I’ll try to do this as succinctly as possible. Head over to Youtube for this clip from Fox and Friends in which Steve Doocy and Stuart Varney talk some bullshit. My commentary:
0:12 - Doocy makes his “yeah, right” face which I think we should call “a doocy.”
0:48 - Doocy, allegedly a journalist, states some numbers that he “read somewhere.” He doesn’t site a source, which would’ve knocked off some points if this were something more formal like a 5th grade social studies report.
0:59 - Varney calls Doocy’s pre-school cost estimates “probably accurate.” He qualifies this by saying he “doesn’t have the precise figures.” I don’t know why he didn’t just make something up because he’s about to make up all kinds of things.
1:28 - Varney on what Obama is doing: “Raise taxes on the rich and offer all kinds of free stuff to people who will vote for you in the future.” Varney pulls the “raise taxes” thing out of thin air. It has no relevance to anything that’s being discussed but he knows its a talking point he has to sneak in someplace. This was as good as any.
The big disturbance for me, is the insistence that education equates to “free stuff” and not vital programs for the country, which is what I tend to think of education as. I’m also not sure how well Varney’s accusation of Obama “buying votes” will work, since people are never going to have a chance to vote for Obama again, unless he goes on American Idol post-presidency.
1:55 - After admitting a few times that Obama hasn’t said how he’ll pay for the program, Varney continues to accuse Obama of doing things the president has only done in Varney’s own imagination, including “forcing big government on the states.” This is how Fox News gets it done: Speculation presented as analysis. Everything Varney says in this beat is 100% made up but everything about his delivery would suggest that it might be real.
2:18 - Doocy’s continued insistence on having read things is starting to sound like overcompensation, like he’s the kid in class who won’t admit to not having read the assignment, even though he didn’t know that Johnny Tremaine totally can’t use his other hand.
Doocy goes on the claim preschool doesn’t really help kids in the long run, something Jon Stewart did a fine job of debunking in the middle of this clip from The Daily Show. The same study that Doocy keeps claiming to have read, actually says that preschool education shows a correlation with “graduation rates, lower crime rates, increased college attendance, [and] income.” Which makes me think Doocy just read the first chapter and skimmed the rest. (Incidentally, the whole clip from the Daily Show is quite good).
3:05 - Varney calls Obama’s plan to give every kid a shot at preschool “an entitlement.” Because I think we’ve all had enough of 4 year olds leaching off the system, haven’t we?
