Lizzie Warren Took An Axe

And gave her campaign forty whacks.

Doesn’t matter, though. As Friend-Of-The-Blog Carol noted the other day, the “cartooning” of Warren has already had its intended effect. However strong her appeal to the progressives in the Democratic Party might be, she was not going to prevail in the general election if nominated.

But she did something really great in my opinion. Courageous and necessary, truthful and ultimately futile. She took a principled stand against FoxNews, something every serious citizen should applaud. She declined to participate in a FoxNews sponsored “Town Hall” event, saying,

“Fox News has invited me to do a town hall, but I’m turning them down — here’s why. … Fox News is a hate-for-profit racket that gives a megaphone to racists and conspiracists — it’s designed to turn us against each other, risking life & death consequences, to provide cover for the corruption that’s rotting our government and hollowing out our middle class,

Wow. Finally. Couldn’t have said it better myself. Problem is, not a single FoxNews viewer is going to listen to that and ask themselves whether perhaps they should look elsewhere for their information. What they will say, and have echoed and reinforced a billion times over by Hannity, et al., is that those pointy-headed, think-they’re-so-smart, Libtards and Cucks are at it again. They’re calling you “deplorable”, and Elizabeth Warren is the worst possible Hillary Clinton. Lock her up.

What no one in the Democratic Party seems to grasp, even after three years of Trump’s ascendancy,  is that the typical Trump voter doesn’t love Trump nearly as much as he hates “liberals”. Trump is their man exactly because he openly mocks them and bullies them and ignores their feeble attempts to fight back.

The problem in our hyper-connected age of instantaneous communication is not that FoxNews is a cynical, dangerous, anti-patriotic threat to our country and therefore the world. That’s all true, of course, but it’s not entirely their fault. The problem is that there is a huge market to be served and profit to be made from the tens of millions of viewers who need their own narrow view of the world validated. If it wasn’t FoxNews, someone else would do it. FoxNews does it better than anyone and is improving their game all the time.

Am I saying FoxNews viewers are “Deplorables”?  Not exactly. I’m saying they have blinders on for some reason I don’t get. I used to see an E.N.T. specialist who was a brilliant guy, taught at Harvard Med, and performed innovative surgeries at Mass. Eye and Ear. But he always had FoxNews on in his waiting room and I just couldn’t abide it.

When I’d ask him about it, he always complained that his taxes were so high and he could never vote for a tax-and-spend liberal, and that you could only get the right perspective on FoxNews. I’d try to wedge in some ideas about how that perspective was surrounded by bias, exaggeration and outright lies, while stopping short of just referring to it as Bullshit Mountain, but I never made a dent. Was my E.N.T. a “deplorable”? No. He was a good guy. I liked him a lot. I just couldn’t go there any more, so, after a few years, I had to find someone else.

So what’s the answer? If you play along with Fox, you legitimize them and compromise yourself. If you take a principled stand against them, you’re ridiculed and vilified and probably ending your political career.

There has to be a way to reach the people who think they hate you, but I just have no idea what it might be. Clearly, Elizabeth Warren doesn’t either.