Fox News viewers know already that the television station is a big fan of The Past. Back in the day, we must remember, America was a fantastic place—a country where men could be (very specific kinds of) men, women could be (very specific kinds of) women, nobody got on your case for being a white Protestant, and you had the freedom to just shoot any motherfucker that walked by you without having to worry much about the result.
These days may not have entirely vanished, but they’re too far removed from the latte-sipping, anthem-kneeling, lily-livered present to give the red-blooded witch-finder generals at Fox much rest.
In a video by Media Matters, a (no doubt incomplete) compilation of the network’s favorite expression serves to remind us that not only is modernity, with its flushing toilets and polio vaccines, a total load of bullshit, but that every day we tread further into the future is something to dread.
The montage beautifully sums up the enduring subconscious preoccupation that dogs Fox hosts every moment of the day. No matter the issue, whether football games or climate change, things were just better before now. Consider a small sampling of stuff that the nation got right before the pesky forces of time had to foul them up: Republicans standing “for fiscal responsibility,” being able to “fax each other,” politicians trying to get votes from “soccer moms,” WikiLeaks “working for the Mossad,” Johnny Carson, white Americans having the manufacturing and coal jobs, communists and Russians being “locked up,” and, who can forget, coups.
All of this presented in one place forces a question: exactly how far back does America need to go before it’s properly returned to the “good old days?” Considering the many problems that have plagued Fox’s spiritual forefathers for centuries, no previous decade is truly safe. The only guaranteed “good” time frame, it seems, is one before the beginning of our modern troubles—one where the Fox & Friends hosts huddle inside a damp cave and live out the glorious reality of subsisting on berries, drawing conspiracy charts on the walls with their spears, and identifying how George Soros’ ancestors managed to fund the sabre-toothed tiger lobby that roars for their blood.
Send Great Job, Internet tips to [email protected]