This week in Fox Is Scared Of Girls

It's time for another installment of The Week in Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Scariest Person on Planet Fox! This week brings some interesting role variations and renewed salience for some other very scary people, but let's get right to the main question: How long did it take for Ocasio-Cortez to be the foxnews.com lead story on Monday? Answer, until about 10 a.m.:

Patrick Moore, the co-founder of the environmentalist group Greenpeace, ripped into New York Democratic Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez over the weekend as a “pompous little twit,” saying the Green New Deal plan she’s advocating is “completely crazy.”

She's a lead story again Monday evening, with two variations Tuesday morning as Fox tried to figure out how seriously to take its latest scandal-for-hire:

New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Saikat Chakrabarti, the progressive firebrand's multimillionaire chief of staff, apparently violated campaign finance law by funneling nearly $1 million in contributions from political action committees Chakrabarti established to private companies that he also controlled, according to an explosive complaint filed Monday with the Federal Election Commission (FEC) and obtained by Fox News.

Here's how things looked Tuesday, at about 7:30 and again at about 9 a.m.:

And she rates the lead position for two more stories on Tuesday. Around 1 p.m., we're foreshadowing one of the week's main themes -- turmoil in the enemy camp -- by rehashing another story from the previous week:

Moderate Democrats are fuming over New York Democratic Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s closed-door warning last week that Democrats who vote with Republicans are "putting themselves on a list" – a comment interpreted as a primary challenge threat.

Ocasio-Cortez has since downplayed her comments, made in the wake of 26 Democrats joining Republicans to vote for a provision requiring Immigration and Customs Enforcement to be notified if illegal immigrants attempt to purchase guns.

And by evening, she's in a slamming match with her betters again:

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y. and Liberty University President Jerry Falwell Jr. got into a sparring match on Twitter on Tuesday over a comment he made about the congresswoman at CPAC last weekend.

By Wednesday, the stage is getting crowded. More of the "Dem frosh" are being called on the carpet, others are committing the sin of lese-majeste, Fox's concern with the challenge to the Democratic leadership is growing, and it's still 2016 at Planet Fox:

Let's take a bit of a detour here, because it's not just 2016 all over again, it's 2000 all over again. Here's the Tuesday lead story:

Bill and Hillary Clinton are facing fresh accusations of nepotism and revenge politics after a Democratic foreign policy adviser claimed they tried to obtain a scholarship for Chelsea Clinton’s boyfriend, and later punished the adviser for backing then-candidate Barack Obama in 2008.

... Tn the book, Vargo claims that in 2000, Mitchell told her that then-President Bill Clinton called him to say he was "very unhappy" that Chelsea’s boyfriend was not on the shortlist for the grant -- despite a letter from the White House.

And one from last Sunday evening, when -- one might think -- more salient things were happening in Alabama:

Former Secretary of State and presidential candidate Hillary Clinton offered a stark view of the country on Sunday, comparing the current “crisis in our democracy” to the turbulence that occurred amid the Civil Rights movement of the 1960s.

Speaking during a reception in Selma, Ala. to mark the 54th anniversary of "Bloody Sunday” and to receive the International Unity Award at the Martin Luther King and Coretta Scott King Unity Breakfast, Clinton said that the United States is facing a "full-fledged crisis in our democracy."


And, of course, the former senator is frontpage news (also Tuesday) when she indulges in a little lese-majeste herself:

President Trump on Tuesday said his former opponent Hillary Clinton would “be sorely missed” from the pool of contenders vying for the Oval Office in the 2020 election.

The president, using the nickname he gave Clinton during the campaign, reacted to news earlier this week that the 2016 Democratic presidential candidate would not be making another go for the White House.

“'(Crooked) Hillary Clinton confirms she will not run in 2020, rules out a third bid for White House.' Aw-shucks, does that mean I won’t get to run against her again?” Trump tweeted. "She will be sorely missed!"

Seemingly in response to Trump's comment, Clinton tweeted a "Mean Girls" movie reference. 

But back to the main event -- Rep. Pelosi's loss of control over her rank and file -- for Thursday:

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is "taken aback" by the growing dissent and anger among rank-and-file Democrats over a possible resolution to formally condemn anti-Semitism, a Democratic source told Fox News on Wednesday -- highlighting Pelosi's tenuous grip on control over the House and underscoring the growing power of the party's nascent far-left progressive wing.

