From this mornings Guardian Luke O’Neil

The following 8 pieces are from an article describing what is being called FOX news brain, and the damage it is doing to American families. Read this and don’t make your family one of the victims.

I love my mother. She is one of the kindest and sweetest people you will ever meet and I would be nothing without her. I’ve never heard her say a bad word about anyone, never mind anything overtly terrible, like the type of thing, for example, you might hear from Tucker Carlson or Sean Hannity. But I do know, much to my dismay, that she has watched them on TV a lot over the years. As such, my mom and I have agreed to not talk about politics anymore. The cognitive dissonance between this lovely woman finding something appealing in the most xenophobic pundits on TV is too hard for me to reconcile. I don’t want to think about it.

It turns out there are a lot of families across the country who have a similar arrangement, or worse, in which people have stopped talking altogether to relatives they feel have been stolen from them by Fox News.


To be clear, Fox News didn’t invent the w***e s*******y and r****m at the heart of America, but the channel has definitely supercharged it. It’s also important to point out that “My parents watched the bad TV and got r****t off it” is clearly a much less serious problem than being someone whose life is put at risk by the type of stuff Fox News promotes. That doesn’t make seeing someone you care about slide into the myopic bubble of right wing propaganda any easier.


I mentioned the idea of losing family to Fox News brain on Twitter the other day, and unsurprisingly, a lot of people had their own similar stories. I asked some of them to share how it felt.

Here’s a collection of the stories people shared.

For a little counter-programming, we actually got one of my cousins back before it was too late. He listened to InfoWars religiously from 2009-2015 or so and is an avid h****r who lives in the woods, smokes a lot of weed and plays a lot of video games, so I thought he was a goner for sure. But thanks to the infinite patience of his little sister, he actually came to his senses and realized what dangerous crock he had bought into.

He could see how disappointed we all were, but having his baby sister tell him every day that she loved him but that he was slowly rotting his own brain seemed to do it. There’s part of me that wonders if what sealed it was the fact that InfoWars was going mainstream, and it wasn’t as cool or exciting to believe in Jade Helm or wh**ever if those beliefs weren’t truly counter-culture.

Sorry for your family fued over politics. It is similar in my family. I have a zillionaire uncle who we all love and who is a dev**ed Fox news brainwashed fool. Most of the Democrats in our family keep him angry with us. My brothers are whacked out and gaga over Trump and all the wonderful things he is doing for our country. I just ignore them and sometimes I mention things that they agree with and it blows their minds. That said I consider myself to be a moderate though I am called a Liberal. About Liberal-- It used to mean forward thinking and good for the benefit of society but now it is used as a slur and a term for a c*******t enemy of the state. Thanks Fox news you divided America.

Kevyn,
While I can perhaps understand your disdain for Sean Hannity on Fox, and can certainly understand Rush Limbaugh, I have a harder time understanding while you feel the way you do for Tucker Carlson.

I find Carlson to be one of the more fair and open minded talk show hosts. He usually gives his guests a fair amount of time to state their opinion on a subject, and doesn't constantly interrupt the guest when they respond to his questions and statements.

You should also appreciate that the mindset of the viewer often determines how they will respond to a particular talk show host. I for one cannot stand Rachael Maddow. She comes across to me as biased, intolerant, and generally unable to consider any viewpoint other than her own.

I personally have stopped watching most Fox News programming (just like I have stopped watching CNN, MSNBC, and listening to Public Radio). I prefer to get most of my news and information from alternative news sites (both left and right leaning) and a lot of libertarian and anarchistic leaning sites.

Oh hell yes--You should have seen me at the board meeting 2 days ago. I read a man the r**t act and gave him a very stern lecture. . I put that insubordinate agitating vicious vindictive loser in his place. I even had the Special Districts of Oregon backing me up--no schitt. Long story but when someone raises my ire they get what is coming to them. I was told afterward that I had held my temper quite well. Hell I was embarrassed because of my position as president of the board I expect myself to be a gentleman at all times. A person can only take so much.