A Fox News “business show” spent more than five minutes fuming over the fact that a public high school used a Russell Brand video, bashing Fox News and unfettered capitalism, as part of a sociology class about poverty and the media.Panelist Jonathan Hoenig exclaimed, “This is why our culture is collapsing!”
I’m sure the outrage was completely high-minded and principled and had nothing to do with the fact that Brand slammed Cashin’ In for attacking a CEO who took a pay cut in order to give his workers a raise. Or because in Brand’s video, he did an imitation of Hoenig as a rat.
Hoenig laid into Brand first. “You want to know why our culture is collapsing? It’s because of progressive – no, wait, wait, wait - regressive like Russell Brand. I mean, he is ignorant!” Hoenig said.
According to Hoenig, Brand’s ignorance is due to his thinking that capitalism is a “Genghis Khan system” where “you do whatever you want, you exploit whoever you want and socialism is just into sharing.”
Then Hoenig reiterated his sky-is-falling hysteria over one class using Brand’s video as a discussion vehicle: “This is why our culture’s collapsing! It’s the ideas that are perpetrated in schools, not just here in America but all over the world!”
I can’t vouch for socialism. But I do know that Brand described self-styled “capitalist pig” Hoenig’s idea of capitalism pretty darned well.
Democrat Jessica Tarlov – who works for one of Fox News’ worst Democrats, Doug Schoen – didn’t seem to notice. Even though in an earlier segment, Hoenig had insisted businesses have the right to discriminate against whomever they want. She claimed to “actually enjoy” Russell Brand but she declared it “a big mistake” for the school to use him as a teaching tool because he had not shown “the other side” in his video. This, as she sat as the lone sort-of-liberal on a four-person panel, not counting the overtly conservative host.
Tarlov was followed by a chorus of complaints about “liberal principals and teachers who think that it’s a good idea to show Russell Brand,” from panelist Michelle Fields, a vow from host Eric Bolling to “go right to that school and say “’Hey, shut it down’” if his son's school ever did such a thing, and “this guy’s just an idiot, a moron,” from panelist Wayne Rogers.
Bolling also complained that it was “ridiculous” for Brand to take a personal shot at Hoenig. Because of course Fox never takes personal shots at people. Oh, wait.
A statement from the high school explains that the video was selected “to illustrate cultural notions and stigmatized portrayals of poverty.”
But as Heather at Crooks and Liars, wrote, “I’m sure Fox won’t be happy until they’ve got a bunch of idiots out marching in front of the school, or they get a scalp and one of them gets fired.”
Ditto.
Watch it below, from the June 6 Cashin' In, via Crooks and Liars. You can also check out Russell Brand's April 21 video underneath.