I probably use a million things as a starting point for this post, but I might as well pick on Kevin Drum as he’s one of the few left-wing bloggers I still kinda like. I saw this through Hot Air, and it’s a post on how the blogosphere doesn’t have as much influence as it thinks (to me it’s like the internet bubble, for a while the blogosphere had influence simply because politicians believed it had influence). In the post, Drum agrees with the Democrats on ignoring the whining of the tykes at the Daily Kos and going on FOX News, but he also says this off-hand:

“Objecting to Fox hosting a Democratic debate is one thing: it really doesn’t make sense to have a Democratic event hosted by an obvious arm of the Republican Party.”

Another thing to fight against if real world problems are too scary.

Now, I’m not very old, but I still remember back when conservatives had pretty much nothing. There was a couple papers and the National Review, but those didn’t get much circulation outside of people who weren’t already conservative. The rest of the media was completely liberal.
Now, there are flat-earthers who will deny that the media is liberal despite all the surveys of journalists’ political leanings. I’ve never quite understood why its death to these people to admit liberal bias because that doesn’t imply liberalism is wrong. Maybe they just really want to believe their fringe beliefs (and liberals in America have always been a small minority and always smaller than conservatives) are mainstream.
Anyway, conservatives somehow kept on going. Reagan was even elected and reelected in these conditions because its hard to keep good ideas down even when they’re filtered through so much crap (and it’s not framing; you have to have ideas that appeal to humanity).
Then there was Limbaugh. Liberals freaked out. Conservatives had completely taken over one small, insignificant part of the media, and liberal fascists came out in full force. Now, most of them are at least self-aware enough not to try and just throw Rush Limbaugh off the air, so their efforts were more to marginalize him with things like the Fairness Doctrine. They also ridiculed him every chance they got. In fairness, he ridiculed them — it’s just his ridicule was more accurate while they attacked him for made up things like that the purpose of his call screener was to keep off people who disagreed with him and that Rush was a racist (he is a conservative).
Capitalism being what it is, it became obvious that people were starved for different media than the liberal crap that was available. So there was FOX News. I remember the first time I saw it and noticed something different. They had a positive story on gun ownership. My initial reaction was, “That’s blatantly right-wing!” Then I thought about it. A very significant portion of Americans are for gun ownership, but I had never seen a positive story on gun ownership in the news before. While such a story seemed right-wing in comparison to the other media, it was actually just balance and reflecting the viewpoints of America. The media was so horrible that something actually “fair and balanced” would appear right-wing.
As we all know, FOX News was a huge success, and has garnered hate and ridicule like no news station before it. Now, from our perspective, the liberals constantly complaining about FOX News is extremely silly. All the complaints they make about FOX News could be made ten fold of about any other news channel. Liberals object to FOX News being “a wing of the Republican Party” but the other news had been openly routing for Democrats for decades. It’s not even very right-wing; we just have it on all the time because we like to know the news and the other channels are just too irritatingly liberal for us to stand the condescension. So why would liberals complain when they have all the other media and even publicly funded liberal media like PBS and NPR which conservatives are forced to pay for?
I think I know the answer, and it’s not all that liberals are fascists who feel the need to crack down on anything that challenges their viewpoints (though, that is a part of it). Let’s reflect a moment on how unnatural FOX News is. If all the rest of the media was naturally liberal, then it took some intervention to make FOX News not so. It’s clearly artificial. If you look at it that way, you can somewhat understand liberals objections to it. Even if FOX News is really a fair and balanced channel (I see it as slightly right of moderate) it took very clear right-wing bias to move it to moderate from the liberalism it should naturally exist in. FOX News is a product of much more blatant right wing bias than other media is of left wing bias. None of the other channels went left wing to win viewers; they’re just there because journalists tend to be liberal idiots. It’s like a dog that doesn’t chase after squirrels. It’s in the dogs instinct to chase and to kill. It might be good for the dog not to chase, but the fact that it doesn’t points to that someone intervened on the dog’s behavior. Similarly, journalist like to educate the dumb folk in the fly over country about how liberal viewpoints are better. If journalists aren’t doing that, then someone obviously intervened.
So, FOX News is the product of right wing bias. Not only that, it is a threat to liberals. We can laugh off most of the liberal crap out there because it’s stupid and will only influence the gullible. Liberals, on the other hand, think they’re the only smart ones and that everyone else is a gullible dupe waiting for right wing ideas to activate their inner Nazis. It is true, though, that simply by having right-wing ideas discussed openly anywhere converts way more people than left-wing ideas repeated over and over everywhere. As a kid, I was naturally liberal because I didn’t know any better. My parents are conservative Republicans, but they didn’t discuss politics much, so my political ideas were the touchy feely concepts I’d pick up from school and TV. I thought all problems could be solved by taking away all the guns and giving lots of money to poor people. It only took a couple of times of my parents having Rush Limbaugh on in the car for me to say, “Wow. That viewpoint makes a lot more sense.” And I’ve never looked back.
Most people aren’t very politically active. Obsessing on politics like many of us do is really a geeky thing. For most people, they’ll seize on whatever sounds most logical and appeals to their values, and that’s where conservatism wins out. If you have a fair and balanced channel watched by many people where conservative ideas are given a fair shake, then it’s going to convert many people to the conservative viewpoint. So liberals are right to worry about right-wing views appearing anywhere average people may see or hear them. Why are college campuses so liberal? Because it provides a place where liberals can be completely free of alternative views or even one person saying, “That’s completely insane.” And it often only takes one to shatter illusions as fragile as inhibited liberalism will produce. While having something like FOX News doesn’t insure conservatives will triumph and liberalism will be as marginalized as stupid ideas should be, it certainly helps. Also, its a huge obstacle to liberals taking over in America, and they’re well aware of it.
Liberalism often seems like less of an ideology and more of a system of coordinated hissy fits, and their railing against FOX News seems to be very emblematic of that. If you look closely, though, you can see the rationale behind they’re anger about it. When you understand that, it’s less frustrating. And then you can just go back to ignoring it.