Why the BP Disaster Threatens to Expose Fox News' Insanity to Its Right-Wing Audience

Media Matters for America / By Eric Boehlert 114 COMMENTS

Why the BP Disaster Threatens to Expose Fox News' Insanity to Its Right-Wing Audience

"I'm wondering if Fox News isn't pressing up very closely to its tipping point; to the moment where Fox News reveals how certifiably insane it is by rushing to BP's defense."
June 24, 2010 Eight-two percent.

That's the number you need to keep in mind as you listen to the right-wing caterwauling about how poor, helpless BP has been tormented and demonized by the bullying, Constitution-hating Obama White House.

Eight-two percent.

According to the latest CNN poll, a huge, huge, huge majority of Americans supports the $20 billion escrow fund that BP agreed to create in order to help pay for the Gulf of Mexico cleanup.



And get this: According to the same CNN poll, a microscopic 5 percent of Americans think Obama has been "too tough" on BP. Just 5 percent.

But apparently those 5-percenters all host radio and TV shows, or blog online, because that radical claim that Obama's to blame for creating the hated escrow fund (not to mention for causing the oil spill in the first place), has been exploding within the GOP Noise Machine as pundits, bloggers, and talk show hosts rush to defend BP and denounce one of the most popular things Obama has ever done.

And, of course, helping lead the charge to guard BP from Obama's wicked ways has been Fox News.

Fox News is programmed for Obama dead-enders, that much is clear. They're the radical minority of political hyper-partisans who hold as a matter of faith that Obama is a Manchurian candidate. It's not just that Obama was born in Kenya and isn't truly of this country, or culture, and that his policies are misguided and wrong for America. It runs much deeper. It's that Obama ran for the Oval Office with the explicit plan to ruin America from within once he was elected. He ran for president in order to destroy this country by stripping it of its freedoms and liberties and transforming the United States into some sort of socialist or communist outpost.

That's how far out on the ledge Fox News now operates. And FYI, if you view the world from that demented perspective, it probably does look like BP got jobbed. (Just like of course the Clinton White House sold nuclear secrets to China during the `90s; Democratic presidents are a treasonous bunch.)

As I said, the dead-enders represent a radical minority. And yet they have an entire right-wing media complex set up explicitly to whet their Obama-hating appetite. There is no thought put into the rhetoric anymore, or their partisan jousting. Instead, the content revolves around a very simple premise: If Obama did it, it's wrong. Not just wrong. More like, if Obama did it, it's evil and dangerous and ghastly and un-American.

So the stimulus bill was evil and un-American. Bailing out GM and Chrysler was evil and un-American. Passing health care reform, of course, was evil and un-America.

But securing $20 billion from BP to pay for the cleanup and to compensate working Americans for the damage done to their livelihoods. That was evil and un-American?

According to Fox News it was.

And with that audacious claim, I'm wondering if Fox News isn't pressing up very closely to its tipping point; to the moment where Fox News reveals how certifiably insane it is by rushing to BP's defense, and just how distant its programming is from the American mainstream.