And now a Muppet News Flash: According to Fox News anchor Eric Bolling, The Muppets is brainwashing [suds begin to issue from writer’s keyboard] young viewers into believing successful business owners [suds now cover writer’s desk, part of his computer screen] are evil. [Writer is carried away on a tide of suds, but not before he issues a rumpled frown in the direction of the computer screen.]
Bolling, Media Research Center talking-head Dan Gainor, and Fox commentator Andrea Tantaros recently devoted a large chunk of Fox Business Network’s Follow The Money to dissecting the liberal propaganda embedded in the newest Muppet feature—specifically Chris Cooper’s cartoonishly villainous tycoon Tex Richman. Never mind that the character is named Tex Richman or the fact that he’s so broadly drawn, he utters the phrase “maniacal laugh” in lieu of actually laughing—Richman is obviously an embodiment of the Hollywood’s war on capitalism in general and the oil industry in particular. (Just like one of the other movies Gainor cites, There Will Be Blood—you know, that scathing, blockbuster exposé on early-20th-century oil barons and the milkshakes they drink right up?) Clearly, Bolling, Gainor, and Tantaros appreciate The Muppets on a much deeper level than us. Best not to let them know about the environmentalist messages preached by Fraggle Rock, Dinosaurs, or The Song Of The Cloud Forest—or the fact that the Muppets’ take on the seven deadly sins was already presented in the Muppet Show pilot Sex And Violence. [Vulture]