American Prospect blogger Paul Waldman claimed in a Friday post that Fox News likes it both ways when it comes to racy content: the channel often “find[s] excuses to put images of scantily clad women on the air…but plenty of [them are] presented with a thin veneer of moral condemnation that allows viewers to feel like Fox remains on their side in the grand battle against sexual depravity.”
Waldman argued that Fox News’s sex-related material is meant to confirm its old-skewing audience’s belief that the world “is going [to] hell, and the prime enemies are change and modernity.” By watching Fox, he wrote, “you can have your darkest thoughts and worst fears nurtured and validated…[Y]ou can be like the stern father who discovers his teenage son's stash of Penthouse…lingering over each photo spread as you shake your head at how depraved the world has become.”
From Waldman’s post (emphasis added):
You can think of this as a betrayal of its audience's cultural conservatism, but I think it's actually a form of service. In a way, Fox News knows its viewers better than they know themselves. Don't forget that the typical Fox viewer is a conservative senior citizen. The median age of the network's viewers is 68.8, and some shows skew even older; Bill O'Reilly's median viewer is 72.
In case you don't watch Fox, you should know that they work extremely hard to find excuses to put images of scantily clad women on the air. Some of it contains no finger-wagging—how about a report on Hooters' third-quarter profits, with lots of shots of waitresses?—but plenty of it is presented with a thin veneer of moral condemnation that allows viewers to feel like Fox remains on their side in the grand battle against sexual depravity…
More so than perhaps any other channel on television, Fox endeavors to shape and reflect not just its viewers' beliefs about particular topics but their entire worldview. It presents a picture of the world in which everything is going [to] hell, and the prime enemies are change and modernity. The president hates America, immigrants are destroying our culture, the kids are out of control, and it's not like it was back in the day. Fox is a channel for the conservative id, where you can have your darkest thoughts and worst fears nurtured and validated.
And of course, there's nothing the id likes better than looking at half-naked girls. On Fox, you can be like the stern father who discovers his teenage son's stash of Penthouse, looking through each issue carefully to understand the depths to which the boy has sunk, lingering over each photo spread as you shake your head at how depraved the world has become. And should a voice in your head alert that you're finding this stuff dangerously titillating, you can remind yourself that the reason you're there is to express your dismay. After all, it's on Fox, the only network you can really trust.
