“I believe that Gandhi’s views were the most enlightened of all the political men in our time. We should strive to do things in his spirit: not to use violence in fighting for our cause, but by non-participation in anything you believe is evil.” – Albert Einstein
Chris Wallace made a decision to not participate in Fox News anymore this morning. He’ll be moving on to CNN+. The timing is intriguing, because as we go into a new week tomorrow, it’s not just the usual last ten days of Christmas. All is not calm, all is not bright in Trump world. Mark Meadows probably won’t sleep tonight because he knows that he’s going to be headline news when the contempt proceedings start and start they will. The January 6 Committee is not screwing around. They don’t have the time. They’ve got to wrap all this up in less than one year and the investigation is expanding daily.
Is the Big Lie the reason that Wallace jumped ship? Fox News has been playing very coy with the Big Lie. Mother Tucker is out there on his usual far reach, that’s no surprise, but when Dominion Voting Systems started rattling the legal sabers last year, Fox News stopped defaming them at once. That caused a lot of viewers to go running over to OAN and Newsmax, where they continue to push the Big Lie, apparently figuring they’ll make money first and worry about lawsuits later. That’s speculation on my part, because nothing far-right *journalism* does makes any kind of sense, beyond generating advertising and subscriber revenue for telling the MAGAs what they want to hear, since reality is too bitter a cup to drink from, evidently.
My take on this is that, simply, when the J6 hearings start, Wallace would be in no position to report on them objectively because it would go contrary to Fox’s fantasy posture. When Wallace said goodbye Sunday morning he said that the network had never prevented him from asking a question he wanted to ask or interviewing a guest he wanted to have on his show. It stands to reason that that situation with Fox management cannot continue in the future.
Fox *News* exists by spinning tabloid truths. Their straight news division is on a different planet from their editorial staff (Sean Hannity famously said, “I’m not a jackass journalist. I’m a talk show host) and some of their elections apparatus, notably their polls, are notably reliable. And you well recall how Fox News both correctly called Arizona for Joe Biden in 2020 and then summarily beheaded the political editor that made the call. That move said everything about Fox.
The termination of Chris Stirewalt has become a legend. He said he was the target of viewers’ “murderous rage.” What a world, when a journalist can get hung out to dry for accuracy and truth. But then again, we live in a world where gallows were prepared for the vice president of the United States if he insisted on upholding the law and not breaking it, so it does make some cockeyed kind of sense, in an Alice In Wonderland sort of fashion.
My best speculation is that Chris Wallace saw the handwriting on the wall, i.e., that if he was going to stay with Fox News, he was going to have to either tell the truth about the J6 hearings, or lie about them, plain and simple. He’s found a way to deal with that conundrum by going to CNN+.
It will certainly be interesting to see how Fox News does report the J6 hearings. The Watergate hearings were televised back in the day and that made an enormous difference, in a pre-cable, pre-internet world. All of America was plugged in, in real time. The J6 hearings will not only be an event of the same cultural and political stature as Watergate, it will be substantially more important. Watergate and Nixon, as devastating as all that was at the time, both seem quaint and sedate compared to Trump and his band of merry thieves, trying to overthrow the government and destroy democracy.
This is an interesting development. People come and go from jobs all the time, but the timing of Chris Wallace’s departure after almost two decades in the same chair is noteworthy.
The next question is who will succeed Wallace. Kayleigh McEnany? That’s my choice. Let’s forget about any pretense at legitimacy and go straight for farce. She can do her first half dozen shows interviewing the goon squad of the House, Gaetz, Greene, Gosar, Gohmert and all the other clowns who are just as bad but whose names don’t begin with G.
Some interesting days ahead at Fox, that much is certain.
I think you nailed it. It makes sense that a legitimate journalist would eventually have to make that choice, if they worked at Faux news.
Too bad you didn’t come up with one more whose name began with G. you know how just the idea and name of “5G” affects them.
The Bullshit Barbie Show. What a title for FAUX SPEWS!