New Jokes from FOX News

Life in the US reminds me more and more of the life in the Soviet Russia. See, the good thing about living with the propaganda instead of the news, and the lack of free speech was the abundance of jokes. That subculture of folk fun kept our spirit alive back then. For example, here is one of the political jokes of the Brezhnev's era (the guy with bushy eye brows and slurry speech who ruled the Soviet Union for nearly two decades and died in 1982). Here it goes:

Nixon and Brezhnev had a running race. Nixon beat Brezhnev. Here is how the news was reported in the "Pravda" newspaper, the official organ of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union: "Presidents Brezhnev and Nixon participated in a race. Mr. Brezhnev came second with an excellent result. President Nixon came next to last."

Would you call it factually accurate? Yes, if you work for FOX News.

Today, that "news" network published the results of the EU commission's finding that the last year's war in South Ossetia was started by Georgia. (I wrote an earlier post on that which you can see below.) Here is how they packaged the news: "EU Report Blames Russia and Georgia for War". Here is a passage from the publication: "The EU report went on to blame Russia for conducting a military campaign deep inside Georgia. "All this cannot be regarded as even remotely commensurate with the threat to Russian peacekeepers in South Ossetia," the report said. Russia's retaliation went "far beyond the reasonable limits of defense," it said, criticizing the devastating Russian assault on a tiny neighbor that in recent years has moved closer into the West with hopes of joining NATO. In a first reaction, Georgia's EU Ambassador Salome Samadashvili said the question of who fired first on Aug. 7, 2008, was immaterial without considering two decades of friction. She said the "report gives the full context," referring to Russia's invasion of Georgia's separatist regions of Abkhazia and South Ossetia."

And here is a link to the whole article if somebody wants to read it first hand: http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,557702,00.html?test=latestnews

Compare it with the headlines published by the BBC News today: "Georgia 'started unjustified war' ." (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/8281990.stm)

Both articles report on the same findings, but their emphasis is clearly different. Few people read beyond the headlines, and the US readership will remember that "EU Report blames Russia" whereas the rest of the civilized world will get the message that "Georgia started unjustified war." FOX News never fails to put a nice spin on a story, if you know what I mean.

I am still laughing. Did you hear? Their president came next to last. Ha-ha-ha!