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The Big Whine of the Week®
The Big Whine of the Week® for June 6, 2022, had to be over the decision that Fox News Channel would not cover the House’s dog-and-pony show on Thursday night. Not only did FNC not carry it, they evidently took it a bridge too far. Writes Jonah Goldberg in his G-File:
What I hadn’t anticipated, however, was the possibility that Tucker Carlson believes the January 6 committee really is a big deal and that he was scared of just how newsworthy it might be—particularly to his own audience.
How else can you explain the fact that his show ran for the whole hour without commercial interruption? (Goldberg’s emphasis)
Here we learn some things even I had not anticipated, namely that white people don’t know how to use a television remote, and the few that do must have some neural stimulation to do so. Those three frames of black at the end of a segment – that 1/10th of one second of nothingness – is the only thing that allows white people the capacity to hit the arrow up or arrow down on their remotes. I guess we all seem to be crippled in some way. Black people can’t get government IDs and white people can’t change channels. Who’d a thunk it?
I have long been mystified by the power that otherwise bright and rational people attribute to Fox News and how it has become an obsession with them. FNC pulls in around 2.6M viewers in primetime on any given weeknight and that’s enough to be the leader of a fractured TV landscape. But in the greater scheme of things, it’s nothing.
We are told that 159M people cast votes for president in 2020. That means that FNC is reaching less than 2% of them. But somehow that 2% is the only thing standing between the United States thriving and crumbling to dust.
Politicians and pundits alike are nostalgic for the days of Watergate, when 75% of Americans reported that they had seen at least some of the hearings live. But in 1973-74 what the hell else was on? Cable TV was in its infancy. HBO was still a regional network. ESPN wouldn’t come around until the end of the decade.
But today is different. Baseball and the NHL didn’t shut down Thursday night. Cable networks ran other sports and scads of off-network reruns. I think six of them were all running NCIS marathons. Netflix didn’t shut down all its offerings and replace it with J6: The Musical. Unless they were going to recreate the riot live, this thing was never going to do what they wanted it to do. (And even then it wouldn’t have been the same without the original cast.)
And so the Left whines, “They didn’t watch. Fox executives wouldn’t let them.”
That’s not how it works. That’s not how any of it works. And that is what upsets the whiners the most. Under the current setup, the American people just have too many damn choices, particularly the choice not to pay attention to the whiners. The whiners want their 1984 moment. The whiners long for the single channel screen that can never be turned off and can never be changed. The whiners need you to participate in their Two Minutes of Hate.
Screw the whiners.
Published in General
OK, Jonah, here’s how I explain it.
I haven’t watched Carlson’s segment. A friend described it to me this morning. It seems that, as I would expect, Carlson thought that the hearing was newsworthy.
I don’t think that Carlson thought that the hearing was newsworthy because it was providing truthful information. I think that he found it newsworthy because our Congress was engaged in a prime-time kangaroo-court show-trial, of the sort that one would expect in a comical satire film about a Stalinist dictatorship.
I don’t personally know Carlson’s motivations. This does strike me as a reasonable explanation for Carlson running an hour-long show without commercial interruptions. Carlson may believe, as I do, that the entire “insurrection” narrative is a malicious lie, propped up by provable lies made in the proceedings, such as the claim that multiple people died in the riot. Carlson may believe, as I do, that the January 6 committee is a propaganda tool in the hands of reprehensible, anti-American ideologues.
Maybe you’re one of them, Jonah.
This makes me sad, by the way. I used to enjoy listening to Jonah, when he was somewhat sensible. I thought that his books Liberal Fascism, The Tyranny of Cliches, and The Suicide of the West were pretty good, at least at pointing out our problems. Like Douglas Murray — and our pal Doc Bastiat — I think that Jonah got the diagnosis wrong, but I think that he accurately identified some of the terrible problems with the political Left.
And/or Jonah thinks that Trump was himself a disease rather than just a symptom, or even the “body” trying to heal itself. But like the FDA etc with Ivermectin/HCQ/etc, our “betters” decided we can’t have the cure.
This was not intended to be a bash Jonah post. He is among dozens that have pushed this “commercial free” argument. I mean, as ridiculous as it is, Jonah has a reason to push this nonsense. After all, Carlson was at the heart of his “You can’t fire me, I quit” moment.
The main thrust is the magical property of the three million FNC viewers who somehow seem to control the fate of the republic.
