Who is Fox scared of this week?

OK, trick question. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is last week's Scariest Person on Planet Fox -- but keep an eye out as the week wears on for some new entrants in the fear field. First, though, a lead story from March 11:

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D, N.Y., said workers should be excited by the prospect of job automation and blasted capitalism as irredeemable at the South By Southwest festival in Austin this weekend.

In response to a question from the audience about the threat of automated labor, the firebrand liberal said workers should be "excited" about having their jobs automated, but were not because of larger systemic issues in American society.

Enjoy (or not) the rest for yourself. AOC is back on the front page Monday evening:

Actor and comedian Joe Piscopo said, on Monday, "Saturday Night Live" should do more skits featuring the New York Democratic socialist Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.

... But all kidding aside, Piscopo, also a former SNL cast member, said picking on President Trump is no laughing matter.

“And when they make fun of the president… [on] Saturday Night Live… it’s OK… remember when Danny Aykroyd did Richard Nixon on 'Saturday Night Live' and it was funny… and John Belushi did Henry Kissinger,” he said.  “We have to laugh at it. We can have some fun with it. I think President Trump should have fun with it.”

Kids?  I think what he's saying is that picking on the president actually is a laughing matter. But on to a couple of Tuesday double features:

We aren't through with the SXSW festival, of course, so there's another commentary to remind AOC to know her place:

This week on the new liberal playground, SXSW in Austin, freshman Congresswoman Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., threw sand in the eyes of capitalism while continuing her sing-song of socialism.  Amongst those in the crosshairs of her juvenile rantings were our 32nd president, FDR, a Democrat who authored the New Deal, and our 40th President – Ronald Reagan – who was criticized for “screwing over working class Americans.”

While you have to admire her spunk and passion, perhaps it would benefit Ms. Ocasio-Cortez to check her facts, listen more, talk less and learn from those who have gone before her – including the widely beloved and admired Ronald Reagan.  He not only inspired our nation, but in many ways changed the world.  That’s quite a resume for her, a rookie, to be taking a swing at.

And another favorite from the previous week, the party's inability to control its youngsters:

On everything from the Green New Deal to impeachment to criticism of Israel, a squad of first-year congresswomen are flexing their muscle and posing an implicit challenge to Democratic honchos like Speaker Nancy Pelosi. Their stridently liberal agenda – and power to steer the national conversation via social media and press attention – has fueled tensions inside the party tent that in turn are testing leadership's control while stirring political concerns going into 2020.

“All of our problems are caused by three people,” one senior House Democrat lamented to Fox News.

(There's a cartoon in case you couldn't figure out who.)

Later Tuesday,there's more about why socialism doesn't pay:

Can we dispel, once and for all, the notion that “socialists” -- “democratic” or otherwise -- actually believe in the socialism they peddle?

“Socialists” love money, guns, walls, fossil fuels, Amazon, meat, private jets and cars, luxury apartments, mansions, and paying low taxes as much as anyone else.

“Socialists” just want everyone else controlled under their rule of tyranny.

And there's the work of an old-fashioned newspaper to borrow:

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is facing another fact-check, this time for claiming President Trump did not transfer any money to address the country’s opioid crisis.

Needless to say, the Post fact-checker's contention isn't that there was a "false claim" about funding; it's about what he called a "false equivalency." But wait, there's more! By evening, she's taking those capitalists to task again:

Wells Fargo CEO Tim Sloan fired back at New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez at a contentious hearing in Washington, D.C., on Tuesday, after the freshman legislator accused the bank of "financing the caging of children" and suggested it should bear financial liability for everything from oil spills to climate change.

For some reason, Ocasio-Cortez gets the day off on Wednesday, but she's back Thursday, being taken to task by another Fox commentator (Ilhan Omar, last week's key supporting player, returns as well):

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., exposed her economic ignorance again

this week when she argued that bankers should be liable for borrowers' mistakes.

During Capitol Hill testimony from Wells Fargo CEO Timothy Sloan, Ocasio-Cortez contended that if in the event of an oil spill on the Dakota Access Pipeline, which Wells Fargo helped finance, the bank should be held responsible.


Friday is a useful reminder that on Planet Fox, every story is a frontpage AOC story if you do it right. The New Zealand terrorist attacks, for example:

U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., slammed those expressing thoughts and prayers for the victims of Friday's mass shooting that killed 49 people in Christchurch, New Zealand.

Or (in yet another commentary) the college admissions scandal of earlier in the week:

There is no evidence that New York Democratic Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez

bribed her way into college or cheated on the SAT. By all accounts, Boston University admitted the freshman congresswoman on her own merits, which distinguishes her from the children of wealthy parents arrested on Tuesday for paying over $25 million to cheat their kids’ way into colleges across the country.

