ads nothing. and
      likes to talk too much for his own good.

      • This is TV we’re talking about, not a Federalist symposium. Your job on TV is to keep people interested in your show. Tell me who they have over there who have the raw broadcast presence and charisma of O’Reilly and Geraldo. In fact, I think Geraldo has always been underused over there. Or maybe he has so much money he doesn’t really want to work that hard anymore. (I wouldn’t.)

        • Tempo Nick –

          Watching Tucker Carlson eviscerate proggies is not boring. He knows how to debate. He communicates mellifluously.

          If your life depended upon it, who would you rather have defending a proposition in front of a live audience, with the formal rules of debate controlling, O’Reilly or Carlson?

      • You nailed it Rod. I have never like Geraldo and his pretentious mustachio. A little prick is what he is.

        I was on business in the late ’90’s staying at the Negresco Hotel in Nice when in walks none other than his royal highness Geraldo. I saw him and just kept on walking past him in the other direction. Wanted nothing to do with him. Some would do the “brush with fame” or make a “networking contact” for future use, but I had no use for that guy.

        Kind of like FOX now adding “balance” with this leftist clown Richard Fowler. As soon as he shows his face, I change the channel. I only recently added FOX to my cable lineup with Trump’s election cuz I thought news would get interesting. Truth is, sites like Conservative Treehouse and Breitbart round out my need for all I really need to know about Trump and what’s going on. I get so tired of FOX fillers called “FOX Extras.” As if there isn’t enough news to go around. Between music performances and medical advice, their actual “news” content is pathetic.

  29. It will keep getting worse until it gets better.

    We have been getting sicker (as a society and culture) for over half a century now, and the Liberal/Conservative opinion leaders have been fighting over the rate of decline. Liberals push for evermore extremism until the last dissenter is converted or killed, and Conservatives proudly advocate for slowing the rate of decline and then expect to be saluted for their nobility. Both paths lead to the bottom and change will only occur when an evolutionary kind of fitness selection occurs.

    One archetype will eventually emerge, and it will either be a hive-minded parasitic sycophant beholden to authoritarianism, or it will be a self-reliant, productive individualist who would sooner die then bend the knee.

    • “darkest before the dawn” or somesuch…. We dodged the end of the USA with Trump’s election and the revolt associated with it. There is a movement below Trump: his election is the opening. We will seen in a few years, but the progs and the globalists suffered a major setback in November; like nothing we’ve seen since their rise in the 50’s. The way they are acting, you can tell, they know they are in trouble. A lot of nommies are being forced to care and are being red-pilled, so to speak.

      • The other side is completely pissed off and in total emotional meltdown mode. If they grab the reins of power back, I fully expect the gulags to be established. The prospect of retribution has a powerful hold on these people. The human mind can shape its reality to justify just about anything, which has been proven time and again in human history. Be aware of who these people are and what they stand for.

      • Be serious. He was briefed back when he pulled Bannon and shot into Syria.

  30. Well, that’s how it works, both big and small. Most of your readers won’t believe this, but the New York Times was once upon a time a good newspaper. I grew up reading the Times…starting a day without the Times was unthinkable. Then, the inevitable happened. A new generation took over, a war protestor replaced his Dad, a former marine, at the top. An Abe Rosenthal, a tough minded newsman, was replaced by a succession of sjw editors.

    A small item: A favorite program of mine, Major Crimes, goes from being a good crime drama, with a viewership from between the coasts, to featuring a gay soap opera, and surprise, the ratings fall!

    There is an out, however. I don’t read the Times anymore. But I do read this blog, Sailer, Insty, etc. How long do the economics last when the viewers have left?

    Tim

    • Probably through the 50’s the NYTimes maintained a wall between straight reporting and their propaganda side. There were some obvious exceptions. They turned a bind eye to Walter Duranty and his shilling for Moscow. Still, much of their news was actually news. In the 60’s is when all of the news outlets went full-on narrative journalism. Chris Munnion’s memoir about his days as the Telegraph’s Africa correspondent does a good job explaining just how quickly American news reporting was overrun by fanatics.

