FOXNews Porn: Right-Wing Hypocrisy Meets Left-Wing Puritanism

There are a great many ways to hate on the FOX News Channel if you happen to be a political progressive like I am.

There's the consistent browbeat of right-wing propaganda thinly cloaked under the brand of "Fair and Balanced News". The revolving door between certain luminaries and commentators of that network and the Bush/Cheney administration-cum-Mafia. Bill O'Reilly. Sean Hannity. Tony Snow. Bill O'Reilly. Bill "Bomb the shit out of Iran and Syria" Kristol. Neal Cavuto. Bill freakin' O'Reilly.

But...for some progressives out there, that alone isn't quite enough....they would like to expose Fixed Noise (to use Keith Olbermann's classic gloss....although for this particular story, Bina Becker's acronym of "FUX Snooze" would be more appropos) for something entirely different.

As a peddler of porn.

What's that, you say??? How can a right-wing media outlet like Faux News be even remotely involved with an industry that most of their base viewers would find beyond the pale???

Easy, says Robert Greenwald, who was the producer of the documentary Outfoxed which was one of the first exposes of FOX News' corrosive impact on the public at large: They use gratituous sexual images and "misogynous and innapropriate" sexual media to attract their audience to their news and information programs.

Greenwald has been a busy man of late pushing his "FOX News peddles indecency while attacking it" meme: he has released film clips over at YouTube (one example of which appears here) depicting how everyone there from BillO to Neal Cavuto to the regular news programs splatter gratituous T&A (and even the occasional blurred XXX image) into their news coverage. He has developed a spoof website (foxnewsporn.com) to promote his efforts; He recently wrote an article for the "progressive" daily Alternet.org promoting his efforts (and claiming that his video clips were "censored" by both YouTube and Digg by not being linkable; kinda not true since I just linked his clip two sentences ago); and he has gotten significant airtime, even to the point of scoring an interview segment on MSNBC's Countdown with Keith Olbermann.

Most of his case consists of replaying clips of where some FOX luminary prattles on about the "sexual decline" and "moral decay" of the country...while images of pretty risque and suggestive sexual activity (or merely sexy images) fill the background screen.

For instance, there is BillO moaning and groaning about the infamous Carl Jr's hamburger ad featuring Paris Hilton doing her Jenna Jameson imitation and nearly mounting her car and having multiple orgasms over their hamburgers....while Paris winds and grinds uninterrupted in the background.

Or, in another BillO segment, another attack on "secular progressive San Francisco (read, "homoSEXual") values", as represented by the annual sex freakery known as the Exotic Erotic Ball....complete with detailed coverage and footage of said acts of freakery from a journalist who was there. (Apparantly, BillO skipped last years Folsom Street Fair, so he wasn't able to report on that particular alleged atrocity of "secular progressive" values.)

Or...there is a "breaking" story about an alledged sexual assault over at the Playboy Mansion in Los Angeles...a perfect excuse for gratituous T&A shots at Hugh Hefner and his stable of bikini beauties frollicking about nearly nekkid.

Or...how about another "breaking story" scaring the viewers about rapists running amok during Spring Break....featuring strippers and thong-clad dancers flashing their naughty bits (pertinent parts electronically covered, of course).

Or even today, on Cavuto's program: a warning about strip clubs "enticing pre-teens"...complete with some pretty saucy pics of said patrons to entice....errrrrr....scare them.

All this, Greenwald asserts, proves how corrosive FOX News is to the body politic; and they must be stopped by any means possible, up to and including media boycotts.

Now, being a prime Fixed Noise hater myself, I normally would be willing to add my support to anything that piles them on. But I just can't hitch myself on this campaign, for the following reasons.

First: This is nothing new with Rupert Murdoch. He is well versed in the art of using skin and sex to bait the trap to get consumers; how else did he make his millions with his tabloids in Great Britain (see the Page 3 Girls) or with his FOX cable network (Married....With Children, anyone???). And as for BillO....well, we'll just leave him to Andrea Mackris' tell all book (which probably won't appear on FOX News anytime soon).

Second and more importantly: Although it is certainly right and proper to spell out the hypocrisy of Fixed Noise playing both sides of the sex media street (remember, Murdoch paid Judith Regan big bucks to sell Jenna Jameson's tell-all biography two years ago, even as he also paid BillO and other assorted columnists to diss her as an ignorant slut), I'm wondering whether Greenwald's real beef is with FOX News or with the sexy images they appropriate...for he doesn't make too clear that he's really not more offended by the behavior of the images than he is by FNC. There are loads of loaded commentary about "indecency" and "gratituous sex" in his documentaries, and there is a not-so-subtle plea for the viewers to "do something" about the images...as if Fixed Noise's more normal political crimes aren't worthy of censure enough.

And thirdly: most of the "pornographic" images that so grieves Greenwald aren't really that porographic or even softcore: they range from refined Girls Gone Wild video excerpts of young girls carvoting, to women lounging in bikinis, to brief titty flashes and thong-clad booty shaking, to women kissing (the Madonna and Britney Spears liplock at the 2002 American Music Awards is featured as one example of FOX "indecency"); to the occasional interview with porn starlets. One wonders from watching this whether Greenwald is really condemning FOX for being right-wing hypocrites...or for showing such evil "misogynistic" and "objectifying" images in the first place. I tend to think more of the later..which would make him only one step removed from antipornfeminist "leftist" fanatic Nikki Craft, who attacks more hardcore porn with pretty much the same theme (though with Larry Flynt as her primary Great Satan rather than Fixed Noise).
The way I see it, why is it that some liberals and "progressives" are so willing to play the Puritan protectionist card as a means of promting themselves and their pet causes?? The notion of attempting to split your enemy amongst genuine Puritan populist and "libertarian" lines may be one attraction (read that to mean getting the real religious Right folk foaming about the "conservative establishment"); perhaps Greenwald really wants to attract authentic social conservatives to progressive causes as well; and sees attacks on establishment outlets like FOX News and their "indecency" as a bridge to such a right-wing populist constituency.

But this is a dangerous game of tit for tat that not only legitimizes and reenforces the most reactionary sexual beliefs as "progressive"; it also mistakes scapegoating of legitimate consensual and harmless sexual imagery and expression with more effective political analysis and organization.

All this campaign proves to me is that conservatives have no monopoly on using sexual fear and loathing as a wedge to import their particular ideology; and that some progressives and liberals need just as much to check themselves and their antisexual myopia. FOX News is bad enough as a politically obtuse, racist, right-wing media organization as it is; there is no need to pile on at the expense of innocent sexual expression.

[Cross-posted over at The SmackDog Chronicles (BTW, memo to Ren and Belle: Update the SmackChron link in this blogroll..please??? OKThanxbye. :-)]