And yet again, FoxNews demonstrates a profound lack of journalistic integrity. Why am I not surprised? Updates noted in the text
Seriously, Minnesota, what the fuck?
Do I miss George W. Bush?
Are you kidding me, Minnesota?
You’ve all seen the news reports, there’s a sign on I-35 outside some flyspeck conservative chancre sore of a town named Wyoming, Minnesota. It features the smirking fuck-you features of our erstwhile president, Chimpy McBush, and the caption, “Miss Me Yet?”
No, asshole, I don’t miss you.
Frankly if it was up to me, I’d erase George W. Bush from history the same way Egyptian Pharaohs used to have their stonemasons chip the images of their predecessors off the sides of the temple walls.
The sign was put up by a small group of anonymous businessmen who seem to be suffering from teabag poisoning there in their little Minnesota Unibomber cabins.
Needless to say, it made the news.
Needless to say, it made FoxNews.
And in fact, FoxNews' Jeffrey Shapiro’s article waxes nostalgic for Bush in what may be one of the most bizarrely creepy cases of puppy love FoxNews has yet published. The man clearly loves his Bush to a disturbing degree.
As is usual for FoxNews (Fair and Balanced!) the article is more made up hyperbole than accuracy. Take this little Fox factoid:
President Bush remains the only president in history to face a foreign attack on the continental mainland of the United States. His responsibility was unlike any other commander in chief in history.
Apparently neither Shapiro nor the FoxNews editors have ever heard of The War of 1812 and that dustup where the British took Maine away from the United States, and then marched into Washington and ate the President’s dinner at his own table before burning the White House to the ground while President Madison and the First Lady fled into the hills. After the White House wiener roast, the Redcoats set about burning, looting and destroying the rest of the US capital.
The British then moved on to Baltimore – you might have heard of that battle, the Battle of Baltimore - The Star Spangled Banner is based on it. But I guess that neither Shapiro nor the great American Patriots at Fox are familiar with either Francis Scott Key or the defense of Fort McHenry. But you know, fuck it, it’s such a small footnote in American history why confuse Fox’s fair and balanced reporting with facts. Right?
Update: The FoxNews article linked to above has been clumsily edited to read:
President Bush remains the only president in history since the 1812 burning of the White House to face a foreign attack
on the continental mainland of the United States. His responsibility was unlike any other commander in chief in history.
The editorial change is not noted anywhere in the article. Fox simply changed history and pretended like it didn’t happen.
Way to show that fair and balanced journalistic integrity, Shapiro. Really, way to go.
Other than that though, there was never any attack on the mainland US.
Well, other than the Mexican American War.
Or that whole Civil War thing. Lincoln, that big sissy never shouldered the kind of responsibility George did. No siree.
I also really like Shapiro’s qualifier “continental mainland” (and really, what the hell does that mean? Is that like dark black? Or Neocon Wackaloon?) because if you include the attacks on the Alaskan and Hawaiian territories that marked the opening of WWII, or the Japanese and Nazi submarine attacks on American shipping along the Continental US’s coastline (including the dropping of saboteurs on the mainland), well that just sort of renders Shapiro’s whole argument null and void. And, of course, FDR’s management of the country during that conflict pales in comparison to the burden born by George.
I can see why Shapiro deliberately couched his statement to exclude mention of the WWII attacks, because even Fox’s ignorant subscribers wouldn’t let you get away with making such an obviously false statement, unless you deliberately excluded the attacks on Pearl Harbor and Kiska. And make no mistake, Shapiro knows what he’s doing, otherwise he wouldn’t have phrased his article the way he did, he deliberately limited the scope of his accusation in order to make his point. In journalism this is no different than outright lying, it’s lying by omission, and the fact the Fox’s editors let him get away such a clumsy and obvious lie speaks directly to the network’s credibility and turns their tag line, “Fair and Balanced,” into a mocking dig at their own readers. Shapiro couldn’t tell the truth, it would have voided the false point he was trying to make and, after all, the truth wouldn’t meet Rupert Murdock’s editorial standards for fair and balanced Obama bashing if actual facts were included in Fox’s articles. And beside, actual history might just confuse Teabaggers and Neocons - who just sort of make up history as they go along anyway.
FoxNews is what happens when you let pinheads like George W. Bush “reform” public education. Ditto times two for FoxNews subscribers.
Shapiro sort of waves his hands over Bush’s declaration of two wars and the resulting massive disaster and budget deficit, then he brushes that aside like a battered wife discussing what a wonderful husband she has while she holds a hand over her swollen eye and split lip,
“But he saved America, not just from the terrorists, but also from the apologist self-doubt and self-loathing that President Obama appears to support.”
George W. Bush saved America. He saved America from the terrorists.
Really?
Then why are we still fighting them? Why then are conservative media outlets like FoxNews and their pundits like Beck and Limbaugh crying that the terrorists are winning? Why then are conservative media whores like Sarah Palin urging us to declare war on Iran in order to “get tough on terrorism?”
Why then is Osama Bin Laden still out there, eight years later, still making videos and financing attacks on the US?
Calling Bush America’s savior is a lot like thanking ENRON for rolling black-outs. This idea is so ludicrous that it damned near defies comprehension.
And I’ve never been able to figure out where people like Shapiro get the whole “apologist self doubt and self loathing” bit – unless they’re talking about how they always end up apologizing for George W. George. Apparently if you hide out in the National Guard when the country needs you, you’re a patriot as long as you wear an American flag pin on your lapel and send other people’s kids off to fight and die in a foreign land. Shapiro’s logic is this, George the Monkey Boy loved America. Everything he did, he did out of love. He should be forgiven for everything, all those lives, because his love for America was so great and so pure. And when his approval rating fell to the lowest in American history, well George just took that in stride because he loved us all too, despite how disappointed he was in us personally for letting him down.
Shapiro opines that this billboard marks a return to courage, the courage of the George W. Bush years. He then mentions that the folks who love America enough to put up this sign, there on that road outside Wyoming, Minnesota, remain anonymous – you know, like true patriots who are too afraid to use their real names, or you know, go off to war and actually fight for this country, or… well, you get the idea. I guess they love this country too, just like they love George.
As long as you love America, it’s not hypocrisy.
Shapiro ends with:
We do miss President Bush, and we will never forget what he did for America and the world; not now, not ever
I miss George W. Bush and his band of lunatics like I miss a case of tertiary stage syphilis and an outbreak of genital warts.
But Shapiro got the rest of it right, we will never forget what Bush did for America and the world.
Miss Me Yet?
No, Shapiro, I don’t miss George W. Bush.
Not now, not ever.
If Shapiro has a bigger than life-sized poster of George The Pinheaded, oiled and clad only in a loincloth, hanging on the wall of his bedroom - I don’t want to know about it. You can keep that shit to yourself.
