An extraordinarily absurd moment occurred during the past week's "Showdown for U.S. Senate Debate" between California Democratic Reps. Adam Schiff, Barbara Lee, Katie Porter and Republican former major league baseball player, Steve Garvey. The debate was conducted on KTTV Fox 11, the Southern California local affiliate of the Rupert Murdoch-controlled Fox Corp.

In an unsuccessful effort to persuade an evasive and reluctant Garvey to unreservedly state his intent to vote for Donald Trump this year, Fox 11 anchor, Elex Michaelson asked...

The answer to that question may have been a difficult one for the former Dodger. After all, Trump is wildly unpopular among California voters who will vote in the March 5 open primary, even if very popular among the state's small --- and shrinking --- GOP electorate. Garvey hemmed and hawed to avoid answering. "Once a Dodger always a Dodger," quipped Porter at one point in the debate.

But, while the case could be made that Michaelson's question aided Democrats by cornering Garvey, the way he did so was absurd, even before Garvey's evasive response. The question itself recalled some graffiti I once saw on a bathroom wall while an undergrad at UCLA in 1971. It read: "Eat shit. Ten billion flies can't all be wrong."

A somewhat less crude analogy can be found in Germany. The fact that, in 1934, the vast majority of that nation's 66 million people adored a man named Adolf Hitler in no way provides a reason for any objective observer to support that genocidal tyrant.

It's especially troubling that KTTV's parent company is largely responsible for creating an alternative reality --- an Orwellian netherworld --- in which a large swath of the U.S. electorate now resides. The netherworld's residents include many of those "tens of millions of people," cited by Michaelson.

Deception, openly deployed not only by Trump and his Congressional Republican enablers, but also endorsed and amplified by Fox "News", provides the core reason why "tens of millions" of Americans, including two thirds of California Republicans, continue to irrationally support a Hitler-admiring demagogue, who called for "terminating" the U.S. Constitution...

Fox Propaganda Network

Last year, in a 130-page Order that partially granted a motion for summary judgment filed by Dominion Voting System, a Delaware Superior Court Judge expressly found that it was "CRYSTAL clear that none of the [Fox "News"] statements relating to Dominion about the 2020 election are true." The court found that the lies spun by Trump and his allies, that were both endorsed and published by Fox, amounted to defamation per se.

A massive trove of Fox internal text and emails, along with the sworn testimony of multiple Fox executives and anchors, referenced in Dominion's summary judgment motion, underscored the point later made by NBC News in its coverage of a subsequent shareholder derivative lawsuit filed against Fox:

While the revelations uncovered by Dominion in their defamation case against Fox would ultimately be settled for a record, eye-popping $787.5 million, they didn't come as a surprise for those of us who've studied media. As illustrated by the landmark 2004 documentary, Outfoxed: Rupert Murdoch's War on Journalism, from its inception Fox hasn't produced news. It has been and remains a right-wing propaganda outlet.

Correlation between Fox lies and Trump support

The cover provided for Trump by lies propagated by Fox, Congressional Republicans and other right-wing media did not end with the Jan. 6 insurrection.

To the contrary, as revealed by the Washington Post, Fox did more than simply fail to cover the landmark Jan. 6 Congressional Hearings on its widely viewed Fox "News" Channel. Its former star prime-time host, Tucker Carlson, went out of his way to discourage its viewers from tuning in to the J6 hearings that Carlson described as worthless propaganda. This was followed by his display of selectively edited video in which Carlson falsely depicted the 1/6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol as a peaceful protest.

The deceptions underscore the absurdity of Michaelson's debate query in the U.S. Senatorial debate in California. The 2/3 support amongst CA Republicans, cited by Michaelson, mirrors the nearly 70% of Republicans who still erroneously believe that President Biden did not actually win the 2020 election.

Orwellian netherworld of the MAGA Cult

As a result of relentless right-wing propaganda, millions of Americans now reside in an alternative reality that might aptly be described as the netherworld of the MAGA Cult --- a place where those who dare expose the truth about the con man, who became the 45th President of the United States, are condemned as liars. Candidate Garvey, himself, revealed that he resides in that Orwellian netherworld.

Citing the purely partisan, and "shameful" censure of Adam Schiff by House Republicans, the L.A. Dodgers' former first baseman accused Schiff of lying to millions of Americans.

A subsequent colloquy between the other moderator, Politico's Melanie Mason, and Schiff, exposed the MAGA cult's alternative reality:

                 

Article Categories: Fox 'News', California, NBC, Tucker Carlson, U.S. House, Democrats, Republicans, Dominion Voting, Donald Trump, Germany, Barbara Lee, Adam Schiff, Election 2020, Katie Porter, Election 2024, Steve Garvey, Elex Michaelson