CNNothing

  I don’t watch much cable TV news these days — I get the scoop I need mostly from blogs — but I wanted to call your attention to this recent report in the trade publication Variety.

Long story short, CNN continues to suffer dramatic double-digit ratings declines while Fox News continues to increase ratings almost as dramatically.

No point flogging a dead horse — Fox is a success because of, not in spite of, its clearly-spoken political agenda (which in a minute I will attempt to describe not as a true conservative agenda but as a populist one). There is obviously a huge market for this stuff, and there is no point whining about the “red staters” or the “knuckle-draggers,” as many of the lefty blogs do whenever Fox News comes up.

Like the old saying goes, you can’t argue with success, and I don’t intend to here.

CNN’s ratings decline is its own fault. By deliberately running in Fox’s shadow — embedded reporters having near orgasms over “Shock and Awe,” American-flag themed graphics packages for anything having to do with foreign policy, etc. — they abdicated the great middle ground and fought the competition on his own turf. (Hmmm… sounds like a certain American political party I could name….) Fox could not help but win that battle and win it handily.

I have learned over the years that conservatives are not impressed by token attempts to appeal to them. They want all-conservative, all-the-time, and they don’t mess with Mr. In-Between. I say that not sarcastically or condescendingly; if lefties had that kind of tenacity and singleness of purpose, the country — and indeed the world — would be a much different place.

I don’t know where CNN needs to go from here. Obviously, trying to confuse viewers into thinking they’re Fox News is not going to work. I’m not sure the cable news universe even holds a place for liberals anymore; liberals watch Jon Stewart for news nowadays anyway.

My sadness over CNN’s decline has to do with the fact that they are the only cable news network that consistently spends serious money on foreign bureaus. They don’t do this entirely out of journalistic conviction; CNN International is an important revenue stream for them.

But if you want real, on the ground reporting from foreign countries, CNN is the only way to go. I suspect if the ratings continue to crater, they will continue on the downward spiral towards 24/7 “opinion” programming, like Fox News, shedding foreign bureaus like lice.

In other words, they will continue to get the pants beat off them by Fox News. Frankly, I would not be surprised if in 5-8 years Rupert Murdoch ends up buying CNN in the final trumpet call of the Apocalypse. (There’s your stock tip of the day, gang, and it’s worth every penny you paid for it.)

So is Fox News really as rabidly right-wing and conservative as lefties swear it is? Fox News certainly wants you to think it is, what with the constant parade of current and former GOP spokespeople in the pundit ranks (Gingrich, North, Snow, etc.). And they certainly want you to see more Republican guests than Democrats (a measured 70/30 split by one survey).

But to me, Fox News couldn’t be less Republican. Real Republicans seek to rise above class resentment by investing capital wisely and with as little government regulation as possible. They want to be monopolists if they can get away with it, but if not, they at least aspire to be real cracker-jack capitalists who don’t need to seek anyone else’s approval.

The Fox News Channel, however, serves purely as a vehicle to make angry white people even angrier. When I watch Fox News, all I see is a constant litany of reasons why poor whites should be resentful of successful people — whether they be rap stars, the “Hollywood Elite,” trial lawyers, “secularists,” or the Clintons.

A constant hallmark of Fox News is this idea that the Great White Christian Heartland is being persecuted and victimized by the coastal leftist elites. Hours of programming on Fox’s nighttime lineup are predicated on this self-victimization. Never a positive message about how great it is to be in the dominant political party in this country; just constant woe-is-us, circle-the-wagons paranoia.

Never mind that a born-again Christian just got re-elected to the White House with historic numbers. Never mind that social conservatives in the Republican Party control both houses of Congress. Never mind that the Supreme Court has a 5-4 conservative majority. Never mind that a majority of governor’s mansions and state legislatures are controlled by Republicans. Never mind that The Passion of the Christ made way more money than Fahrenheit 9/11.

No, never mind all that — you must pity the poor white masses. They got it so bad.

Resentment, not conservatism, is the currency Fox News trades in. And apparently, there’s a lot of money in resentment these days.

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