Of course, the following are only impressions I have gathered and have no scientific basis.
Still, I am impressed over and over that Fox News and every one of its personalities are in a death spiral. The network has been moving more and more into the same useless stodginess that can be found in CNN, MSNBC, NBC, CBS, ABC, BBC, and so on. These news networks are reminding me of Henry Ford's retort to the question of other colors for his automobiles: something like, you can have any color you want as long as it is black.
Fox is moving left. Right now, it is near dead center, and I do mean "dead." The vitality has left the building. "We report; you decide" has become "We say what everyone else does, and you don't have to decide since we have done it for you."
Fox has become encased in the concrete of political correctness. It kisses the asses of those whose asses should be kicked into oblivion. "Newsmakers" include Al Sharpton, Charlie Rangel, and all the same microorganisms that we must read about and hear in the MSM (mainstream media). I have been going back to Headline News more and more for months to get the news.
I have to go to HNN because Fox drives viewers insane with overcoverage of stories. The classic is the continous coverage of car chases in Los Angeles. Expand that to every "news event" in the nation, and one soon overdoses on non-moving "news" coverage. A tragedy occurs, and Fox hangs with it until the last human being that can talk can be put before the camera. Hours replace brief summaries. We all feel horrible about a number of tragic events, but we do not have to throw away the concept of news summaries.
Wha started the huge decline of Fox, in my state of awareness, was the Dubai Ports incident. The Chief Prig of FNC, Shepard Smith, represented the Tony Snow division of the Fox Army, which happened to be the big part. Shepard in his usual superciliousness, the I-am-so-goddammed-wonderful style, belittled anyone who thought that turning over our port security to a bunch of jihad supporters just might be a bad idea.
I have made another discovery that pleases me not. This evening, as I passed by the television which happened to be on Fox, I saw O'Reilly arguing with Juan somebody, some Mexican government shill who grins continuously, about illegal aliens. As usual, neither man was getting anywhere.
Then it dawned on me. What I was seeing was what I was intended to see. The object was not present facts but to present arguments. The object was not the truth and making it triumph. The object was the argument. Then it hit me. O'Reilly is really not very smart. He has been living on inflated credit for years. He has nothing to offer except what I see. No wonder I never watch him any more.
The same applies to Hannity, Colmes, Geraldo, and all but Neil Cavuto. Neil has more intelligence and journalistic moxey than everyone at Fox taken to the tenth power. Hannity and Colmes are "dumb and dumber," and they must draw straws weekly to see who is which. Geraldo is not worth the cost of a bullet to put him out of our misery.
Has that Saudi prince who owns 19% of Fox News stock worked his magic? I could believe it with the slightest of evidence.
Today, I endured hearing Hannity on the radio. This johnny-one-note represents modern conservativism perfectly, which is why I am not in any way a conservative. The guy is a walking illiterate. How people can fawn over his dullness mystifies me. He has never had an original thought. He mouths every conservative, religious cliche' ever uttered in the history of man. He is 100% politics, and he is not good at that. He never met a principle he ever thought about, unless it was Roman Catholic conservative dictum. Like O'Reilly, Hannity is not bright. For that matter neither is Rush, although he is more entertaining than all the rest of the conservatives on radio combined. Don't let us leave out Michael Medved. He thinks his mind doesn't stink, but it does, and he is banality squared.
Little wonder that the Republicans lost in 2006. Fox News and the Fox hounds on radio cannot bring off a win any more than Republicans. All are intellectually bankrupt, which is why intellectually bankrupt Democrats won. The winning characteristic of Democrats was that they were not Republicans.
Ladies and gentlemen, if this isn't cultural bankruptcy, nothing is. Murdoch ought to change the name of Fox to the Banal News Network. Once more, those of us on the right, the side of reason, rights, and capitalism, have no media outlet.