Fox News Has Jumped the Shark

There is a saying in television that a series has jumped the shark when they run out of ideas and latches onto some extreme premise in the ruse of an original, viable, idea.

I know that there is a great divide in this country and realize that MSNBC surely makes Conservatives gnash their teeth but what the folks at Fox are doing this weekend, to me, has shown that they have jumped the shark of credibility.

Rush Limbaugh yesterday called Chris Christie some version of a fat fool. Rupert Murdoch advises that Chris Christie needs to come out and reaffirm his support for Mitt Romney. Seriously? Because Chris Christie has acted in the best interests of his state, a state by the way, that consists of more Democrats than Republicans, not that that should matter, he is a traitor. One should consider that when the party castigates Charlie Crist over welcoming the President to his state as a Governor and now seems to be doing the same thing to perhaps their most popular governor they might need to take a breath.

The purity test they are asking for might be their undoing. Consider this, what if Chris Christie, realizing that the Conservatives will never, in the end, back him, were to make a run as an independent and take a moderate Democrat with him in 2016. You heard it here first, if the folks on the right castigate someone like Christie they need to take a look in the mirror.

Last night while watching the benefit concert on NBC I flipped around a bit and saw the folks on Fox talking to Rudy Giuliani under the headline " Dereliction of Duty" stating that the President was not doing a good job in handling this crisis with Hurricane Sandy. I think anyone with a sense of reason, right or left, knows this is not the truth, and of course Chris Christie would agree. Perhaps this is one of the reasons the right is so angry at Christie, by thanking and praising the President they are taking away an attack method.

The claim that the President should not be campaigning could have a bit of merit, there are some who feel he should be in Washington coordinating the reponse. Of course to a man this group would also say that they feel FEMA should be disbanded and the powers of FEMA given to the states. Why they would want the President to coordinate a response that they feel the states should be organizing is beyond me.

Hypocrisy in the extreme. Hypocrisy in the extreme. I have to say it twice. Mitt Romney, desperate to remain in the news mid week set up a fake rally to collect foodstuffs and water for the folks in New York. Of course he bought a great deal of the items collected and then handed them to people off camera as they entered the building so that they could hand them to the governor. Seriously.

I understand the frustration of the right. They dislike the President. They do not understand how things do not " stick " to him. Of course the right's great icon gave Democrats the same fits. The Teflon President in my memory was, of course, Ronald Reagan. Benghazi for example, watching Fox news trying to continually bang the drum on this story is like watching a lonely man trying to pass out some pamphlets at the post office. No one cares. It might have merit but the only ones paying attention are the ones who already hate the President.

It is understandable to be frustrated. And in all this Romney could very easily still win. What we need to be aware of though is that a group of people who have lost their sense of objectivity in this extreme, and hate this strongly, will have no problem with an ends justify the means action on election day, or in the probable recounts that could take place thereafter.

This, this is the greatest danger of any jumping of the shark. When hatred begets the abuse of reason one does not know where it will end.