      The other day, the Vancouver Canucks sent out a tweet about their new gay friendly team sweaters. My guess is the number of homosexual hockey fans numbers in the two digits. Why would the team do something so stupid? The people in charge care first and foremost about the one true faith. They will die for it.

    • The economics model seems to be: get ‘investment’ from foreigners. So what it happening is that foreign interests are writing the news. (Israelis have always been doing this, now the Arabs are now in, big)

  31. I wonder if the meteoric rise of Tucker Carlson made the decision easier? O’Reilly had become like an obnoxious pro-quarterback. He won the games but was very expensive and a real asshole prima donna to deal with.

    Along comes a rookie who seems just as good, gets paid a fraction as much, and doesn’t piss-off the coach. Makes letting the old guy go kind of easy and sweet.

    • I don’t know what ordinary Americans think of him, but this Brit thinks Tucker Carlson is very good. He comes across as a genuinely nice guy, too. I’d like to think he is.

      • I agree. I remember Tucker Carlson back from the 1990s, when he got his start with the newly launched The Weekly Standard. I always thought he was one of their best writers. Of course, I lasted with TWS only through their first three years, but I’m not surprised that Carlson has grown beyond them. The dramatic rise of Tucker Carlson is the real media story of the year.

        • Yeah I like Tucker Carlson especially when he frowns and drops his jaw because a particularly stupid thought bubble floats out from his guests.

          As for Murdoch I wonder what the effect will be of the Clinton insults re his Catholicism. One thing I’ve noticed about Murdoch, he has a strong sense of self importance underpinned by a desperate desire to be recognised as part of the ruling classes. And he holds a grudge.

      • The Brits news is worse than ours. What do they know about whose running the real world where plutocrats pit Luna against righties as entertainment while they make the rule and skim off the top for themselves?

  32. This may be the tipping point for me with respect to cable tv. I was never much into OReilly’s show, but FNC’s lurch towards “respectability” means there’s even less on cable I’m willing to pay $150/month for. I might like Special Report at 6pm and the occasional Simpsons rerun, but not so much that I want to pay $5 per day.

    There’s a live by the sword/die by the sword component to FNC … they clearly decided to promote easy on the eyes women as part of their business model (which makes sense, who wants to look at Candy Crowley?) but in doing so, they planted the seeds of their own demise. Hire powerskirts and, just as day follows night, they’ll turn to the state to arbitrate their sex/relationship drama.

    • I finally got around to cutting the cord this year. I have an Amazon Fire if I want to watch a movie. I loaded Kodi onto it so I can watch anything I want. My experience has been that I watch less, but more. By that I mean I’ll watch a series like Boardwalk Empire, which I never bothered to watch when it was on HBO. But, I only turn on the TV a few nights a week. On-demand and streaming is just a superior way to consume video entertainment. And cheaper.

      • Boardwalk Empire is good. It didn’t do as well as I thought it ought to, possibly because it is quite heavy-going in places, but in other places it is magnificent. The production quality, particularly the costumes, is second-to-none. And the Richard Harrow character is awesome, one of the best I’ve seen in a TV series.

    • It would be wise for every conservative man who is in a lead position in any organisation with money to keep a homely older secretary with him during all meetings with women(& ?), and to have her keep a sworn record of each days encounters.

      Liberal men need not worry – as highly placed figures in a vicious gang which pursues the biggest loot pile of all and has armies of fanatics, they are too dangerous to mess with.

      • Yesterday a commenter at Vox Populi suggested men should apply the Billy Graham rule.
        Never meet in private with any female not your wife. Makes sense, although from what I’ve heard Billy was a genuine lech, who’d grope any attractive woman within reach.
        IOW, at least some of those claims would be genuine unprofessional behavior. Although I suspect at least some of them jumped on the bandwagon seeking a payday – just like with Bill Cosby.
        Will he make a comeback? Not on radio, a few months after Hannity went national they tried ”The Radio Factor”. Epic fail.
        It lasted the minimum one year contract.
        At his age (67) and with his background my guess is he’s now ‘retired’ whether he likes it or not.

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