Fox News Channel- You can't buy 'em stupid...so you have to make 'em ACT stupid
Kayleigh McEnany gets paid a shit-ton of money to do a Raspberries-level poor acting job
Oh, don't be so wise and stupid.
Elizabeth Gaskell, Wives and Daughters
Ah, yes…Fox News Channel (FNC)- an entire cable news network dedicated to the science (or perhaps the art) of performative dipshittery. It can be genuinely impressive to wonder how so many seemingly well-edumicated folks can automatically drop their IQ by 50-75 points as soon as they sit in front of an FNC camera.
Of course, FNC talking heads aren’t REALLY as stupid as they appear on TV; they’re paid to play a much dumber and more reactionary version of themselves. No one with a JD from Harvard Law School could possibly be as dumb and reactionary as the character played by former Press Secretary for The Former Guy Kayleigh McEnany.
Unless the worms really have eaten her brain.
It’s always good with Fox News clips like this to remind folks that Kayleigh McEnany is not legitimately stupid, but rather is paid to be. She got her JD from Harvard Law. But education ain’t gonna keep you employed at Fox News. On Fox News, the job requirements for most appear to be “Must use same bottle blonde as everyone else” and “Must have no inner pride or self-love that will prevent you from humiliating yourself on TV each and every day for the titillation of Oxycontin-addicted evangelicals out in the flyovers.”
That’s the Fox News Roger Ailes built. The fact that he’s rotting maggot food, and that Fox News has had sexual harassment lawsuits out the wazoo, changes nothing.
Feast your eyes and ears on McEnany being angry at Joe Biden for … something? Going to a spinning and Pilates class while Vladimir Putin was murdering Yevgeny Prigozhin? We are not certain, but then again, we are not the intended audience for this nonsense.
The entire act is, sadly, all too formulaic-
Act as if President Joe Biden is a doddering fool and unable to subsist on solid foods.
Pretend that The Former Guy (only a couple of years younger than Biden) is the picture of virility and can still leap tall buildings in a single bound.
Jump on the slightest indication of anything that can be twisted to indicate that the President is demented, out of touch, and/or doesn’t care what’s happening in the world.
React to the President’s every vacation or personal day as proof of his “laziness” and lack of commitment to his duty and to America. (Why is he not committed to working 24/7/365 for the American people like The Former Guy was??)
Define the President’s attempts at self-care- in this case, exercise- as proof of his selfishness and lack of seriousness. (Exercise is for losers and Liberals.)
Find something to denigrate in every Presidential accomplishment, no matter how significant.
Yeah, it’s pathetic and predictable, and the feigned righteous outrage gets old quickly, but it’s true- we’re not the target demographic. Her act is intended for the older, whiter, more Conservative, and more “Christian” heterosexual cisgender folks in flyover country. And they LOVE the interchangeable FNC bottle blondes like Kayleigh McEnany.
Is she a liar? Duh, of course, she is. She’s the same person who, at her first White House press gaggle, said, “I will never lie to you,” which was itself a lie because everything that followed was knowingly and deliberately untrue.
Kayleigh McEnany can lie at roughly the muzzle rate of an M-60 machine gun. While the machine gun barrel will eventually melt, McEnany is susceptible to no such problem. If her lips are moving, there’s a very high likelihood she’s prevaricating, dissembling, and slicing and dicing the truth.
MCENANY: I cannot. I mean, you saw the former UN ambassador Nikki Haley last night talk about the evils and atrocities of Russia in a very powerful, smart way….
MCENANY: We didn’t elect a Pilates instructor!
MCENANY: We elected a guy to go toe-to-toe with Russia!
Yes, former Ambassador Haley TALKS “about the evils and atrocities of Russia in a very powerful, smart way[.]” President Biden has been DOING something about Russia for more than 2.5 years. Anyone can talk a good ballgame, and former Ambassador Haley’s experience at the United Nations shouldn’t be ignored, but she was not the decider and implementer of policy. She was an adviser.
President Biden is the person upon whom the burden of decision-making rests, and he’s been dealing directly with Russia’s problematic behavior since he took the Oath of Office.
So, no, we DIDN’T elect a Pilates instructor- and McEnany’s smart enough to know that, even if her character’s too stupid to pick up on the distinction. We DID elect someone to go toe-to-toe with Russia, something Joe Biden has been doing since Day One.
If The Former Guy were still in office, Vladimir Putin would be sitting in Kyiv now, and Russian troops would be rounding up and executing Ukrainian resistance fighters. And The Former Guy would be patting Putin on the back for it.
MCENANY: Think about this as you go to the polls next November!
Sure thing. Which is why America will vote for Joe Biden once again.
Joe Biden really should have a Diet Coke button at his desk, though, like any REAL leader would.
Perhaps while we’re waiting in line to vote, randomly laughing to ourselves about how DumpFuck Trump literally told those Georgia jail workers he was 6’3” and 215 pounds, which set America to laughing all over again?
How 77-year-old BigMac McTreasonFuck is allergic to exercise, while the other old one, the 80-year-old who beat him by eight million votes, goes on bike rides and does spin class and Pilates?
What, Interchangeable Fox News Pundit? What is it?
Let’s talk about what McEnany is really doing here. All those questions we asked above are questions the average Fox News viewer is far too stupid to even think about. Their brains are not developed enough for it to occur to them how obviously pointless McEnany’s line of questioning is. They don’t have the basic knowledge of the world to stop and say, “Wait, how is that event in Russia something that should make the American president cut his workout short?” And they certainly don’t know who Prigozhin is/was.
The message here is much simpler, it’s coming through loud and clear for her intended audience, and it is “JOE BIDEN IS A FAGGOT.” That’s it. The interchangeable Fox News pundit is calling Biden a faggot.
Sure; while Liar McLiarnany is painting The Former Guy as the picture of raw, powerful, decisive masculinity, her character’s doing its best to paint President Biden as a weak, effeminate, milquetoast, homosexual Pilates addict. Neither depiction is accurate, of course, but as Theodore White taught us, it's all in the marketing when it comes to running for President. Selling a Presidential candidate is not unlike selling toothpaste or toilet paper.
Tastes Great!! Less Filling!!
And so I ask you: Who would you rather have- someone who radiates raw, powerful, decisive masculinity…or a weak, effeminate, milquetoast, homosexual Pilates addict?
I don’t know about you, but I want the one who’s not destined to end up in prison.
BOOM! Game, set, AND match.
Good night. Game over. Drive home safely, y’all!!
(Going forward, all of my posts will be public. Any reader financial support will be considered pledges- support that’s greatly appreciated but not required. I’ll leave it to my readers to determine if my work is worthy of their monetary support and at what level. To those who do offer their support, thank you. It means more than you know.)
It does not require an excess of intelligence to get a JD from any school. What it requires is the dogged determination to do the work, and a bank account that will pay for the privilege of sitting in the classroom.