This is true even though my politics are way more MSNBC. I read the New York Times daily, for Pete's sake (who is Pete, anyway?). I scan the Huffington Post and the Daily Kos. I'm an NPR supporter.
Nevertheless, I've been watching Fox News. And I've been doing so precisely because, to me, the outlet seems insane. The Atlantic recently featured a kick-ass piece on how right-wingers drank their own media koolade, which led to a straying from reality sufficiently serious that Romney's defeat was, to many conservatives, an out-and-out shock.
It made me think. About the blinders we don, the dangers of niche marketing, what is salable versus what is true.
It made me think that must be some pretty damn good koolade.
Fox News turns out to be utterly and immersively fascinating, on the order of documentaries that spirit you into the lives of the Amish, or disabled rugby players, or parking lot attendants. It's as if, without boarding an airplane or stepping into a car, I've managed to wake up on the other side of the world.
I recommend it without reservation. Fox may be (OK, is) maddening, but watching it reminds me -as we increasingly, desperately need to be reminded- that there are many ways of looking at a blackbird.
Yes, some of those blackbirds might have horns and polka dots. But for every horned, polka-dotted blackbird on TV, somewhere there sits a man with binoculars waiting for a speckled, fierce-tusked creature to wing through his window and fang its way into the sky of his nose.
Worth a gander, no?
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