Feeling as though you missed something? Hang on for the seventh graf:

... So what is a college degree worth these days? Millennial congresswoman Ocasio-Cortez majored in Economics and graduated cum laude from a private university that costs nearly $70,000 per year. Since entering Congress, she has struggled to articulate even basic economic concepts.

For Saturday, she's an especially interesting lead story:

U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s unfavorable rating has spiked after just months in Congress, with most of the public viewing her negatively rather than favorably, a new poll shows.

The New York Democrat shot to fame amid the party’s lurch to the left and embracement of socialist policies such as the Green New Deal, yet the more people learned about the 29-year-old freshman congresswoman, the more they were turned off by her.

We've been over this point before. Fox is usually quite honest (and quite restrained) about reporting on its own survey results, though it frequently lies like a rug with other people's data. The poll doesn't show that her "unfavorable" rating has soared "since taking office," because it can't. The story is comparing a survey that was in the field Sept. 4-12 with one that was in the field Feb. 12-28. The "unfavorable opinion" proportion is significantly higher,* but there's no way of telling how much of that change occurred before or how much after she took office.**

Fox also overlooks the questions that make a poll about a minor political figure interesting: how did she pile up that much name recognition so fast, for example, and whether there's some relationship between where she's salient and what sorts of opinions parts of the (AHEM) electorate form about her.  But there you go, mistaking Fox for an organization that wants you to make rational, self-interested decisions.***

There's been no frontpage AOC coverage so far on Sunday, which raises an interesting question: What else is Fox scared of? Let's explore a couple of possibilities, starting Friday:

Beto O'Rourke's announcement he's running for president may have captured the hearts and minds of many Democrats who believe he can beat President Trump in 2020, but as far as TV's Dr. Drew Pinsky is concerned, "something's not right" with the former congressman.

"I thought that was Tony Robbins," Pinsky, a board-certified internist and addiction medicine specialist, said on the "Brian Kilmeade Show" in response to audio of O'Rourke's presidential announcement video.

"I'm just saying, there's something gonna go down there.  I can feel it coming. I don't know what it is... There's something not right," Pinsky said.

Who's back on the frontpage Saturday, with a commentary from the Media Resource Center?

Betomania is a lot like Beatlemania – except instead of teenage girls in the 1960s, journalists are now the ones swooning for their star.

If the Beatles were around today to sing about media infatuation with newly announced Democratic presidential hopeful Robert Francis “Beto” O’Rourke, their song would be titled “They love him, yeah, yeah, yeah.”

And for a Foxamatic lead story Sunday"

Democratic presidential candidate Beto O’Rourke touted his "Republican" mother during a campaign event in Iowa last week, despite her voting in Democratic primaries since 2000, according to media reports.

... But a closer look at Melissa O’Rourke’s voting history shows she has mostly voted in Texas Democratic primaries since 2000 and has donated money to candidates from both major parties.

It's ... I know, call it crazy, but it's almost like someone who complained about O'Rourke's "hand movement" last week had somehow influenced Fox's coverage!

Have a look next to Sunday's second O'Rourke story (above; judge the level of "blasting" for yourself), though -- there's something that might strike fear into the hardiest Fox acolyte:

During "Media Buzz," Howard Kurtz addressed the fact that "Justice with Judge Jeanine" did not air Saturday night, one week after the network condemned her comments about Minnesota Democratic Rep. Ilhan Omar.

"A Fox spokesperson says, ‘We are not commenting on internal scheduling matters’ and yet, without some public explanation of why the show was pulled – it certainly looks like a suspension," Kurtz said during Sunday's broadcast. "Pirro’s remarks, which were unfortunate, sparked a furor."

So to recap, it took Fox until Sunday afternoon to catch up with the story that tormented the foil-helmed Twittersphere on Saturday night and drew the attention of Fox's ultimate master himself on Sunday:

Nor was that the only Fox personnel issue in which he took an interest:

The coming week is certainly shaping to be an entertaining one on the Fox front. Let's see if Fox is able to contain its fear of the White House long enough to focus on the opposition party.
* For homework, calculate the maximum margin of sampling error at 95% confidence for a random sample of 1,932.
** Fox also conflates "never heard of" and "no opinion," which are separate options here, when it feels like it, but that too is fairly easy to pass off as the sort of statistical incompetence that's common at many grownup news outlets.
*** No, I don't know why the pushups story -- see the left-hand reefer above -- didn't rate a separate of its own, but here it is.