When I heard that FOX’s E.D. Hill had asked whether a fist bump between Barack and Michelle Obama might have been a “terrorist fist jab”, I was amazed, but not really surprised. After all, stuff like this is what FOX has done since their inception to achieve their goal of scaring their predominantly old, conservative, white, prejudiced audience into voting Republican. In addition, FOX has had no problem “reporting” that Obama is a Marxist, a socialist, Hitler, a communist, a “sleeper agent”, a secret muslim, a "domestic insurgent", a dangerous radical, a madrassa student, etc. etc. with virtually no repercussions and rarely even an apology. It's the home of serial liars and hysterical exaggerators like Bill O'Reilly and Sean Hannity. Hill's comment was outrageous, stupid and wrong, but not a whole lot more outrageous, stupid and wrong than what comes out of the mouths of O'Reilly, Hannity, Coulter, Malkin, Limbaugh, and Savage on a daily basis.
FOX’s elderly audience probably has never seen a fist bump and tends not to question what FOX and the Republicans tell them (even if that means believing that Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden were partners or that WMDs were found in Iraq), so FOX might be able to put one over on them. I was amazed at this new example of FOX being so deceitful, biased, divisive and/or out of touch with reality, but I wasn’t surprised.
But what did surprise me is that Hill promptly (sort of) apologized, and FOX promptly announced that it is canceling Hill’s show, America’s Pulse, though Hill will remain on FOX in some other capacity.
This seems like an uncommonly responsible and oddly fast thing for FOX to do — in the past, adlibbed insults, snide comments, or wild accusations (as long as they were in the form of a question) were encouraged, as long as they were attacking democrats. Hill has been with FOX since it started, so she probably knows as well as anyone what the FOX producers consider to be acceptable. She didn’t think she was doing anything wrong.
So what is going on at FOX? That’s something I’ve been asking myself for a few weeks now, since something appears to be happening over there.
