Rather Sad moment

[Johonny]

So I'm at the cafe sitting eating breakfast Sunday. The people on either side of me start having a conversation on the election. They go on for about 5 minutes when the waiter decides to pop in. Turns out he's a BIG Faux fan. He can't understand how these people (who seemed very liberal)can be so ill informed. So he starts talking about what he's heard on Billo's show and what Insanity's said... I decide not to say anything. I just felt here's three white collar professionals all well informed liberals and here's a blue collar worker who at ~40 is working as a waiter in a cafe. Which person can least afford to buy into Republicanism? I just can't see how people can so buy into a political philosophy that does nothing to serve them or their interests. I just seems amazing that faux has so much appeal to these people. Faux seems to have done a great job of tuning into these peoples anger and channeling that anger against liberalism. They never seem to clue into the fact Republicanism has not delivered anything to them in the 37 years since Reagan. I just felt really bad for this guy.

[BOSSHOG]

1. He's well trained

just like the right wing noise machine wants him and his kind. Trained to be ignorant. And one of many reasons the right wing noise machine deathly fears anything akin to the fairness doctrine. Just like bush and cheney fear swearing to tell the truth.

And his job would be in jeopardy if I were his boss. He should not be placing himself into the conversations of customers.

[Parche]

2. Most Right Wing Republicans Are Too Ignorant

They are unedumucated.................:hi:

[islandmkl]

3. why would he listen to Faux???

because they tell him 24/7 that it's the liberals fault, well, liberals and minorities fault, that he doesn't have the world by the balls...

preying on the very people their view of 'democracy' keeps down...

the American MSM version of 'Stockholm Syndrome'...

[El Pinko]

4. What a snobbish post.

I know plenty of working-class lefties (although I personally eschew centrism/liberalism).

And I know tons of well-off people who love the trash on the Fox Propaganda Channel.


I don't know how it is that you figure that you and a bunch of other "white-collar professionals" bemoaning the stupidity/ignorance/gullibility of your "blue-collar" inferiors is going to win any of them over.

[hisownpetard]

10. Oh, c'mon - that wasn't at all the intent of the OP. The OP was merely wondering out loud

what the Republican party offered to someone of this man's age and occupation, the same way I often wonder
how anyone who's black, Jewish, gay, female and/or sane could ever possibly vote for a Republican.
Who would vote for a party that basically wants them to disappear?

[El Pinko]

17. Regardless of intent...

...there is no way that waiter would come off his shift and read this OP (Wow, you mean waiters can use the interwebs too?) and not feel like he was being condescended to.

No wonder they turn to Fox & Rush - at least they don't talk down to them when they pump them full of lies.


The OP didn't have to lord the fact that he and his pals were "white collar professionals" over the waiter in order to make a point, but he did it anyway.

[EmperorHasNoClothes]

5. It essentially amounts to brainwashing

Fox and similar outlets train their viewers to vote against their own self-interests (and, in fact, against the self-interests of 99% of the people in this country).

[LeftinOH]

6. One oughtn't discuss politics (or religion) with clients.. regardless of the

setting -its just bad form- whether waiting tables, selling appliances, doing taxes, or filling dental cavitites. Conversation shouldn't stray into certain areas unless everyone involved is already acquainted.

[Orsino]

7. Faux tells small minds that they're better than other people.

What's not to love, if you have issues with self-esteem? Why turn on some network that might cloud the issues with facts and figures?

[lonestarnot]

8. Ack! I don't feel sorry for them! I hate them! Look what the loberheads have done to our country!

:puke:

[lazyriver]

9. I have long been perplexed by the over-worked, underpaid

blue collar republicans. I lost a long time friend after 9/11 as our political affiliations diverged. He, a beer truck driver and Reagan worshiping republican turned even harder to the right and became fiercely pro-Bush. I went the other way. He busted his ass 50 hours a week delivering beer, was in the Naval Reserves, and still had to work weekends to get by. Yet he adamantly supported the republican agenda, was a loyal Faux Newz viewer and Rush listener, and believed "all liberals need to get the f*** out" of "his" country.

