David Frum admits what most of the media ignores -- that Fox News works for the GOP -- but then turns it on its head.
Frum: "Republicans originally thought that Fox worked for us, and now we are discovering we work for Fox."
Frum has been outspoken against a lot of the tactics the GOP has been using since Obama took over office and even called the passing of HCR the GOP's Waterloo.
The audience for Beck’s Friday night special were each given copies of two books. One of them was Cleon Skousen’s Five Thousand Year Leap. Skousen, who died in 2006, is one of the legendary cranks of the conservative world, a John Bircher, a grand fantasist of theories about secret conspiracies between capitalists and communists to impose a one-world government under the control of David Rockefeller.
There’s always been a market for this junk of course. Once that market was reached via mimeographed newsletters. Now it’s being tapped by Fox News.
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It’s not a new message of course. In fact, big parts of it seem almost self-consciously copied from Peter Finch’s legendary declamation in the movie Network.
Of course, Finch was only pretending to be crazy. He was an actor performing a role. Then again – so probably is Glenn Beck.
But what about Fox News? What’s their excuse?
Frum seems to be under the impression that Glenn Beck's blend of stupid and crazy is some sort of departure from Fox's previously high standards. If only that were so.
John Birch is alive and well in the Tea Party movement. Beck is acting as a transmitter for all things crazy, but he was just the latest extension of what Fox News has always been. And for Roger Ailes, it's not about news, but ratings anyway -- and crazy brings ratings.
AILES: I'm not in politics, I'm in ratings. We're winning.
Here's my piece on everything Ailes said on THIS WEEK: It's very revealing. Ailes exposes Fox News' GOP philosophical connections
