Another Friendly Republican

Posted on March 19, 2005

Media Matters caught an interesting segment from Fox News on Wednesday in which they interviewed a woman from Florida who had been the alleged victim of a “road rage” attack.

The reported cause of the attack? Her “W the President” bumper sticker! Apparently it caused some insane librul in a subcompact displaying its own anti-Bush adornments to try and run her SUV off the road.

Of course, there may be more to it than that, as this brief exchange from near the end of the interview suggests:

HOST: Now, he claims… ahh… that you gave him the finger.
MICHELLE FERNANDEZ: Right.
HOST: What do you say to that?
FERNANDEZ: And you know, it’s possible that I did; it happened so fast, that I honestly — I mean my hands were back, flailing, and I was screaming back at him, and it’s possible that I could have, I just can’t be 100% sure.

Nice refusal to take responsibility for her own behavior there. No wonder she’s a W fan.

And after she’s done stumbling about, the terminally incurious host comes back with:

HOST: Not that that excuses anybody being run off the road either!

Of course not. But it might cast some doubt on the wisdom of running a live story with this woman with the title “PRO-BUSH BUMPER STICKER MAY HAVE SPARKED ROAD RAGE”… unless you work at Fox, that is.

And did they talk to the “road rager” to get his side of the story? Of course not. Here’s a nice steaming cup of fair and balanced for ya.

The sad thing is, despite the fact that the woman’s weak-ass story doesn’t even hold up under Fox News questioning, despite the obvious slant, millions of people will have seen this and come away thinking that there’s an army of dirty hippies out there waiting to sideswipe them (AND THEIR CHILDREN!!! WHO WILL THINK OF THE CHILDREN!!!) at any moment, just for showing their GOP colors.

Which of course is bullshit. But this is just one example of how — even today, when we are under real threat from foreign terrorists, and at war in two countries abroad — powerful people are pitting us against our neighbors for their own profit. Think about that the next time you wonder who your real enemies are.