In the green euphoria of 2006, when a sleepy nation and the brain dead media took a sudden, startling leap forward in eco-awareness, with climate crisis on everybody’s lips, it’s hard to imagine any mainstream news agency wanting to be caught stubbornly mired in the dark ages. Except Fox, of course. Glancing at the “Science News” main page of foxnews.com, as I had occasion to this past weekend, is like a stroll back in time. While all the other news outlets are looking back at their global warming coverage like a really embarrassing haircut in a yearbook photo, Fox News is still sportin' theirs like one of those late '80s rattails, convinced they never went out of style.
Top Story: “Global Warming Debate.” Straight from the Guidelines For Reporting Global Warming In A Way That Makes People Shrug And Keep Pumping Gas Into Their SUV pamphlet published by ExxonMobil. C’mon, Fox – even Time Magazine has stopped calling it a “debate.” The video clip has a smarmy anchorman in a pink tie musing about the lack of hurricanes this past season and whether it “casts doubt on all those expensive global warming studies,” and then two interviews follow. First, Mike Ozanian from Forbes explains in hyperbolic terms why global warming is “the biggest bunch of bunk in years.” Then, Tyson Slocum from the Public Citizen’s Energy Program suggests that you can’t derive evidence of global warming from a single hurricane cycle while the Forbes guy shouts over him for the entire interview. As a visual aid, Fox News switches to a split screen so we can watch the Forbes guy shake his head vigorously while Tyson speaks.
But Fox, never one for subtlety, isn’t going to settle for just one slanty clip on their main page - if you glance to the lower right-hand corner, you’ll spot an old friend:
Jimmy Inhofe! Fresh from his last few moments as head of the Senate Environment & Public Works Committee, which he used to publish corporate propaganda on government stationary, in a brief and exclusive interview.
There’s a reason Fox News watchers talk about it like crabby octogenarians demanding more tapioca from the staff nurse – it’s like a drug and a security blanket rolled into one. If Dick Cheney was Linus, then Fox News is the soft blue fabric he clutches against his cold, dead heart.