Tom Nichols: The Real Elitists Are at Fox News, Patronizing for Profit (The Atlantic)

[highplainsdem]

https://www.theatlantic.com/newsletters/archive/2023/02/fox-news-tucker-carlson-dominion/673128/

Elected Republicans and their courtiers in the right-wing-media ecosystem deploy the word elite as an accusation, a calumny, almost a crime. To be one of the elite is to be a snooty, educated city dweller, a highbrow pretend-patriot who looks down upon the Real Americans who hunt and fish and drive pickup trucks to church. (It does not mean “rich people”; Donald Trump has gleefully referred to himself and his supporters as the “super-elite.”) The elites also support the production of “fake news” by liars who intend to hoodwink ordinary people into doing the bidding of wealthy globalists. They buy books and listen to National Public Radio and they probably read things like The Atlantic.

This shtick has been a remarkable success. Republicans have used it to convince millions of working people that super-educated gasbags such as Ted Cruz, Josh Hawley, and Ron DeSantis are just ordinary folks who care deeply about kitchen-table issues that matter to their family and a secure future for their children, such as Hunter Biden’s sex life and whether public schools are letting kids pee in litter boxes.

In the entertainment hothouse, Fox News is the most prominent offender. The Fox all-star lineup, especially in prime time with Tucker Carlson, Sean Hannity, and Laura Ingraham, is a parade of millionaires who work for Rupert Murdoch, one of the richest and most powerful men in this corner of the Milky Way galaxy. Every day they warn their viewers that democracy is in peril because of people who majored in gender studies. All of this nuttery is delivered with a straight face—or in Carlson’s case, the weird mien of a dog watching a magic trick.

It’s one thing, however, to suspect that Fox personalities see their viewers as mere rubes who must be riled up in the name of corporate profit. It’s another entirely to have it all documented in black and white. Dominion might not win its lawsuit against Fox, but for the rest of America, the process has produced something more important than money: an admission, by Fox’s on-air personalities, of how much they disrespect and disdain their own viewers.

-snip-

That might be the best description of Tucker Carlson ever.

[Celerity]

1. K & R

[betsuni]

2. Elite as an insult is not only a right-wing thing of course.

[FakeNoose]

3. I'm pretty sure most Faux Noise viewers aren't regular readers of The Atlantic

And that's the problem. We aren't taken in by the lies of Faux hosts, because we don't watch them. We aren't their true believers. The ones who are, will never receive the truth about them because their eyes and ears are already closed to the real truth. They are stuck in the bubble and we'll never reach them. Neither will The Atlantic.