The end of an era?

Everybody knows Fox News sucks — well, maybe not everybody, but people are starting to figure it out.

That Fox News has been in bed with the Republican party is not exactly a stunning revelation. Eric Boehlert's Media Matters piece on the network earlier this week outlined some of the problems it faces as the GOP wanes in popularity.

From the piece:
"The point is that Fox News years ago made an obvious decision to appeal almost exclusively to Republican viewers. The good news then for Fox News was that it succeeded. The bad news now for Fox News is that it succeeded."

Ratings are down — CNN is kicking its ass this year — and the two Democratic rock stars running for president won't have much to do with it. And Bill O'Reilly, my fellow Irish Long Island douchebag, is doing his part to grease the skids on the channel's slide towards obscurity.

O'Reilly has been asserting for some time now that the phenomenon of the homeless veteran is a myth. For realsies. But this afternoon a group of very real homeless veterans stopped by Fox News headquarters in New York with a petition signed by like 17,000 people demanding an apology.

An aside: What's with all this apology crap? What the hell good will that do anyone? Such silly shit.

Anyway, the group held an inmpromptu press conference on the street. And while the T-Warrior (yeah, that's what he calls himself. Also Tiger) never made an appearance down on the street, he did send one of his producers, another prickish type named Jesse Waters, down there to ask the brown folks if they were the ones who called our troops "baby killers."

Some footage of the whole nasty business:



Now, I know a hundred guys just like O'Reilly, tough-guy blowhards who have many opinions on subjects they know absolutely nothing about. Of course, these clowns don't have their own television shows; they just spout off at the country club bar.

Fox News is doomed, as far as I can tell. Because that style of journalism is going the way of the Ugg boot — strictly for dumbasses a few clocks behind the times.

Fox News, with its non-apologetic point of view, played no small role in the propogation of the 935 lies told by the Bush White House that led up to the Iraq war. And you know what? People don't like being lied to. It makes them feel stupid and pisses them off. And it's not something people forget too soon.

In journalism, particularly, integrity is like virginity — once you lose it, that's pretty much it. You can't unpop a cherry.

And, as Boehlert pointed out, these integrity issues are affecting the launch of the Fox Business Network. Because in politics you can listen to lies you agree with all day long, but when there's money involved, bullshit walks.