duggars

No, MSNBC is not the left mirror image of Fox

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Crossposted from DemocraticDiva.com

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I often encounter people who are so wedded to the “both sides do it” narrative that no matter how bad the Right gets, they will strain to find something, anything, that has the remotest appearance to being equal to it on the Left. One particularly tedious example of this is the belief that MSNBC is the liberal version of Fox News.

Now, let me stipulate to being sympathetic to those of you who think the entire cable news concept is garbage. The 24 hour news cycle leads to a lot of inane bullshit making its way on the air to fill time. So I’m not here to defend the overall quality of MSNBC, which is frankly lacking much of the time. What I am disputing – not that I should even have to since it should be bleedingly obvious to anyone who spends an hour watching each network – is the risible notion that MSNBC and Fox are ideological mirror images. They’re simply not.

Fox News is a major propaganda organ of reactionary conservatism and its political party, the GOP. The entire day’s programming is dominated by conservatives. There are no liberal hosts on the network and while they do keep a few token Democrats around, it is mainly to humiliate them or to set a torch to the latest liberal strawman. MSNBC, on the other hand, starts it’s programming day with Morning Joe, a two-hour show co-hosted by former Republican Congressman Joe Scarborough (who has not gone liberal).

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Should Cathi Herrod answer some questions about the Duggars? Why, yes!

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Cathi Herrod

The shocking Josh Duggar story broke last Thursday, when Mark and I left for a long weekend in a mountain cabin. When we returned it was all over the place and perhaps the most interesting (if by “interesting” you mean “vomit-inducing”) reactions to it have come from conservatives defending Josh Duggar (while insisting they are NOT defending Josh Duggar!).

I’m honestly surprised that our local news people, who can usually be counted on to find an “Arizona connection” to any major national story (no matter how tenuous), haven’t seized upon a rather obvious one with Josh Duggar, who resigned quickly from his position as executive director of FRC Action, the political arm of the highly anti-gay and anti-choice Family Research Council.

FRC has deep roots in Arizona right wing politics, as Political Research Associates reported in 2012.

Some of the most important leaders in the conservative movement were on a marriage equality panel at the recent Values Voters Summit. But likely few of the conference participants had even heard of the panelists or the Family Policy Council, the network that makes them greater than the sum of their parts.

Panel moderator Cathi Herrod, president of the Arizona Center for Policy, is worried about the “Four states voting on whether marriage will be redefined in their states.” Herrod said that proponents of marriage equality (no, she didn’t really call them that) “see the fights in these states as the kickoff to reversing the victories in thirty-two states where the voters said ‘yes’ to marriage being defined as between one man and one woman.” She sees any victories by her opponents as potentially a “game changer.”

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