Though -- look out, Indy! -- the evil ones are still coming for Your Favorite President, and there's another commentary to remind us that all Democrats are hypocrites.

And Fox's favorite newly minted ethics watchdog group is back on the email case from two weeks ago:

EXCLUSIVE — A conservative group that filed a complaint with the FEC alleging Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez's campaign may have illegally funneled thousands of dollars through an allied PAC to boyfriend Riley Roberts on Thursday lodged a fresh complaint with the Office of Congressional Ethics.

But the main story of the day is still the Omar resolution, and Fox lets the mask slip a little for that:

As it does again on Friday morning, to the point of defending a member of the McCain family:

U.S. Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., was apparently unmoved Thursday by Meghan McCain's tearful remarks about her on "The View."

McCain had become emotional during the ABC talk show, discussing Omar's recent criticisms of Israel and its supporters. She said Omar's remarks were hurtful to many of her Jewish friends.

... But instead of responding directly to McCain, Omar retweeted a post that criticized McCain for "faux outrage" and referred to past statements attributed to McCain's late father, U.S. Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., who died last August at age 81.

By early afternoon, Omar has reached that unusual stage at which she can be represented in the main hed by just a pronoun (note the three witches dealing another blow to their aging leader's grip on power in the No. 2 position):

Rookie Democratic Rep. Ilhan Omar, fresh off igniting an intra-party uproar with comments widely viewed as anti-Semitic, took a swipe at former President Barack Obama, saying in an explosive interview the 44th president's message of "hope and change" was a "mirage" and blasting his administration's drone and border detention policies.

Another commentator reminds us of the radical takeover on Saturday, even as Fox finds a way to keep the Obama story alive:

Rep. Ilhan Omar’s attempt to shame a news outlet for misquoting her blistering attack on former President Barack Obama backfired after she released audio of the interview that only served to confirm her remarks.

Yet another commentator checks in Saturday night to keep the campaign finance issue alive:

An investigation is needed to determine if socialist Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the media magnet on the far-left fringe of the Democratic Party, has broken federal campaign finance laws. If convicted of criminal conduct, she could get up to five years in prison for each violation.

And by Sunday, there's fresh outrage as "far-left AOC" goes after everything in sight:

U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez slammed political moderates at the South by Southwest Conference & Festivals in Austin, Texas, calling their views “misplaced” as she defended her progressive politics in a room full of supporters.

“Moderate is not a stance. It's just an attitude towards life of, like, ‘meh,’” the New York Democrat said Saturday during an interview with Briahna Gray, senior politics editor for the Intercept. “We’ve become so cynical, that we view ‘meh,’ or ‘eh’ — we view cynicism as an intellectually superior attitude, and we view ambition as youthful naivete when ... the greatest things we have ever accomplished as a society have been ambitious acts of visions, and the ‘meh’ is just worshipped now, for what?”

Despite stern competition from the both the old guard (in the form of Clinton) and her fellow newcomers, Rep. Ocasio-Cortez managed to be the lead story at the Fair 'n' Balanced Network four days out of seven. Tune in again next week for another installment of Fox Is Scared Of Girls!

Fox News is REALLY scared of girls

Mommy, why is the scary lady the lead story at the Fair 'n' Balanced network again?

A top adviser to New York Democratic Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has admitted that an official "Green New Deal" document posted by Ocasio-Cortez's office contained a guarantee of economic security even for those "unwilling to work" -- but not before he went viral in progressive circles for claiming the exact opposite, repeatedly, in an interview with Fox News' "Tucker Carlson Tonight."

Hard to see how that adds up to a schooling of the "freshman Dem," but you can tell there's still nothing that scares Fox News quite as much as Rep. Ocasio-Cortez. She's so scary, indeed, that she was the subject of the commentary in the No. 3 position on Sunday afternoon as well:

We are reaching a turning point that will forever determine our future -- how we live our lives and how our children will live theirs.  The gap between the ever-widening left and right has never been wider, and yet amazingly it continues to widen.

Every time we turn on a TV, open a laptop or listen to the radio, another bizarre, offbeat, outlandish idea brings us closer to socialism and the destruction of capitalism. And it is being pushed by the left.

