Friday, Dec 1, 2001

Today's Grapevine is hosted by Chris Wallace, a Fox News "journalist" known mostly for his nakedly partisan interviews of prominent Democrats and his insistence that, contrary to all available evidence, he approaches his subjects in a fair and balanced manner. But on Brit Hume's Grapevine Wallace once again demonstrates how ideology trumps journalistic ethics at Fox News. In a segment headlined "Animal Rights Activists" Wallace claims:

Animal Rights Activists

There's at least one front in the war on terror — even the ACLU is backing. President Bush has signed a new law giving federal authorities expanded powers to prosecute animal rights activists—which the State Department warns are a more serious day-to-day threat than terrorists— for US companies overseas.

The Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act will make it easier for the FBI to wiretap and prosecute animal rights activists who target researchers among others. Such harassment ranges— from late-night phone calls, to vandalism, assault, and even death threats.

The opening sentence "There's at least one front in the war on terror -even the ACLU is backing" is completely superfluous, given that the ACLU is never again mentioned in the segment. In fact, the statement is little more than an unashamedly partisan swipe at the civil rights organization, and a libeous one, too, given that no evidence is given to support Wallace's contention that the ACLU opposes the so-called "war on terror." Instead, it is simply taken as a given that the ACLU's opposition to measures that curtail the rights of U.S. citizens and foreign nationals on U.S. soil is part and parcel with opposition to the struggle against radical Islamic terrorism. For Wallace and Fox News, you either believe that the Constitution and the Bill of Rights are dispansable, or you're with the terrorists.

Next Wallace eagerly and enthusiastically promotes the ridiculous Fox News meme that there is an ongoing "war on Christmas." But this war is not only taking plce in the U.S. In fact, as it turns out, there's actually a global war on Christmas, as evidenced by:

Scary St. Nick?

And the "war on Christmas"— also goes on overseas. A ban on Saint Nicholas in Vienna's kindergartens is being enforced in response to pressure from Austria's growing Muslim population. City officials contend it's not about religion — that the sight of a large, bearded figure in school can frighten children. But one child psychiatrist says that's "total nonsense"— adding that Saint Nick is a "positive figure who encourages and rewards children."

Every year that I have walked this Earth, I have witnessed Christmas coming earlier and earlier, so that it has largely swallowed up Thanksgiving and is now even showing signs of encroaching on Halloween (and I'm not talking about Tim Burton's "Nightmare before Christmas," either). The economic inplications of the holiday season are enormous. I just recently learned, for instance, that the reason retailer refer to the Friday after Thankgiving as "black Friday" is because it is the frist day of the year that many businesses can actually report an operating profit, that is, their books are "in the black" for the first time that day. So the notion that the holiday season is in any danger is simply a laughable one. Of course, most Fox News commentators also seek to imply that the "war on Christams" is evidenced by the claimed fact that the holiday is becoming more secularized. However, one is left to wonder why it is a supposedly impartial news organization would report on this supposed secular turn as an alarming and corrosive development. That's not a fair and balanced perspective, but rather, a partisan, evangelical one. Ultimately, though, the fact that Fox has to go all the way to Vienna to dig up a newsworthy example demonstrates the extent to which this phoney war is manufactured, packaged and sold to the U.S. public exclusively by the conservative ideologues who run Fox News.