South Park Conservatives

The August Chronicles is out with my review of Brian C. Anderson's South Park Conservatives: The Revolt Against Liberal Media Bias. Chronicles doesn't put a great deal of content from the magazine on the web, so you should subscribe. In the meantime, here is an excerpt from my review:

The largest single media phenomenon that Anderson chronicles is the launch of the Fox News Channel in 1996. Anderson simply gushes about Fox, and, indeed, it is fair enough that Republicans should have their own news channel, given that most of the other networks lean politically in the other direction. However, I cannot swallow the working-class baloney that Anderson serves up when discussing Fox. He practically spits Red Man chaw in quoting "pugnacious Irishman" Bill O ’Reilly, who describes his show as representing a "working class point of view." Anderson also informs the reader that Fox's CEO, Roger Ailes, who grew up in a "blue-collar Ohio community," reports news for the "whole country that elitists will never acknowledge." Reading such hogwash gives me a new appreciation for ABC's Peter Jennings, who couldn't be any snootier if he read the news in French while enjoying a piquant Chardonnay.