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Fox & Friends replaces Obama address laughter with cricket noises
By Jeff MillsJanuary 26th, 2011, 5:15 pmComments (10)
So as we all know, President Obama gave his annual State of the Union address last night to a politically non-segregated packed house. It was a fairly dry, workmanlike speech, effectively conveying salient points in an even-tempered manner, which we've come to expect from Obama. But he did have his humorous moments, with a couple jokes landing solidly.
Fox & Friends, the morning chat show on Fox News, didn't seem as amused, which isn't exactly earth-shattering news itself. Brian Kilmeade introduced a doctored clip of the two jokes that substituted the sound of crickets for actual audience laughter. The smoked salmon line in particular went over pretty good, in actuality — in the video, you can even see John Boehner reluctantly amused in the background. Just from a purely objective standpoint, cricket noises in this context just aren't funny, knowing that it's a blatant attempt to spin an undeniably successful reaction to a joke. It wouldn't surprise me if Fox News employees were contractually required to kiss a statue of Rupert Murdoch before leaving work each day.
Commentarium (10 Comments)
Has anybody else noticed that all the fox female news anchors are blonde, and all of the cnn female news anchors are notblonde? WHY?
Eh. In the scheme of Fox's predations, this isn't so bad. This type of joke goes back to at least the '60s -- I remember seeing a video at some point of either Lyndon Johnson or Sam Yorty (mayor of LA at the time) giving a press conference with a laugh track dubbed in.
I suppose Mr. "Objective" Mills - the "Workman" doesn't know that the "Salmon" analogy is a rip-off of speech work from another wonder of Hyper-Statist Corporatism known as FDR. And yeah, jokes about arbitrary government and an extraconstitutional Police State giving you illegitimate pat-downs is not funny. It's a joke that infuriated your ACLU cronies. But, you and your partisan pot smokers were probably too busy watching American girls chug wine on corporate television.
Boon Companions - are you saying you would prefer that terrorists board planes with explosives in order to preserve the integrity of The Constitution? That's not what you're saying, is it?
Plain and simply, this is a TV show for morons.
Boon... What? Not one mention of Stalin in that comment. Knee-jerk conservative whelps about freedom ain't what they used to be. God I'd love to hear what the European social philosophers (who's ideas are the foundation of the American Constitution) would think about those ideas being blindly held up against something so patently self-preseving as airport security policy in an age of terrorism. Surely self-presevation is the greatest of all freedoms and frankly, I'd rather the airport handle it their way rather than let you go all Die Hard 2 in your own special freedom loving way.
Boom, perhaps you should start TeabagAir with security provided by CHL holders and specially-trained "don't touch my junk" ninjas.
Why does Fox even pretend to be an actual news organization any more?
Twid: Jeffrey Immelt in your mouth. It's called Corporatism. ..."Social" philosophers. Wow. You are too erudite for me. You must've, like, gone to college er sump'm. Social philosophers - are they, like, more evolved than garden variety philosophers? You probably got some fancy "social" studies teach'n in fancy schoo, too - and some foreign fascism courtesy of Heidegger & Foucault. If'n I wasn't such a tea baggin' hick, I might would try to spar wit yer elite, erudite, oligarchic shrine to self-anointed sanctimony. But, my red-necked beer bong is fresh out of Mummy & Daddy's college kid ivy allowance. Keep sippin' the Jonestown juice, munny.
m: Because Fox is "restricted," if you catch my drift.