One America News- Пусть они все задушится от своей рвоты

When you make Fox News looks like the picture of integrity, you have a problem

Translation: “May they all choke on their own vomit” XOXO

We all know that Fox News Channel (FNC) is “fair and balanced” only in a universe not in any way like our own, right? Since 1996, FNC has risen to the top of the Right-wing slime pond by creating an alternate reality for angry White Conservative heterosexual Christians. Believe it or not, there are media organizations MUCH farther to the Right than FNC and even less devoted to the truth (as difficult as that may be to imagine).

At least one of those networks, One America News (OAN), is struggling for survival. Unfortunately (or not, depending on your perspective), it turns out that even cable providers have a maximum level of bullshit and Right-wing propaganda they’ll tolerate before they pull the plug. OAN appears to have far exceeded that.

Cancel culture strikes again! Its latest victim is One America News, which got dropped by Verizon Fios yesterday after failing to renegotiate its carrier agreement.

The divorce, which was first reported by the Daily Beast's Justin Baragona, leaves OAN without a way to get its very serious news journalisms on the airwaves. It was already dropped by DirecTV, after which it filed a hilariously stupid breach of contract suit against AT&T, which owns DirecTV, alleging that the telecom's board chair was a dastardly Democrat hellbent on "cutting off [OAN's] ability to earn revenue to help fund its defense" in the defamation case filed against it by Dominion Voting Systems.

Which is exactly the LOLsuit you'd expect from a network which made Chanel Rion a "star" by flogging every election fraud conspiracy or bit of COVID misinformation crapped out of the ass-end of 4chan. Remember that time when Rion claimed that octogenarian philanthropist George Soros was tailing her around Ukraine as she and Rudy Giuliani pursued the "truth" about President Joe Biden and his son Hunter?

It’s difficult to imagine a “news” network less devoted to objective, factual news than FNC, but one could be forgiven for wondering if OAN even has a fact-checking department. With a “news” operation built on the soft sand of conspiracy theories, misinformation, lies, and propaganda, OAN has a tiny following of fringe Right-wing zealots and psychopaths on court-ordered Thorazine regimens.

These are the folks who think InfoWars and Storm Front represent the unvarnished truth. Mama must be SO proud….

In the aftermath of the Tea Party ragefests that cropped up during the 2010 summer town hall season, the Far-Right gave birth to its own media complex. Modeled partly on FNC, operations like OAN have always had a loose and very adversarial relationship with objective truth. In the Right-wing echo chamber, “truth” has come to be defined as something fungible, something an intelligent operator can manipulate to undergird whatever a political moment requires.

Some (like me) on the Left call that “propaganda” or “misinformation,” and it’s difficult to argue with those definitional words. But when truth becomes less empirical than malleable, manipulators use it to support whatever propaganda and/or talking points support Right-wing candidates or movements.

Will this earn Verizon a nastygram from Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, who took time out of his busy schedule of harassing trans kids to send AT&T a letter joined by AGs in Mississippi, Louisiana, Missouri, Montana, and South Carolina telling them to put OAN back in the lineup or else.

"My fellow attorneys general and I strongly recommend that you reconsider your present course and renew your contract with OAN in April," he wrote. "Your failure to do so will not only cause you to lose millions of dollars in business, but also drive many millions of Americans to simply cancel your services outright, as President Trump and other leading figures have already called for."

And yet, AT&T defied these very serious law men and their extremely credible claims.

How will America learn to live without OAN and its gymnastic feats of onanism? Guess we'll soldier on somehow. But don't worry, kids, we'll always have Newsmax.

On the one hand, the decision to dump OAN is purely a Verizon business decision. On the other, one could argue that OAN is an exceedingly small network among their lineup and that not being able to re-negotiate a mutually acceptable rights fee deal is an unfortunate fact of life in business. It’s also a covert way to rid themselves of a network that’s undoubtedly more trouble than it’s worth.

The only cable system in the US currently offering OAN is Alaska’s General Communications, Inc (GCI), which has a subscriber base of about 100,000. GCI is looking to ditch cable altogether for streaming, which probably makes sense in Alaska.

The only other digital platforms that carry OAN are Vifgo and KlowdTV. Unfortunately, those systems are so small they’re carried only in state mental institutions in rural Maine and gun stores, porn shops, and Waffle Houses in rural Kentucky, west Texas, and West Virginia. Oh, and a hockey arena in Warroad, MN.

It’s not surprising that Texas AG Ken Paxton is involved; he’s carried water for Conservative causes and businesses for years. And he’ll probably get a few hefty donations to his political war chest out of his idle threats, so it’s perhaps worthwhile to him from that angle. Plus, he can claim to be leading the charge to protect Conservatives from craven Liberals and their dastardly plots.

Whether a few state attorneys general can dictate business decisions to a multinational corporation remains an open question. Or whether the threat will convince Verizon that this isn’t a hill on which they should want to die. So, in the end, political influence may deliver OAN from its well-deserved death.

Or not. Because OAN has little of value to offer the general public.

In the end, Conservatives stick together and stick up for one another. The truth of the case in question hardly matters; it comes down to who can apply the most political pressure until someone caves.

You might wonder who will stand up for the truth. Sadly, there isn’t enough money or political clout for the truth to have a place in this fight.

Surprised? You shouldn’t be.