Clueless Or Lying? – You Be The Judge
One of the frustrating things during the health care debate was that real problems got pushed aside by fake debates on ZOMG socialism and death panels. Sometimes I wonder if conservative propagandists are just lucky people who’ve never had to worry about making money or getting treatment when they’re sick.
On yesterday’s episode of “Fox & Friends,” viewers saw this exchange:
Steve Doocy: [President Obama] was talking about Planned Parenthood being this great provider where women can get blood pressure checks and pap smears and breast examinations…
Brian Kilmeade: Which you can get at Walgreens.
Steve Doocy: Exactly right.
Seriously, that’s what they said. There’s video proof.
I went ahead and did a little research on this, and while Walgreen’s press office wasn’t available last night, my cursory review suggests there isn’t a Walgreens in the known universe that offers pap smears and mammograms to its customers. The very idea is … what’s the word I’m looking for … crazy.
Honestly, does the cast of “Fox & Friends” even know what pap smears are? For that matter, do they know drugstores do?
To be sure, I understand the point of their claims. Republicans, like their cable news network, would like the public to believe the preventative health services provided by Planned Parenthood aren’t especially necessary or worthy of funding, since they’re readily available everywhere — as if every block in America has a Starbucks, an ATM, and screenings for cervical cancer.
Do they have special Walgreen’s near the Fox studios with stirrups and mammography machines in the back? Seriously, huh? I guess I’m leaning towards clueless on this one because why would you tell such an easily disprovable lie? Fox’s older audience is probably well familiar with what is in a drugstore.
SNL skewered these two clueless assholes and the empty headed bimbo that shares the screen with them over the weekend.
Saw part of it on Morning Joe.
Sometimes I wonder if conservative propagandists are just lucky people who’ve never had to worry about making money or getting treatment when they’re sick.
I wonder that exact thing about Democrats who would not fight for a public option or tax increases for the rich. Limousine Liberals are nothing new; their out-of-touch policies cost us the White House in 1980 and probably will again. Republicans have been successfully running against those 1970s Democrats for over 30 years now.
Democrats have enjoyed a layer of insulation from voter wrath by portraying themselves as the defenders of Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security. Now Obama has single-handedly stripped away that layer of protection from the Democratic brand. Good luck with that.
Skip: The “bimbo” is not brainless. Gretchen Carlson graduated cum laude from Stanford University in 1990, with a degree in sociology (organizational behavior). So she can’t fall back on stupidity as an excuse for her politics.
Fun fact to know and tell: She is married to sports agent Casey Close, who represents (among others) the Phillies’ Ryan Howard.
So what’s her excuse Geez?
I guess she went to FAUX News and said “Show me the money!” and handed over her pre-frontal lobe in return.
Well, married to a sports agent, what do you expect?
FOX and Co. lie because it works and it eats up time by making Dems/libs/progs correct the lie. It’s already too late then, the lie continues to grow.
FOX knows its audience – and it’s more than its viewers, those viewers are merely foot soldiers whose purpose is to spread the lie via email, birthday parties, etc.
I agree pandora, but at what point are the lies so blatant that Fox loses their credibility with their audience? Anyone who goes to a Walgreen’s knows there’s no gynecology clinic there. Half the audience knows that cancer screening is expensive.
Fox is like Pravda of the 60’s and 70s. It all propaganda until proven otherwise.
And Carlson is the worst kind of person, smart enough to know what the truth is, but ignores it for personal gain. She’s nothing more than a basic bullshiter and perfect future candidate for grave desecration.
How can the lose credibility when they are telling people things they already believe? The problem isn’t so much FOX as it is us.
Jon Stewart actually did a piece on Carlson, and how she dumbs herself down to connect with her anti-elitist audience. Sad in so many ways.
http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/tue-december-8-2009/gretchen-carlson-dumbs-down
granted you CAN get your BP checked at a walgreens, so they will argue that they were being accurate by playing BS semantics. And they would probably also argue that you don’t need a breast exam because you should be doing them on yourself at home. Does anyone know if Fox’s audience skews male in addition to old? maybe they’re just banking the audience doesn’t know what paps are? Ugh.
I think that the main problem may be that STEVE Doocy and BRIAN Kilmeade (like many men out there, but unlike us very sophisticated fellas in here) have absolutely no idea what is involved in a pap smear and/or a mammogram. Walgreens has those blood pressure cuffs (which are almost always broken and terribly unreliable when they seem to be working), so (logically) they must have all other sorts of preventive medical tests.
It isn’t just Fox though. The very idea that “news” should be factual has been thrown over the side.
Yeah, Walgreens.
Hey Brian and Steve,tell me when I can go in to be checked by a “volunteer” for testicular cancer.
And I know what a Pap smear is and how it’s “gathered”and the pain involved with mammograms.
I pay attention to my wife and sisters and mom when she was alive and before she died of breast cancer.
Walgreen’s issues a correction at Fox. Probably won’t do any good though. The comments here are entertaining, however.
True Walgreens story:
I was obese, had diabetes and was on insulin. I gathered my feces together and began to lose weight.As the pounds came off I needed less insulin.At a certain point, they prescribed a different needle for my injections, a smaller one.
There was a problem. My prescription was in UNITS,which my old “works”measured, but the new ones measured cc’s.So I returned to the PHARMACIST for help right after getting them from her.
She started doing some equations on my receipt,losing me quickly, and finally told me the magic number.
I went home for my hit but when I went to put the insulin in the needle, I realized it would take one FULL barrel and half of another to meet her number.
I took the plunger out of the barrel, put an old dose in an OLD needle and put THAT into the barrel of the NEW needle. It came up HALF WAY.
If I’d followed her direction, I’d have taken THREE times my old dosage.
I took both needles back to her store and told her what I did except I told her I had TAKEN the needle and a half and I was feeling really funny, and not HA HA funny.
Well, her eyes almost popped out of her head. She knew she’d fucked up! She said right away,”We should get you to the hospital”.
That was the only reason I didn’t tear her a new asshole.
I told her right then that I, luckily, had an old needle and the foresight to experiment when things didn’t “seem” right.I hadn’t taken anything yet.I told her most people don’t question anybody in a white lab coat.[most of you know what I mean]She couldn’t have been more apologetic.
So we finally figured out the correct dosage and the matter was dropped by me.
Yet, the next day I got a call from their corporate office with further apologies.
She must have dropped a dime on herself! That’s class.
I no longer need insulin.
But I shop at Walgreens because of her.