Fox & Friends finds the corrupting influence of our generation

[Zeradul]

Wow.

http://www.prosebeforehos.com/government_employee/04/29/fox-news-calls-mr-rogers-evil/

[stas]

hmm the question i have is where are they getting the idea that young people feel so entitled? i don't see it among my friends.

[Stinger]

I know a crop of people who feel entitled for no good reason, but to blame that on Mr. Rogers is just insane.

I met the man once. he was a united methodist minister. A good one, at that. If the brain-trust at Fox and Friends believe that making kids feel like they're worth a damn is evil, then that speaks far worse of them than it does the nice old man who sang songs and played with puppets.

[Stinger]

A Mr. Roger's quote: “What this country needs is dirtier fingernails and cleaner minds.”

Yeah, he's obviously for teaching kids to be lazy.

[Ruckus]

LOL to include Mr. Rogers into something like this par for the Faux course.  Right wing propaganda television delivered 24 hrs to your mindless skull.

[rue]

I guess no one watched the video.

They were talking about a study done by Dr. Don Chance (who's a well known Econometrician) in Louisiana, and they spoke of it mockingly.  They laughed dismissively.  The anchor who cries "I back it!" is speaking facetiously.

Some may wonder:  then why do the story at all?  Because 24 hours is a long time to report news and you have to talk about -something-.  My usual channel, CNN, spent a ridiculous amount of time covering the Tiger Woods saga, for example.  I stopped watching up until the crisis in Haiti hit.

[Zeradul]

Really DD?

I watched it the first time and didn't get that sense at all.  I just watched it again, and you are correct it does sound like one host is hesitant to condemn Mr. Rogers, however, why would they do three separate segments on this topic throughout the day and not actually say how absurd the study is.

But if this was a joke, then wow, bad taste.

But I don't think it was a joke, they actually spend minutes explaining how a "sense of entitlement" is destroying the youth of today.  You don't babble on endlessly agreeing with a point during a cynical discussion about something you think is absurd.

[rue]

1:17 - The female host laughs as she explains the study's conclusion.

2:00 - As the female host asks the listeners to send emails with their opinions on the study, one of the male hosts laughs and remarks fadingly "...what a crazy..."

3:00 - As the female reporter again explains the study's conclusion that Mr Rogers is the root cause of all sense of entitlement, she slows her voice down and speaks grandiosely.  If you haven't heard that before, it's a mocking tone. (somehow I feel you have)

4:20 - After an email supporting the study is read, the male host remarks that we'd all be better off if children "went to school, went home, made the butter, milked the cow, went out to the loom and made our own sweater."  I wrote something out after this where I used subtle sarcasm explaining that the host is kidding here, but then I realized I was using subtle sarcasm to explain subtle sarcasm and worried it may go over your head again.

5:10 - Gives me a good opportunity to comment on the video as a whole. As the male host's voice is asking a silly question, we're given a shot of him asking a serious question.  Except (as is the case in the entire video) the audio and video aren't synced.  Clever.  In any case, the guest laughs and so does everyone else, including the male who asked the question. 

[Zeradul]

Ok, there's no need for telling me I've missed your amazing sarcasm more such sarcasm will obviously go over my head.

So I actually think you are right, but I have a better explaination.

I watched it again, and then I went elsewhere trying to find corroborating evidence because it does seem like parts of this video are missing.  I even searched fox's news site and couldn't find it.  I thought, wtf, how could that be?  And then I realized the video might be old.

Sure enough baseball scores are being ticked on the right hand side, and that day it aired, it was 89 in Minneapolis, and it doesn't get to 89 except in July and August.  Also note that the "news ticker" at the bottom is cut off, so us, the unsuspecting viewer doesn't see news from '07 and realize that some trickery has gone on here.  Also, a news ticker would make it very obvious every time the video chose to cut out a segment, the news ticker would not line up after the segment was removed.

So this was either from Summer of '09 '08 or most likely '07 when this "study" was released:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB118358476840657463-search.html

So who cares if it's old?  For one it's harder for Fox to defend itself because they don't have this particular moment of 3 year old video online.

In addition, the audio is fucked, yes, when I first watched it, i assume it was Firefox's fault, as I had 80 tabs open at the time, and I only have 4 GB of ram.

The audio IS correct at the beginning, and by the end it approaches a 7 second delay (video behind the audio) so what is happening here?  I believe the author (a third party editor of this footage) unskillfully cut out key words and parts of words where the commentators did say things like "this is absurd"  So they probably did it in two steps.   Cut out whole sentences that make it obvious that they are not believers of this.  After the whole sentences are gone they likely just snipped and blipped their way over other words that make the dialogue appear worse than it was.  What is scary is that they almost did it perfectly.  Had they got rid of the blips, and made the audio sync up, there is no way I would have suspected it was a fake.

So I believe that we (and the quarter million people who saw that youtube video) are victims of this attack on Fox's credibility.

THAT SAID, there are a few complete sentences within that video that were unaltered, such as:

3:13 - "The signs of narcissism have been growing in this country for 25 years and THAT MAN unintentionally did a whole generation or two a dis-service!"  (he goes on to give the tee ball example where everyone wins, and everyone is told they are special -- this was not sarcastic)

I still think that all sane people can agree that Mr Rogers did not intentionally or unintentionally hurt anyone.

I am very surprised that Fox has not responded yet by posting the whole video to combat this kind of bullshit.

[rue]

Apologies for the sarcasm quip.  "Really DD?" pissed me off because it's diminutal speech.  

I do believe the quote you have there was sarcasm or at the least devil's advocating.  People who work in television are taught to keep conversations going when need be.  ("Say 'Yes', don't block")

Fox won't and shouldn't defend itself from these accusations, unless a reputable, national news network runs this story (which none will).  It's a matter of small fries and big fries again.  Fox News is not in the business of defending itself from bloggers.

[Zeradul]

The "really DD" was because as I began that response I was still very confident that I was right about the position Fox appeared to take in the video clip and I had not considered that it was altered.

It did not seem like the Fox commentators were being sarcastic or joking when I originally watched it, so your claim as to the explanation seemed like a very hokey one to me.

Regardless, I think that Fox SHOULD be in the business of defending itself, especially in cases like this, because then it could begin to make the case that their viewpoints and such are routinely taken out of context, and in cases like this even downright distorted and manipulated.

Plus, how hard is it to have an intern put up a 3 year old video clip?

Perhaps if the blog had been something anyone had heard of before, Fox would have responded already.  No better way to defeat your opponent than to expose them for such fraud.

[rue]

Challenging them gives them credence.  It "feeds the trolls."  

Fair-handed example:  The White House doesn't respond to every Birther whacko who "unearths a new piece of evidence."  Doing so leads to more suspicion than not doing so.