Here she is again on Feb. 9 -- the almost-as-scary Ilhan Omar is the lead story, but there's another commentary in the No. 2 position in case you thought the socialist menace was retreating:

The Democratic Party’s lurch to socialism led to a presidential rebuke at the State of the Union on Tuesday night. From Sen. Bernie Sanders’s call for “Medicare-for-all,” to Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s proposal of a “Green New Deal,” to Democratic presidential hopefuls’ hankering for stiff tax hikes, prominent members of the Democratic Party seem unwilling to miss any opportunity to advocate for greater government control of the economy.

Yet as Democrats justify grandiose proposals by decrying income inequality, many of us who immigrated to the United States from socialist countries see great irony. After all, unending income equality is what drove us to leave our native lands in the first place.

Ocasio-Cortez is the lead story three times on Feb. 8 (note that the third example has another twofer with the "slam" from a Wall Street Journal columnist; Ocasio-Cortez herself is mentioned exactly once in "Guns, Grub and Driveways"):

 And the lead story twice on Feb. 7:

She was especially scary on Feb. 6, the day after the State of the Union address. It's tempting to score this as a hat trick, but the "sullen Dems" in the commentary at the No. 2 spot isn't quite conclusive):

She was the lead story on Feb. 5:

... with, in a different daypart, another commentary meant to reinforce the danger of it all:


It’s been two years since the end of the Obama presidency and in that span, the mainstream Democratic Party has made an extreme shift to the far left.  In 2019 the Democrats have put their weight behind increased taxes, universal health care, open borders, and third-trimester abortions.

How do we account for this radical trend?

I don't know, dude. No Schlitz, Blatz. No Blatz, improvise. But of course, she was also the top story on Feb. 4:

Imagine, using the guest list to score political points. But there were two other downpage appearances that day as well:

Another lead story on Feb. 3:

Documentary filmmaker Michael Moore declared U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez the new leader of the Democratic Party, while urging political moderates to take a position because there “is no middle ground anymore.”

“She is the leader. Everybody knows it. Everybody feels it,” Moore said of the freshman congresswoman from New York during a Friday interview on MSNBC.

For a Friday story at the top of the Sunday page, that seems singularly low-bore, but perhaps Fox is unusually scared of Michael Moore too. Or it could have been trying to make up for lost time, in that there seem to have been no stories about Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez among the top five on Feb. 2! There was, though, this to start the month:

New York Democratic Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez acknowledged her “privilege” as a “cisgendered woman” during a podcast interview this week, explaining she will never know the “trauma” of being transgender.

The progressive-favorite’s comments came during a wide-ranging discussion with The Intercept, a liberal news site.

Fox has its usual liberal hand with the scare quotes, though whence the hyphen in "progressive-favorite" is beyond me. That's probably not as interesting as Fox's inability to decide among "democratic socialist," "Democratic Socialist" and "Democratic socialist," or its swinging back and forth in January between Ocasio-Cortez's family name and given name, or assorted substitutes like "AOC" and "Alex," or the more customary "Dem Socialist darling." Indeed, there's a whole catalog of frontpage representations from January that just kept getting -- overtaken by events. 

Our question at the end of the year was whether Fox News is scared of girls. The first few weeks of 2019 seem pretty conclusive. Fox News is absolutely petrified of girls. If you are a girl, please don't knock Fox News down on the playground and take its lunch money.

What we drink about when we drink about war

This ad is sort of how we talk about beer, but it's really more how we talk -- or don't -- about the state of exception. It's from Life's April 13, 1942, issue, and it appears (make of that what you will) in the middle of a big spread about the "vermin press":

In times like these, all of us feel increasing need to be together in friendly groups. Courage and stamina are bred in the circle of good companionship. But certainly we are not in the mood for big, lavish parties. 

Beer and ale are very naturally the basis of today's simple hospitality. Beer is the very symbol of friendship ... of rest and peace after work and strain.

It is the beverage of thoughtful and tolerant people who live sanely and wisely. Most important of all, beer is the beverage of moderation for a self-disciplined people.

Well, and it's also how we talk about gender:

... Remember that beer and ale can do much during these strenuous times to bring relaxation and pleasure to your husband, your family, and your circle of friends.