“At a certain point, if you play along with Fox, you don’t look principled or bipartisan, you just look stupid,” Samantha Bee admonished Democrats. “Nobody is impressed by how Charlie Brown reaches across the aisle to Lucy’s football.”
On the most recent Full Frontal with Samantha Bee, the host conflated doing Fox News town halls with all appearances on Fox. I, myself, have no problem with Democratic candidates appearing on Fox in a general interview, especially if they confront the network's bias and divisiveness. Giving Fox a whole hour to get good ratings, sell advertising and use a candidate's appearance to burnish its news cred – then launching a smear campaign the moment his or her back is turned is an entirely different thing. I've gone into this more deeply here and here.
No matter how lit your town hall is, doing one on Fox legitimizes the network undeservedly, Bee pointed out. And she brought comedic receipts.
Bee acknowledged that she’s not a political operative. “If you’re sure that going on Fox is strategically the right thing to do, I guess, go for it," she said. "In two years, I’d rather be mildly disappointed in President Buttigieg than dancing for my birth control under President Trump. But I am sure that it is not morally the right thing to do.”
Have some laughs on Fox, but with a serious message below, from the May 22, 2019 Full Frontal with Samantha Bee.
I may have at one point supported Democrats appearing on Fox News but in the era of TrumpTV I don’t see the point.
1. A Democratic pollster refers to Fox News viewers as a “hung jury” because their opinions are so far skewed from the rest of the media’s viewership: https://www.marketwatch.com/story/its-fox-news-viewers-vs-everyone-else-new-poll-concludes-2019-05-07.
2. Their audience lacks diversity. It is overwhelmingly white with only 1.1% of viewers being black. Yet, we hear again and again Democrats need a big black turnout to win. It is also overwhelmingly old with an average age of 68. Yet, we keep hearing Democrats need to get out the youth vote. I also believe (but couldn’t find a statistic) it’s majority male in the so-called ‘age of the woman’ for Democrats. Fox is a dry well for Democrats.
3. Forgetting ‘fairness and balance’ issues of the moderators, the issue is not a matter of how well a Democrat does at a Fox News town hall because the rest of their programming will be an opposite and equal (or worse) reaction. Long-term, ironically, the exposure will hurt any Democrat.
4. Then we get into the entire boosting of Fox’s legitimacy argument.