Friday, May 07, 2021

The 'Foxitis' Defense.

AllTheirCodswallop'R
UsVille


You knew it had to be coming.

And now it has arrived...

The lawyer for one of the folks involved in the attack on the US Capitol on January 6th has said that a specific media organ made him due it.

Luke O'Neil of the Guardian has the story. Here is his lede:

The lawyer for a Delaware man charged over the Capitol attack in January is floating a unique defense: Fox News made him do it.

Anthony Antonio, who is facing five charges including violent entry, disorderly conduct and impeding law enforcement during civil disorder, fell prey to the persistent lies about the so-called “stolen election” being spread daily by Donald Trump and the rightwing network that served him, his attorney Joseph Hurley said during a video hearing on Thursday.

Antonio spent the six months before the riots mainlining Fox News while unemployed, Hurley said, likening the side effects of such a steady diet of misinformation to a mental health syndrome.

“Fox television played constantly,” he said. “He became hooked with what I call ‘Foxitis’ or ‘Foxmania’, and became interested in the political aspect and started believing what was being fed to him.”...


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Now.

You know that the late night shows and the Bill Maher-types will have a field day with this.

However, I honestly think that there is merit to this position and the susceptibility to being swayed to extremism by demonstrably false codswallop that is both peddled and not immediately discredited as such.

And, further, as long as the fine folks doing the peddling do not pay a political and professional price for doing so we will never be rid of it.




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And do not for one second think that we do not have our own Canuckistian variants of concern.

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4 comments:

Keith said...

Yea, it seems at first blush a stretch, but given a while ago even Fox lawyers argued in a slander case, you can’t take Tucker Carlson seriously, and won.

https://www.npr.org/2020/09/29/917747123/you-literally-cant-believe-the-facts-tucker-carlson-tells-you-so-say-fox-s-lawye

So to your point Ross, alternative facts and pulling the wool over the eyes of a willing audience will go on, there doesn’t seem to be a consequence and the $s just keep on coming.

Lew said...

If the judge thinks there is some merit to this defence as you and I do, RossK, and therefore imposes a lighter sentence, surely Rupert’s goons are liable as accessories. As someone on the Twit machine said, “Not guilty by reason of Sean Hannity”.

Perhaps a jail sentence with mandatory provision that a TeeVee installed high in the cell and tuned loudly and irreversibly 24/7 to MSNBC would be a fitting result,

RossK said...

Keith--

Thanks for the reminder regarding the MurdochCorp's defense of their continued use of Mr. Carlson who, as Jon Stewart once pointed out, is (still) hurting America (now more than ever).


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e.a.f. said...

the way fox carried on it was, in my opinion, a form of brain washing. the whole thing smacked of cultism. Hope the guy wins and then they go after fox and the rest of them.