The Mainstreamed Pathology That is Fox & Friends

[paft.livejournal.com]

From Fox & Friends Weekend:

Allisyn Camerota: Meanwhile, we have to tell you this crazy story from the Occupy Wall Street (inhales, as if trying to maintain control of herself) gang. There is a Florida mother of four children. Two weeks ago, she left her family and her husband in Florida because she felt motivated and compelled to come up and occupy Wall Street…

Dave Briggs: I want to reiterate what Allie mentioned, this 38-year-old Hessler mother of four says ‘Military people leave their families all the time, so why should I feel bad? I’m fighting for a better world.’ That is more disgusting than any of the, filth, down there on Wall Street…

Describing people you dislike as “filth” isn’t just hatred. It’s pathological hatred. Normally it’s relegated to extremist blogs, political website commenters, or late night talk radio, but here it is folks, all tricked out in business clothes and offered in a steaming heap on a trowel on national TV.

But really, they’re doing this because they’re concerned! What about the children? Who are at such tender ages…

Camerota: She’s clearly having a mid-life crisis of some sort…Her children by the way are 17 years old, 15 years old, and 7 years old. She says she has talked to them three times in the two weeks since she left. These are tender ages, obviously, to be without your mother…

Clayton Morris: …There’s some suggestions right now that she’s living right now with a waiter up here...

Camerota: You say that she’s living with a waiter. Sort of. They are occupying the same quare cement block.

Morris: The same tarp.

Camerota: She says that they are not romantically connected, but they are, um, providing warmth… We should also mention that her husband’s a banker. That would also offer a window into her psyche. She may be protesting something else besides just capitalism...

That’s right. Camerota, Briggs, and Morris are sooo concerned about the Hessler children that they’re reviling their mother in public and snidely implying that she’s having an affair. Good job, guys. I bet those kids really like snuggilng down in that warm fuzzy “concern” of yours.

Fox and Friends Weekend were pretty keen on getting viewer feedback on the mother. One comment that they reaad on camera:

I can’t believe this 'mother' compares what she does to being in the military. There is no one shooting at her and she’s not defending anyone’s life.

Well, hey, now that she’s been publicly denounced as filth and declared an unfit mother, that could change, especially given the rising hysteria on the right about the Occupy Wall Street movement. One OWS site has already been targeted with a Drano bomb. Fox friends kept urging viewers “tell us what you think,” and with that in mind I checked out the Fox Nation article about Hessler.

Funny thing. The comments have been closed and aren’t visible.

Golly. I wonder why.



Crossposted from Thought Crimes

Comments

[telemann.livejournal.com]

And to think yesterday someone suggested Rupert Murdoch websites are legitimate and unbiased sources.

married mother of four from Florida ditched her family to become part of the raggedy mob in Zuccotti Park -- keeping the park clean by day and keeping herself warm at night with the help of a young waiter from Brooklyn. [oooh sexual innuendo]

“I’m not planning on going home,” an unapologetic Stacey Hessler, 38, told The Post yesterday.

“I have no idea what the future holds, but I’m here indefinitely. Forever,” said Hessler, whose home in DeLand sits 911 miles from the tarp she’s been sleeping under. [almost an attempt at making her sound homeless but since it's factually correct, no bold font ;)]

Hessler -- who ironically is married to a banker -- arrived 12 days ago and planned to stay for a week, but changed her plans after cozying up [oooh sexual innuendo no 2] to some like-minded radicals [FRINGE!]

[htpcl.livejournal.com]

Could you use lj-cut for part of your text please? There appears to be something going wrong with your html, thanks in advance.

[devil-ad-vocate.livejournal.com]

Has she been caught peeing on a police car yet?

[paft.livejournal.com]

You have some evidence beyond a single incident that this is an ongoing trend at OWS?

[luvdovz.livejournal.com]

You went there. ;)

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

Camerota: She says that they are not romantically connected, but they are, um, providing warmth… We should also mention that her husband’s a banker. That would also offer a window into her psyche. She may be protesting something else besides just capitalism...

^I find this kind of comment very ironic from the party of closeted gays and man-on-dog adulterers. How many marriages are Rudy and Newt on now, anyway? How many men have people like Ted Haggard and the GOP closet-gays who want to outlaw sodomy slept with?

They don't even care about this kind of thing except insofar as it's a convenient club to bash the other side with assuming the speakers have the balls of a whale.

Faux News...

[sophia-sadek.livejournal.com]

... firmly denies any partisan affiliation. They are fair and balanced. They present both perspectives: that of the Tea Party and that of the Republican Party.

