Jack Welch set off a wave of Bureau of Labor Statistics trutherism yesterday, as you know:
"Unbelievable job numbers," tweeted Jack Welch, the iconic former boss of General Electric on Friday morning, moments after the Bureau of Labor Statistics released its September jobs figures. "These Chicago guys will do anything," he continued.What's striking to me about that is the reference to "Chicago" -- a name that's profoundly sinister to right-wingers and utterly benign to everyone else in America. Where did Welch get this shibboleth? I suspect he got it from the same place your email-forwarding, Obama-hating right-wing uncle gets this and similar in-jokes and buzzwords: from the right-wing media, particularly Fox News.
No one, as far as I know, has ever done a survey, but I'd bet that right-wing billionaires log as many hours watching Fox News as do all of our non-billionaire uncles and aunts and grandparents who have, to our horror, gone Fox-crazy.
In fact, I wonder if that's what's saving President Obama in the first post-Citizens United election. You watch some of the ads being generated by pro-Romney groups and they seem to be talking in the same epistemically closed right-wing language Fox speaks -- they're not speaking the language of persuadable swing voters at all. Are the payers of the pipers calling the tunes? Are the billionaires demanding that the campaign be conducted in wingnut-speak? (When you look at the Jeremiah Wright ad Joe Ricketts wanted to run, you certainly get that impression.)
And this may extend to the Romney campaign itself. Why didn't he move to the center from last spring until (arguably) now? Why did he pick Paul Ryan? Is this an approach he had to commit to, in return for right-wing billionaire bucks? I wonder.
See also: Trump, Donald J.
