Today, I made another giant pot of bean dip. Spiced to perfection.

I am happy to report that the Xena Season 2 dvd transfer quality gets dramatically better over the course of the season. (Well, up to the middle at least, which is where I am.) It must have been the 16mm film stock which was used in Season 1, and, apparently, also the early portion of season 2. (I recall somebody saying something about it in the Season 1 documentary at some point.)

I'll take the 35mm, thank you. Destiny, thank goodness, has excellent picture quality. Despite all the mistakes Rob Tapert says he made in his directorial debut in the commentary, I still say it stands as one of the best episodes of the season; even the series as a whole. Some people are just their own worst critic. (Or maybe not, now that I think back to recalling a few of the more venomous posts that used to appear fairly regularly on the long-dead nutforum. Ah, but those were the days. /me suddenly wonders what became of all those kooky characters.)

...

In other news, my dad now has something resembling cable television. He got it because they offered him several free months of basic broadcast channels (or something like that) in combination with the net connection, but it also seems to include several non-broadcast channels. Among them is FOX News, the channel my dad watches most.

"Fair and Balanced."

Up until the last week, pretty much everything I've heard about Fox News has been second-hand info. I know that several Salon writers have spent many a megabyte pontificating about the channel's borderline insane right-wing slant, and that the network had joined the idiotic litigators' club in suing one not-so-hapless author over the use of the phrase "fair and balanced". Having never experienced it myself, I figured their content was probably somewhat similar to a typical tv newscast, but with a slightly more conservative bias. (Cause, ya know, occassionally Salon authers have an tendancy to blow things out of proportion too.) Now I know better.

My God! Watching and listening to a few hours of FOX News programming in the background while I did other stuff, I got the distinct impression I was listening to an ISN broadcast during the Clark presidency. Yes, it's that bad.

Having a bias is one thing. Every news organization has one, even if they may try not to show it. The good ones, when reporting raw facts, at least try to keep their use of language somewhat objective, and present information from both sides of any given debate in a relatively... well... fair and balanced manner.

Based on what I have seen and overheard, the slew of reporters on Fox News cross the line from having a naturally unpreventable bias, into the territory of outright propaganda. Frequently, very subjective adjectives are used just in passing to describe the president in an unquestioningly exhaulting manner, and his opponents and critics are casted in a correspondingly negative light.

For the two hours following the democratic presidential debate on Tuesday, they talked endlessly about how all the candidates more or less made fools of themselves. They "attacked the president" (disagree == attack, in their eyes, I guess). The democrats are out of touch with the American people, as they try to appeal to a fringe demographic that believes civil liberties are under assault, see America as turning into a police state, and don't support the president's efforts to fight terrorism in Iraq.

As just demonstrated, the very assumptions made in phrasing a sentence can be skewed in such a way as to make any disagreement appear something that is not.

It's a typical Fox News style question. "Do you support the president's efforts to fight the threat of terrorism in Iraq?" (I'm not saying they asked this specific question, because my memory of exact wording isn't that good. But it would be a typical thing to say.)

A direct and simple "yes/no" answer cannot be given without implying that the respondant agrees with the implicit assumption therein. Namely, that the president is making efforts to fight terrorism in Iraq. If one says, "I oppose the war in Iraq," then it is assumed that the respondant does not believe in fighting terrorism, and by extension -- at least in the logic of the Fox News world -- implicitly supports terrorism.

Any attempt to deconstruct the question itself is cast as being evasive, avoiding the "real issue", or flip-flopping. The host will often loudly interrupt, and demand a so-called straight answer. "Please answer the question. Yes or no."

If you believe in preserving civil liberties, you are a member of a "fringe" that the democrats are "pandering" to -- mainstream Americans (as defined by Fox News commentators) know better.

Uggh. Are there people who really buy into such cheap propaganda? Is my father (whose views are typically of the conservative persuasion) one of them?

I'm not saying that anybody who holds conservative opinions in an idiot. Though I often disagree, I enjoy well reasoned and thoughtfully presented arguments from the right.

But if a channel with the rabid tone and Ministry of Truth style psychological bombardment of Fox News truly speaks on behalf of "mainstream America" as it claims, then we are indeed a troubled nation.