Fair and Balanced

I’ve been watching a lot of Fox News lately. Well, let me re-phrase that… I’ve been watching programs that appear on a channel that is called Fox News. One must be careful with language here because the name of the channel is a misnomer. The name is purposefully designed to imply that the programming contained on the channel is news, when in fact, it isn’t exactly news that they are providing. It’s like having a channel called “Comedy Central” and airing Police Academy 4. It makes people think that it is actually comedy they are watching, when in fact, it’s clearly nothing of the sort.

This is a common tactic of liars and con-artists… or put another way, politicians and pundits. It’s a form of double-speak that is at once subtle and blatant. It floats on top of the substance of things and envelopes them in a fog of convoluted logic creating a false premise for the delivery of information that would otherwise be considered inconsistent with people’s perception of reality. But make no mistake, it is intentional and it is effective. It is the simplest form of double-speak. I illustrate this as a prelude to a much more complex and insidious tactic commonly used by people who may have no idea they are doing it. The process goes something like this:

1. Accuse your opponent of trying to do something terrible.

2. Explain your opponent’s tactics to achieving that terrible goal.

3. Do that terrible thing you accused you opponent of planning on doing, using the tactics you explained your opponent would use.

4. Be outraged at the hypocrisy of your opponent when they accuse you of doing what you had previously accused them of wanting to do.

5. Use that outrage to focus attention on the outrage itself, rather than the terrible thing you just did.

It’s so simple, a caveman could do it… or even Glenn Beck.

I’d like to come up with a name for this tactic, something like: “A Reverse Reality Logic Bomb” but with a little more zing to it. Maybe I’ll call it Fox News. The point is, this tactic is most effective when the outrage is genuine. In other words, the perpetrator of this lie needs to be so overwhelmingly ignorant of reality that they actually believe they have been victimized. Of course, the liar would never call himself a victim. Instead he would accuse his opponents of having a “victim mentality” and trying to use that to make themselves rich, so they are able to gang up on him, attack him and deny him his rights, which is why you should listen to him thereby make him rich. Perfect.

You may ask: “How can I protect myself against falling victim to this ingenious ploy?”.  It’s very simple. Any time you hear someone upset, yelling, screaming or in any way demonstrably declaring outrage, you know that you are either dealing with a liar or watching Fox News... but most likely you are doing both.