Our friendship officially ended when I asked him what, specifically, the republicans were doing for him and other working people. He did the usual right wing side step and asked me what Clinton did for me. I pressed my question again and the debate quickly devolved into a near fist fight. We walked away agreeing not to speak again. I simply don't understand how the people the republicans shit on the most can so fervently support them.

[SoCalDem]

11. Rush & the buds have convinced him that the most important things are

low(no) taxes
no abortions (unless his 14 yr old gets pregnant)
no inheritance taxes
no socialized medicine
no trial lawyers

etc..

why does he support republicans? because he thinks that someday HE will be rich, and all those laws will benefit him THEN..

It's politics,afterlife style..

he sees NO connection to the struggles in his own life because he has proabably lived his entire adult life without a safety net.. he does not fear losing it, because he never had it..and has been told we "cannot afford" it..

People do not fight as hard to GET something, as they do when they fear LOSING something.. That's why millions of Europeans take to the streets when they fear their government is going to take something away from them..

[OnyxCollie]

14. Unless they (conservatives) are convinced what they are losing

benefits themselves, ie. civil liberties.

"The President said, 'They hate us for our freedoms.'"

"Well, that settles it. We need to get rid of these freedoms, then we'll be safe from those librul-lovin,' burka-wearin', cold-blood killers."

"Yes. The looney left moonbats are using civil rights to ruin this country. Just look what's happened since the moonbats brought civil rights. Coloreds shop in the same stores we do. Abortion lovers want to kill white babies, so minorities can go to our schools. They're gonna let men marry dogs soon."

"Libruls want to stop the President from listening to terrorists, 'cause they want Al Qaeda to come and kill us. I ain't gonna bitch if the President hears my call. I ain't got nothin' to hide. Not like them libruls."

"Yeah."

[juno jones]

12. My guess- dude can't afford cable,

and the only station that broadcasts over the air in the area is Fux. I know I've lived in a couple of places where that was about the only choice.

I don't think we even have a republican in the restaurant I work in.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

13. The RW media take the resentments that people in that waiter's position

inevitably feel and channel them away from their proper object, which is all the elements that make up the System. Instead, they channel the resentment toward racial minorities, "uppity" women, GLBT people, Muslims, and anyone else who never actually did anything to the white working class male.

[varelse]

16. Bingo

this is exactly what is happening... somehow I don't see the RW as the only people using this strategy, though :(

[AngryOldDem]

15. You hit on it with this observation:

<<I just seems amazing that faux has so much appeal to these people. Faux seems to have done a great job of tuning into these peoples anger and channeling that anger against liberalism.<<

Fox allows people to be angry -- it's OK to be angry, even if you are completely clueless about what you are angry at, or clueless as to the reasons you are angry at all. And it's not only liberalism. Gays, anti-war protesters, fill in the blank. Like Pavlov, Fox knows what to throw out to get its audience salivating. It taps people's primal fears of stuff they can't (or don't want to) understand, and it makes being ignorant acceptable. (I think a lot of that anger comes from the perception that the right has largely been muzzled since the late 1960s...another topic for another thread.)

I've had similar conversations with a Fox junkie, and if I'm patient and put things in the simplest terms, more often than not he sees my point. Often, it comes down to asking him to think for a minute what Fox is telling him, and then asking him if that REALLY makes sense. If that REALLY jibes with reality as he sees it. More often than not, he admits that it doesn't.

Reprogramming someone from the Fox News Channel isn't really that hard to do, once you wrest the remote from their hands and force them to watch something other than O'Reilly and Fox and Friends, and show them that actually thinking for themselves isn't that hard to do. But, convincing them that Republicanism truly isn't in their best economic interests is another matter altogether.

[Javaman]

18. people who watch faux, don't want real answers they want easy made up answers.nt