Say It Ain't So Already

Fox News’ Use of Guillotine Imagery

August 30, 2009 at 10:11 AM Leave a comment

On August 18 I posted about Neil Cavuto’s use of a video depicting Marie Antoinette being placed in a guillotine to be beheaded.  The video was shown immediately prior to a discussion about how — according to Cavuto — outrageous it was that pro-public option Democratic congressman Eric Massa (NY) said he would “vote adamantly against the interests of my district if I think what I’m doing will be helpful.”  It seemed to me that Fox was implying that Massa’s constituents should kill him.

Then today I stumbled upon this McClatchy article titled:  Secret camps and guillotines?  Groups make “birthers” look sane. It explores the truly insane accusations that are floating around out there about the alleged plans being made by the Obama administration:

In one, retired FBI agent Ted Gunderson says the government has prepared 1,000 camps for its own citizens. He also says the government has stored 30,000 guillotines to murder its critics, and has stashed 500,000 caskets in Georgia and Montana for the remains.

Why guillotines? “Because,” he wrote in a report obtained by the Southern Poverty Law Center, which tracks hate groups, “beheading is the most efficient means of harvesting body parts.”

Crazier than crazy.

So, though the circumstances of the two scenarios are exact opposites, I think Fox’s use of the guillotine imagery was probably a nod to the most extreme of those amongst us and part of its ongoing effort to scare the hell out of Americans and to scare someone into assassinating Obama and who knows who else.

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