Fox Nation, the Fox News discussion board, is full of fevered denunciations of President Obama on guns ("Freedom, Tyranny and Granny's .38"; "King of the Gun Grabbers"), while Fox prime time last night gave Rand Paul a forum to announce his nullification plan for Obama's executive orders (shown at the bottom of the screen on Fox as Paul spoke: a headshot of Obama and the phrase "STANDING UP TO THE KING").
But the main Fox News site is a bit less fevered -- when I woke up this morning, this was the lead story:
But note the unmitigated gall of this: it's an attempt to deflect criticism of guns by focusing it on Hollywood -- from the news division of a media empire that includes a huge film studio.
But Murdoch knows Hollywood is safe, so the harrumphing is a lot of sound and fury signifying nothing. And the huge picture of Quentin Tarantino (there's also a still from Django Unchained on the home page) is a way of telling the easily led Fox audience not to go see Tarantino's violent movie -- which is not a Fox release -- at a time when Fox's big movie is the rather more high-minded Lincoln.
(The Murdochians are pretty much the last folks in America still engaging in the old tabloid-news practice of trashing the competition at every opportunity. The New York Post regularly bashes the Daily News. Fox Nation regularly mocks NBC and what it regularly calls "left-wing Politico.")
Don't worry -- Fox News won't keep this up. Fox certainly won't be lamenting movie violence a month from now, when its big release will be this: