The Eternal Sunshine of the Heartless Brain
Fox Launches Santorum’s Weapon of Mass Delusion
By Christopher Famighetti

I was eating pistachios in my underwear watching Fox News, covered in Cheeto dust, basking in the blue light of television, biting my nails in anticipation of the grand news that was about to be unveiled. Pennsylvania Senator Rich Santorum and Michigan Representative Peter Hoekstra unveiled the pot of gold: we had finally found the weapons of mass destruction in Iraq! The great day in history was June 21^st, 2006 and I think we all remember it well. Remember? You were finishing up that weekly TPS report before going to happy hour at Applebee’s, where you really knew you had a reason to enjoy that pitcher of margaritas.

As far as I could tell there were three potential reactions to such information being trumpeted as fact through the Fox News cycle on June 21st: panic, the passing of the phrase “hope springs eternal” through your mind, or the routine outrage at the audacity of Fox News to put forth blatant lies simply to confuse the public. The most routinely outrageous part of the ordeal was that all of the talking heads on Fox trumpeted right along, at times even inviting decoy “liberal” commentators to apologize to the country for doubting the war’s rationale.

Sean Hannity led the discussion between conservative “author” Ann Coulter and Laura Schwartz, a former aide to Clinton who was in charge, specifically, of event planning. Does anyone know who Event Planner extraordinaire Laura Schwartz is? Either way, none should be surprised by this b-list Democratic pundit placed alongside a conservative heavyweight. This sort of mismatching is a long-documented tactic of Fox News, evident in the selection of pussy-whipped Alan Colmes to sit aside the vitriolic meat-popsicle in a suit that is Sean Hannity. In an analysis of the war debate, Coulter suggests that Iraqis are better off since they have been freed “from the rape rooms,” a comment from which we can deduce that Coulter either hasn’t seen the photos from Abu Ghraib or is a more subtle comic than we appreciate. After enthusiastically agreeing with Coulter, Hannity invites the lamb to slaughter, saying to Schwartz, “Give me your liberal line. What is it going to be?” Later in the show, Hannity returns to the WMD issue with Whoopi Goldberg, long known for her outstanding political analysis (see her work on Hollywood Squares). Whoopi offers her insights, saying that she wants to find the “the guy who put this gig together,” and I think she’s talking about Osama Bin Laden, but who knows? She could always be referring to Jumpin’ Jack Flash director Penny Marshall.

Fox’s John Gibson and Brit Hume join in the jingoistic chorus, debating the issue of WMD in their own uniquely misinformed ways. On Gibson’s “My Word” he questions the Weekly Standard’s smirking Bill Kristol, who suggests that the White House is too “timid” to come out and embrace the news of the WMD discovery after receiving a black eye over the intelligence disasters leading up to the war. The idea that the same White House that tacitly authorized torture, challenged terrorists to “bring ‘em on” and attacked a country on a hunch could be called “timid” is an offensive but useful mischaracterization. As far as my analysis goes, it is clear that the White House would want to keep quiet in such a situation so as not to directly associate itself with the misinformation being peddled by Santorum and Hoekstra, while simultaneously not obstructing any effect the false WMD claims may have on public opinion.

Brit Hume contributes to this coordinated and desperate attempt to wedge this argument’s foot in the door, by discussing it with the panel on Fox’s flagship news program Special Report. In a moment of lucidity, NPR’s Mara Liasson suggests that the White House didn’t utilize the information because “they don’t think it’s important, I guess. I mean.” Hume responds, “I know, but that’s not a good reason for not letting people know they’re there.” I’ve read over that exchange on the transcript several times and it’s a strange statement on Hume’s part. He admits that the administration realizes how insignificant it was to find expired chemical weapons from before the Gulf War buried in the desert, essentially stating that his show is discussing a matter of little or no importance. Finally, I see my views represented on Fox News.

The most novel attempt to defend the entire charade, though, is made by Fox Military Analyst Thomas McInerery, who suggests that the Bush Administration didn’t make noise about these WMD as to not alienate our allies, specifically Russia, China and France. “[I]f you get in there and if you found those weapons and found the precursors, the fingerprints would go back to Russia, China and France. Now those are the three countries that had the most conventional weapons sales to Saddam Hussein.” Talk about delusions of grandeur. Implying that the cowboys who got us into the Iraq mess and ignored massive international opposition in the process have become ultra-sensitive to the feelings of other countries, especially France, is ridiculous. What McInerery fails to mention is that the degraded weapons in question were not conventional, but chemical weapons, and those were supplied by other countries, including Germany—and the US.

In the end, Fox issues no correction and no conclusion to the “debate” that it held up like a newborn baby lion to the African sun. It is no surprise that a University of Maryland poll showed that regular Fox News viewers are consistently misinformed, specifically concerning the WMD issue. The results are expected given this sort of inaccurate and misleading coverage. This is another example of one of the major strategic tenets of the American conservative movement, to force itself into public debate while offering very little that is meaningful or valid, in an attempt to simply confuse the electorate enough that they are repeatedly fooled into voting against their own interests.