Please Stop Watching Fox News

After my last post I have been thinking a good deal about the pounding conservatism takes from today's conservatives. It's hard in today's political climate (where a moderate republican is 73% more conservative than 70's-era a moderate republican) for a center-right guy like me to feel he has much in common with major GOP figures. Worse yet, at times I feel confessing that I am a conservative lumps me in with a host of politicians and pundits whose beliefs I disagree with and whose actions I believe are hurting our country.

Case in point: Fox News. I have come to a point where I now believe there is absolutely no good that can come from watching Fox News. As a conservative, the representation of conservatism that is presented on this channel offends me. It is laden with fear, hate, racism, spin, and often just a general lack of facts. Fox's journalism is so poor that it's often laughable, which is why I usually try to keep myself from getting worked up about it - thinking that no reasonable person really buys the crap they dish out. But I know that's not the case. I know there are hundreds of people in this country, probably thousands, who rely on Fox as their primary, if not only news source.

I'll present just three examples here for your consideration. Please note none of these include the usual pundits (Hannity/O'Reilly/Coulter/etc.) which I've been known to decry.

1. Ignoring the fact that the man's own mother is white, Glenn Beck (the best-selling author and #3 radio host in the nation) says on the air that Obama is a racist with a deep-seated hatred for white people.

2. A commentator claims that if the U.S. were to adopt a national healthcare plan, it would be a breeding ground for terrorism. A spokesperson from the National Review (another conservative news source I can't stand) claims that under national healthcare, the U.S. government would bring in Muslim doctors, and patients would not be able to tell whether their doctor was a terrorist or not because U.S. doctors would be more diverse (read: you couldn't racially profile your doctor anymore).

3. You've probably heard about this one, but a year ago host E. D. Hill called the Obamas' celebratory fist-bump a "terrorist fist jab," as if someone in their right mind actually might have thought that's what it was.