[dukexmachismo.livejournal.com]

man-on-dog adulterers

I must have missed that one. Link? I need the lulz for the day.

[meus-ovatio.livejournal.com]

There is a pernicious habit people have that turns systemic or national issues into individual morality plays. As long as they're are talking about one person, the issue doesn't have to be discussed. As long as we obsess over an individual, we don't have to worry about the issue. What I don't get is why people so willingly waste their time on a non-issue like this. It's like they've been so brain-deaded they don't care anymore that they do nothing but traffic in nonsense and irrelevancies.

[paft.livejournal.com]

By "non-issue," do you mean the act of reviling this one protester on national TV?

Or do you mean the fact that Hessler was reviled in this manner is irrelevant and a "non-issue?"

[anfalicious.livejournal.com]

Well put.

[montecristo.livejournal.com]

"Ninety percent of everything is crap."
— Sturgeon's Law

Given what I've seen of the culture lately, I'd be tempted to conclude that most people aren't capable of considering politics on a level deeper than the average soap opera or horse race.

I agree that it's a non-issue. I also suggest that pointing out something so obvious also borders on being a non-issue.

[anfalicious.livejournal.com]

With no real issues to report on about the protests Fox is obviously going for obscure character assassination.

Ah, the kitchen hasn't even started to get warm yet

[montecristo.livejournal.com]

Yes, yes, and obviously, obviously, it is only the Evil Right who do these sorts of things...

Obviously, the OWS, many of whom ARE economic illiterates, ARE being maligned and smeared, as a group, by the Right, just as the Tea Pariers, in many cases, just as ignorant, are maligned and smeared by the Left. You're expecting honesty in politics? I never cease to be amused by the idea that people do, at least from their side.

Just today I saw a self-proclaimed politically-left, "Pagan Priestess," of all people, post a link to a Slate hit piece on the Mormons which was nothing but innuendo and an insinuation that people should be "alarmed by their weird and sinister beliefs." Now I don't like Mitt Romney much as a politician, myself. As an atheist, I think all beliefs in what I consider supernatural superstitions to be a bit suspect and a tad sinister, but I would be the last to slyly inveigle people into religious intolerance.

"People do not expect to find chastity in a whorehouse. Why, then, do they expect to find honesty and humanity in government, a congeries of institutions whose modus operandi consists of lying, cheating, stealing, and if need be, murdering those who resist?"
— H. L. Mencken

Re: Ah, the kitchen hasn't even started to get warm yet

[paedraggaidin.livejournal.com]

I am assuming that was the recent Hitchens piece. He is a sanctimonious ass with a hard-on against all religious belief.

Though it's pretty ironic that a pagan priestess would link to it, considering what he probably thinks of her religion.

Re: Ah, the kitchen hasn't even started to get warm yet

[paedraggaidin.livejournal.com]

Also, Mencken was metal.

Re: Ah, the kitchen hasn't even started to get warm yet

[kylinrouge.livejournal.com]

Why do you guys always pull the same card? Do you have anything to contribute other than 'you guys do it too!'

Re: Ah, the kitchen hasn't even started to get warm yet

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

Maybe some criticize one or the other for different reasons but to me they are both examples of the kind of mass movement that wrecks a democracy if permitted to grow as a movement in its own right. The Optimates have the Tea Party, now the Populares have OWS. Now all we need is some asshole general deciding his army is *his* army and history will indeed begin to recur.

[il-mio-gufo.livejournal.com]

i have no idear how many brain cells just flat-lined...

[surferelf.livejournal.com]

Yes. Cable news is like huffing without the fun part.

[enders-shadow.livejournal.com]

theyre kinda simply bad people

[msmichelle.livejournal.com]

I take it you don't have kids and a family?

I take it...

[sophia-sadek.livejournal.com]

... you have never been smeared with reactionary detritus.

[dreadfulpenny81.livejournal.com]

17 and 15 aren't so much "tender ages", but 7 would certainly seem to be. Seems rough to leave your kid at 7 just to go protest. And to me, it IS despicable for her to equate leaving the state to protest to leaving the country to serve in the military and literally put your life on the line. If there's any truth to her bunking with a waiter at the OWS protests, is it by choice? Cause I know that at Occupy Cleveland, people were asked to share tents (and it didn't end up being a good situation), either to save space or accommodate those who came without shelter.

It's not fair to judge her marriage or her relationship with her kids from a distance other than to say it might have been a rash decision on her part.

[yes-justice.livejournal.com]

These slimeballs cannot stoop low enough.