There is another study out that shows that Fox News watchers are aggressively and disproportionately misinformed about pretty much everything. But I wonder whether this is because they believe the lies that they are told while they are watching Fox News or it is because the subset of people who are attracted to Fox News is submental in the first place. I mean, you have to be a half a dick to actually like their programming. I can’t endure it at all, and it’s not just the content. The graphics, the sets…just the whole attitude is aggressively obnoxious.
So, first you get a bunch of reptile-minded dicks and then you subject them to rank propaganda that has been specifically designed to appeal to their most base and mean instincts. The next thing you know, they are buying a Bill O’Reilly coffee mug and muttering about the War on Christmas.
I’d like to see a controlled experiment where they let one group of people self-select which cable news network they watch and another group is assigned randomly. Then we can see if the stupid people are choosing Fox News and being made more stupid, or if Fox News can draw in mentally competent people and turn them into drooling buffoons who think Charles Krauthammer isn’t a deluded crackpot but a sage patriot and overall mensch.