Cranks used
to be harmless individuals who stood on the corner cursing the heavens,
screaming the world was coming to an end and hurling dirty looks and a raised
fist to anyone so bold as to ridicule them. There weren’t enough of them to make a
difference and for the most part the few that existed were obviously crazy, or
as we used to say, touched in the head. They’ve come a long way. Now they have
their own news station.
Watching FOX
News is like being a fly on the wall in a roomful of old cranks, disguised as
attractive young blondes accompanied by their suitors, listening to them
proclaim the sky is falling and discussing whose fault it is. FOX News is where
cranks, both viewer and commentator, wind up to get wound up.
It’s not
that hard in a complex world to find something wrong if that is all you are looking
for. Cranks have always known they can draw a lot of attention to themselves by
searching behind every silver lining for that tidbit of disaster that might
exist. But Fox News has managed to place themselves ahead of the curve on the
negativity scale by putting those tasty morsels under a microscope.
In their
world tragedies become conspiracies, isolated cases become the norm, good
programs they don’t like become evil deeds they must destroy.
We live in a
country where individual freedom and representative government are the standard
by which all others are measured. The very bedrock of our Constitution is based
on the dignity of man and the guarantee of life, liberty and happiness. But that
doesn’t mean things won’t sometimes go wrong or that in a nation of 300 plus million
people, some of them at times will be less than happy. Zeroing in on those exceptions
and harping on them because it gets you an audience doesn’t make you a voice of
reason. It makes you a crank.
It is easy
to ignore a crank standing on the corner. But FOX News has cornered the crank market.
They reach millions of people who wouldn’t recognize a crank if he or she were
staring them in the eye.
Like I said
earlier, the crank standing on the corner thinking he could change the world
was crazy. But the cranks over at FOX News can and do influence people. So what
is their motivation? You don’t have to go far for the answer.
Money and
power, as usual, are always the prime motivators behind bad behavior.
Why else
would people claiming to be dedicated journalists who love their country express
so much contempt toward their government when there is so much to be proud of?
There used
to be a thing called perspective for everyone but the cranks. We were cautioned
to keep everything in perspective and always be aware of it.
But in its
quest for money and power, FOX News has distorted the facts by continually
maximizing the minimal. They have treated perspective as something not to be
aware of, but rather to beware of.
They lead us
to believe that
—the
miniscule number of people that might engage in voter fraud justifies putting
an unnecessary burden on millions of voters who have never committed fraud;
—more Congressional
hearings are needed to determine if a tragic attack on an embassy might
possibly involve a conspiracy;
—the rise in some
people’s rates overshadow ten million people having health insurance for the
first time;
—the
inability to stop or control political upheaval in countries where political
unrest could and should be fully anticipated is somehow seen as a sign that the
most powerful military in the world is suddenly weak;
—raising
the minimum living wage will cost jobs when being able to earn a living is the
reason for having a job;
—regulations
are bad in spite of the fact that every major economic catastrophe has been due
to the lack of regulations.
The list is
never ending because cranks will always find something to complain about. Talk
of death panels, IRS, NSA, ATF, FDA, ETC overreach, the color of the president’s
suit, or worse, whether he was even born in this country—all this becomes
fodder for the cranks at FOX News.
It is
important to remember that cranks aren’t necessarily dancing to a different
drummer. They are simply out of step.
How should
we deal with all this crankiness?
The same way
as if they were standing on the corner.
Ignore them.
After all, they’re just cranks.
