The Super Bowl is the most watched sporting event in the United States. It is estimated that more than 117 million Americans may watch the spectacle between the Philadelphia Eagles and Kansas City Chiefs.
It will play out in an American pageant of ostentation, competition, hype, drama, performative patriotism, slick marketing and big business that unfurls between Chris Stapleton singing the national anthem, Rihanna’s halftime show and the flyover of an all-American and all-female fighter pilot formation. The million-dollar ads won’t focus on uncertainty and pessimism, but rather turn to nostalgia over tomorrow.
It will play out on Fox Sports, but that isn’t where Rupert Murdoch has made his mark on America. He is the most dangerous immigrant who ever came to American shores over our long history. He has damaged the fabric of America like no other because he has poisoned the concept of the truth. His tool was Fox News, which is the propaganda front for the extremist movement that has spread across America and turned violent. All of it has been incited by Rupert Murdoch and his despicable empire of malice.
Kudos to President Biden for declining to participate in what has become a pre-game tradition — a Fox News anchor having the opportunity to interview the president. It was a farce when Bill O’Reilly did it, and it would have been one with Bret Baier doing it.
Watch my video to hear my more expansive thoughts on Fox News and the damage that Rupert Murdoch has done to America.
Enjoy the Super Bowl — and remember the man behind the marquee.
Right on, Steve, with your take-down of Murdoch, one of the most evil men on the planet. Media Matters has been examining and critiquing Fox News for decades now, among other things doing or citing studies showing that folks who watch the channel 1) not only *lack important information* about many crucial topics, 2) they also *hold very wrong ideas* about many topics. In other words, they've been mis-informed by the dis-information project carried on over the years by all those repulsive talking heads, especially during primetime hours--Bill O'Reilly, Sean Hannity, Laura Ingraham, Tucker Carlson, et alia ad nauseam.
There are some bitingly cogent visual memes i've collected about FOX News and Murdoch over the years. Can't show them here in a comment thread, but they include things like a guy holding up a sign that reads, "FOX News: Rich people paying rich people to tell Middle class people to blame Poor people."
Another one has three vertical panels-- first one is labeled "Car Factory" and shows an old b&w photo of a Ford manufacturing plant. Second one is labeled "Motorcycle Factory" and shows a Harley-Davidson manufacturing site. The third panel shows the FOX News logo and is labeled "Bullshit Factory."
Yet another one shows Murdoch sitting at a table on which he has a plate piled high with cookies. To his left is a white guy in a hard hat with one cookie on his plate. Murdoch is leaning over toward the guy and snidely saying, "Careful mate, that foreigner [pointing to a black man across the table who has no plate at all] wants your cookie."
...and let’s not forget that the Super Bowl is being played in a stadium, as Judd Legum has informed us, is a massive giveaway to a billionaire. Often the billionaire owners of NFL teams use extortion, (the threat to move their teams) to extract taxes from the communities and states in which the teams play. Both the gleaming new stadiums and the potholes driven over to reach them are testaments to uneven playing field on which American Democracy is played.