Paul, Texas
My dad has always had a conservative leaning in his views. Growing up, I remember car rides as a little kid where he would have on a local conservative talk radio station owned at the time by CBS News. But when we got home, he preferred to watch Larry King Live on CNN, or HLN primetime. For as long as I can remember, we always made a point to watch the network evening news as a family, either with Tom Brokaw on NBC or Peter Jennings on ABC. Clearly, my dad was what would be considered today as a moderate conservative. But somewhere down the road, my dad became more and more radical in his views.
Around 2008, he started listening to the Michael Savage show — which was incredibly ahead of its time in terms of the insane and bonkers and entirely untrue things I would hear on that show. Then, he stopped watching CNN and HLN in favor of Fox News around the late 00s. And then, he dropped our local ABC station (which he loyally watched for almost 20 years) and ABC News in general in 2020 and has become a total Fox News fanatic.
These days, it’s Fox News all day, all night at home with him at home. Whereas our primetime was once spent watching TV shows like The Middle, Roseanne, American Idol, and The Voice, his primetime is spent watching Fox News, Fox News, and more Fox News.
My dad honestly behaves like a drug addict in terms of his need for Fox News, which is consistent with what the neuroscientists in the documentary had to say about Fox News. He gets defensive whenever I call him out over his newfound pathological obsession with Fox News. He has made shockingly racist comments, which I have called him out on. He loves to make any and all conversations political, even if it has to do with something as non-political as food. He loves falsely stereotyping me as someone who only gets his news from CNN — when in reality, I get my news from a vast array of sources, including Fox News. He’s as miserable as a person can be — and seems to neurochemically thrive off of hate radio, hate podcasts, and hate news. It’s like he loves getting himself all pissed off over nothing.
On Inauguration Day, I wrote to President Biden about the need for a modern-day Fairness Doctrine — and I told the President how disinformation has torn families and people apart. I encourage everyone with family members like mine to write to the President as well.