After the debacle of 2012, in which conservatives at all levels were gobsmacked that Barack Obama beat Mitt Romney, some of them began to question the information bubble in which they had ensconced themselves. It's reassuring to think that everything is always going your way, but does it really serve you in the end? Then after a few minutes, they essentially said, "But we love our bubble!" and went right back into its warm embrace.
Which brings me to this tweet I saw this morning from Bill Kristol:
Stunning poll results on Iran: 65% willing to use force to stop Iran from nukes, 84% call Obama-type deal bad idea.
- Bill Kristol (@BillKristol) March 5, 2015
Wow, I thought, those are incredible results. Fox News polls are always silly, but this may be worth checking out. So I went to the story, and from there to the actual results, and found the questions in question. Here's the first:
"Do you favor or oppose the United States taking military action against Iran if that were the only way to keep Iran from getting nuclear weapons?"
Interestingly, they've been asking this question for a while, but they used to ask it without the phrase "if that were the only way." But I suppose that phrasing didn't produce high enough numbers, so they changed it to this version. And, what do you know, 65 percent of people said yes. Perhaps in the next round, they can add "which would mean you and your children will die a fiery death."
And here's the second question:
"Do you think it's a good idea or a bad idea to allow Iran to get nuclear weapons 10 years from now in return for it agreeing that it won't obtain nuclear weapons before then?"
What? "...allow Iran to get nuclear weapons 10 years from now"? Seriously? That's how they describe the proposed deal between the U.S. and Iran. So naturally, 84 percent of people say no, we shouldn't let them have weapons in ten years. (If you're looking for a survey that described the deal in reality-based terms, you can see this one, which found that 61 percent of people supported it.)
What I wonder is, do the people at Fox think this kind of thing really serves their audience well? I guess they must, or they wouldn't be doing it. But to me, it shows that they look on that audience as a bunch of suckers. This isn't just about partisanship. The folks at MSNBC also deliver their audience a lot of material that they'll find congenial. But I have no sense that MSNBC believes there's any value in deliberately misinforming that audience. You don't actually do them any favors by telling them that everyone in the world (except for the traitorous liberals) agrees with them.
You do keep them watching, I guess; there's no arguing with Fox's financial success. But there's a real contempt for its viewers on display here.
