|
A Fox fan caught by his own tail
By Matthew White
Contributor
Published November 7, 2009
In what seemed like an attempt to give a scolding and rather condescending history lesson to guest writer Ivana Atkins after her column “Americans don’t know meaning of socialism” (The Daily News, Oct. 17), John Dreiss succeeded only in writing a response that has no basis in historical fact (“Fox balance beats socialist hatred,” The Daily News, Oct. 23).
He defined socialism as an “oppressive system that divides society into two parts, those with rings in their noses and those who pull the rings.”
That seems almost the opposite of socialism as originally defined, which stressed worker ownership of businesses and business decisions made by the workers, with compensation based on amount of labor, and individuals who accomplished more earning more.
True socialism emphasized the worker and not the state, as Dreiss claimed.
Hitler’s government was “socialist” in name only — in practice, it was totalitarianism, fascism. Stalin’s policies were not at all socialist, even though his country was called a socialist republic. The ruling class he led exploited workers for the benefit of the upper few, a tactic some say matches that of the recent Bush administration.
The word “socialism” had a fairly good reputation in the early 20th century until it was hijacked by Hitler and Stalin as a “nice” word used to cover up their true intentions — as leaders, they did not practice socialism; they only used the word as a mask.
In our present day, conservative mouthpieces have trotted out the word “socialism” to frighten voters, as Ronald Reagan did when he claimed that introducing Medicare would essentially turn the USA into the Soviet Union, equating a vaguely socialist health-care policy as tantamount to communism.
History has proved Reagan was wrong in his assertion. Once again, the scare-word has been brought out to argue the same regarding President Barack Obama’s health-care initiatives.
Dreiss spoke of an American “hunger” for the supposed balance that Fox News and conservative talk radio bring, failing to mention that, in study after tedious study, viewers of Fox News were found by a large majority to be the most misinformed audience for television news.
A survey by Media Matters showed that 79 percent of Fox News viewers believe recent health-care legislation would be a “government takeover” of US health care and that 73 percent believed the so-called “public option” would cover illegal immigrants, and it goes downhill from there.
If Fox News is “filling in the gaps” as Dreiss insisted, it is filling them in with lies, distortions and cheap fear tactics used merely to frighten uninformed, gullible citizens into voting for his apparent favorite form of government — plutocracy.
It’s ironic that Dreiss would use the nose-ring analogy to describe his curious view of socialism, considering that I’ve never known of a herd of cattle more willing to be pulled around by their nose rings than the audience that listens to conservative talk radio and watches Fox News.
Matthew White lives in Slidell, La.
Share |
Save |
Mail |
Print |
Letter |
6
Comments
|
|
|
