Fox News tried to tear my family apart: How they failed to incite my father [View all]

[DonViejo]

Murdoch’s news channel invited my dad on to slam me for being liberal. Instead he proved my anti-Fox points for me

EDWIN LYNGAR

A pundit on Fox News was so upset about my recent Salon piece, “I lost my dad to Fox News: How a generation was captured by thrashing hysteria,” that she invited my dad on the network to blast me. The ham-handed attempt failed, and gave me new respect for my father. Next to the lunatic Fox News host, Andrea Tantaros, my dad looked like a textbook case of decency — even when he was dismissing evolution.

After my post on Salon about my dad’s destructive Fox News habit, my Twitter feed and email exploded with people sharing their sad stories of lost loved ones. The sentiments were near universal: That is my father, mother, spouse or other loved one. It seems I could start another political party of Fox News orphans, and we’d be bigger than the current Republican Party.

For every five nice comments, there was at least one furious note of some kind or another. Some had a point. I was insensitive comparing the loss of a parent to Fox News to that of a cancer patient, and I’d reconsider that choice of metaphor if I could. I would also say that I was too focused on the older population. It’s true the median age for Fox viewers is 68, but I should not have dismissed those people who are middle aged or younger caught up in the impotent fury of Fox News. Sadly, hysteria crosses generations.

There were other comments that only served to prove my point about manufactured outrage. Many Fox defenders dismissed me as a liberal, a socialist or a communist — those magic words that hold sacred power to so many. Some people got silly; one person called me a graphic female body part.

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http://www.salon.com/2014/03/12/fox_news_tried_to_tear_my_family_apart_how_they_failed_to_incite_my_father/