Claytoonz: Fox News needs stories to distract from Jan. 6 hearings
The first of the live televised January 6 Committee hearings will air tonight at 8 p.m. You can watch it on CNN, MSNBC, CBS, ABC, NBC, PBS, C-Span, and even Fox Business. Fox News is sticking to its regular line up of Fucknut One at 8 p.m, Fucknut Two at 9 p.m, and Fucknut Three at 10 p.m.
Fox News does plan to cover the hearings during TuckerHannityIngraham time as “news warrants.” What that means is producers will be watching the hearings and writing material of it for the anchors to be outraged over on the air. Fox News will have a special on the hearings at 10 p.m. which will gaslight the hearings to their viewers who didn’t watch them.
Fox News will not air the hearings for three reasons. Reason one is that they get the highest ratings with their usual primetime lineup. Sure, it’s all white nationalist propaganda delivered by a bunch of lying bastards, but they get viewers. Sure, most of those viewers are Nazis, but Neilsen Ratings count Nazis. Nazis buy Balance of Nature and MyPillows.
The second reason they won’t air the hearings is that they can’t let their viewers make up their own minds. Fox News can’t let its viewers watch the facts play out. Fox News has to gaslight the issues for their viewers. If you’re a Cletus, it’s easier to be told what to think than it is to develop your own thoughts.
The third reason Fox News won’t air the hearings live is that it would probably piss off their white nationalist audience that’s mostly made of sycophantic MAGAts. Fox News doesn’t want to air evidence against Proud Boys and Oathkeepers when their audience consists of Proud Boys and Oathkeepers. Their viewers don’t want to spend two hours hearing how Trump is a traitor to the United States. They’ll change the channel to Newsmax or One American News before hearing that stuff. They would just stick their fingers in their ears and go “la la la la la” for two straight hours, but they’d forget the words. Cletus will send Ella-Mae on top of the trailer to rearrange the antennae. She doesn’t need shoes for that.
So what will Fox News talk about tonight? Maybe they’ll do a segment on how nobody should listen to a celebrity like Matthew McConaughey talk about politics right before they advertise Tucker’s upcoming special on Kid Rock (this is a real thing).
Maybe they’ll talk about the assistant principal fired in Mississippi for reading to children the book “I want a new butt.” Maybe they’ll talk about the most dangerous thing making its way into schools today and threatening children, Drag Queen Story Time.
They’ll probably talk about the migrant caravan heading this way through Mexico. Remember during the 2018 midterms when it was all Fox News and Trump would talk about? They claimed George Soros was funding it. It was the most dangerous threat to this nation since Obama’s tan suit. It was so dangerous that Fox News stopped talking about it the day after the election.
The surest bet is that Fox News will do tonight what they do every night, and that is deliver propaganda over news.
Most news outlets are businesses that seek profits, but most of them understand they still have to be responsible to the public. Fox News does not get that. So while airing the hearings would be the responsible thing to do, Fox News would rather go with its usual lineup and continue selling advertising for the evening. But even worse, they’re not going to let their viewers see the proceedings but will later gaslight it all to them. And it’s mostly for entertainment.
Instead of showing two hours of evidence that Donald Trump tried to destroy our democracy, Fox News would rather show their viewers two hours of MyPillow and gold coins commercials.
Music note: I listened to Queen, not because of the issue here, but because they rock. However, when I first started drawing this, I got Cher songs in my head.
Clay Jones is the 2022 recipient of the RFK Human Rights Journalism Award in Editorial Cartooning, and won a 2021 Sigma Delta Chi Award for Excellence in Journalism from the Society of Professional Journalists. He was a finalist for the Herblock Prize in 2019 and a finalist for the National Headliner Award in 2020. See more award-winning editorial cartoons from him at Claytoonz.com.