...for Fox viewers, Fox is only the most visible part of a vast alternative reality...

[pampango]

…[including] especially the chain emails that do so much to shape the worldview of Fox viewers."

http://delong.typepad.com/sdj/2012/08/david-frum-on-the-dark-matter-of-the-republican-right.html

The Fox News Wink: Is Obama "Gay"? or "Gay Gay"?: On Fox News' "The Five," moderator Greg Gutfeld offered up this comment in a jokey yuck-yuck tone:

Obama is now out of the closet … he's officially gay for class warfare….

It's very important to understand that for Fox viewers, Fox is only the most visible part of a vast alternative reality… [including] especially the chain emails that do so much to shape the worldview of Fox viewers. You cannot "get" Gutfeld's joke unless you "get" that a large part of his audience ardently believes that Obama is in fact gay, that his marriage is a sham, and that Mrs. Obama leads a life of Marie Antoinette like extravagance to compensate her for her husband's neglect while he disports himself with his personal aides.

(A right wing chain email about Obama being secretly gay follows.)

Thus when Fox reports on (false) claims that President Obama seeks to limit military voting, they report to an audience that has for years absorbed a fictitious narrative about systematic presidential disrespect for the military.

(Another right wing chain email about Obama disrespecting military funerals follows.)

You'll not hear something quite so bizarre as that on television. But Fox News is edited and reported for an audience much of which believes such stories to be true, and edited and reported by producers and on-screen talent highly attuned to those beliefs.

I must admit that I watch no Fox News and rarely receive any of the right wing emails so this was very revealing to me. I know that most Fox viewers live in a make-believe world and that there are a lot of right wing emails being forwarded around, but I hadn't thought about the synergy of the two.

[Rambis]

1. Making strong connections between unrelated subjects seems to be the norm

I think they are all Walter Sobchack thinking that Vietnam has a literal connection to everything?

[woo me with science]

2. We ALL live in the Matrix.

FOX News is just one of the most readily visible parts of it, and even that is by design to keep fomenting the differences among us and urging us on to hate one another.

All of our media is filtered through the motives of the one percent. Here we are in a Presidential campaign, and what we are fed is garbage, fluff, and shiny objects. We are talking about dancing horses and chicken sandwiches while our government builds a massive spy center to provide warrantless access to all our emails and phone calls, militarizes our police forces, and puts surveillance drones in our skies...and neither of the candidates is questioned about any of it. And the wars keep growing and growing and growing, and nobody is questioned about that either, beyond the utterly sick, predictable media competitions about who will best protect America from "the terrists."

We live in a corporate culture of propaganda from the day we are born, steeped in sick attitudes and assumptions and messages about what is important and how we should live our lives. Buy, buy, buy. Watch television. Be a hard worker so that you can go out and buy what you see on television. Be a good patriot. Cheer the wars. Consume. Good Americans know life is about hard work and producing. Produce, produce, produce. And embrace "shared sacrifice."

Time with your family? Time to create and read and learn and explore? Actual relationships beyond a screen? Activities that aren't corporate-provided and don't require your wallet?

What are you? A socialist?