They wish. At least then they’d have someone to blame besides Biden, and themselves.
The real problem is that they dare to dissent in their views. And their viewing.
Dissent is no longer the highest form of patriotism. Even though it was just two years ago.
Funny how they can switch it on and off like that…
Until you realize it’s not about principles, it’s about power.
Except that the reason Jonah Goldberg’s opinion on this matter is man-bites-dog news. At least it’s couched in that manner. Just as Liz Cheney, supposedly an (R) is seeking retribution on someone else who is nominally and supposedly an (R) and is celebrated on that basis. Not on the basis that maybe there’s a split in the GOP between perpetual war Neocon globalists, and working-class ordinary Americans who aren’t in agreement with Democrats, but also want a more balanced and sovereign nation.
To portray personal vendettas -possibly family vendettas as principled differences is a travesty by itself. And Goldberg has his own petty grievances with Fox News which is his compensation for his hostage situation at CNN.
According to The Free Beacon, more people tuned in to see a Young Sheldon rerun the week before the hearing than watched the hearing on CBS.
So true for me. I only watch our local news, primarily for the weather forecast. More and I have to mute parts of the local telecast because of the mindless drivel they pick up from their national feed. In short, I can see the time when I record the telecast and fast forward to the weather report then delete it all.
I get my weather report and forecast from wunderground.com, and also have an app that shows weather radar. There is no need for television to get your weather info.
Weather Underground was so much better before the Weather Channel bought it.
Though it’s still the site I use.
I didn’t know the weather channel had bought it. (I’m not quite sure what the Weather Channel is, but I’m not completely unsure, either. I’ve heard of it. Probably I’ve seen it in hotel breakfast rooms.)
Weather Channel was great when they concentrated on the weather. After being purchased by NBCUniversal everything was climate change.
Yup. It’s inescapable now.
I love the underground app! I despise weather channels and the old style of forecasting and here’s why:
They have a perverse incentive to keep people indoors watching TV. And their use of ‘percentage’ chances is maddening. It’s poppycock. The only real thing they are saying is it might rain, and it might not rain, and appending a percent chance of it happening. But doesn’t it seem that, unless the weather prediction is perfect, they encourage people to stay home (and watch them!)
I perform outside at renaissance festivals and the “weatherman” tells people, it’s probably going to rain today. What that means might be that it will rain in Houston for example, but the festival is 45 miles north of Houston. That festival ultimately got a live feed from its grounds (the owners and producers are smart) to report the actual weather which was often different from the Houston forecast entirely. Also how much rain?
Wunderground will tell you. .01″ at 3 PM .02″ at 4 PM at 50% chance. In other words, not really rain even if it does occur. Since we have musical instruments and shows scheduled 4-5 times per day the radar map comes in handy. It will show the rain will miss my area entirely, or a big cell is going to hit us directly. It makes everything so much easier to plan.
I dislike the “percent chance it’ll rain” stuff. Either it’s going to rain: 100% — or it’s not: 0%. If I want to know whether it’s going to rain, I call up the radar, look for the green blobs, and note which direction they’re moving. Is that green blob going to hit us? Then the chance of rain is 100 percent. Is it going to go north of us? Zero percent.
Similarly, I dislike the “feels like” that’s been added to the temperature. (It’s 92º but it “feels like” 105º. It’s 10º but it “feels like” -20º.)
When I ask the temperature forecast, my wife will always tell me the “feels like” temperature, but that’s not what I want to know. I want to know what the actual temperature is going to be.
I think they added the “feels like” so they could make temperatures look more extreme, which is another way they promote the climate change agenda.
Exactly. And I agree all the “feels like” stuff is absurd. Which also makes me think, my friends and acquaintances on the heavier side seem to complain constantly about the heat, and in the winter I’m shivering and they often seem quite content, so maybe they should do the “feels like” based on weight? If you’re over 250 pounds, today will be a scorcher!
I lived shortly in Switzerland years ago and they would report the weather and temperature by elevation, which was useful.
From living in Oregon in the past, I tell people that the % chance of rain was different there.
In most places, if you get like “50% chance of rain” that means a 50% chance that it will rain, or not.
But in Oregon, “50% chance of rain” meant that it WILL RAIN for 50% of the day: 12 hours out of 24.
Thanks for the recommendation. I’ll just have to get over the shame of bookmarking a website named after left wing domestic terrorists.
I understand. That name was a little disorienting back when I first encountered the site in the early 2000s.