The Muppets are Communist sez Fox News!

Wednesday, December 7th, 2011 at 3:15 am Category: News

Fox News, not content on just spoiling the serenity and joy of the holiday season with their phony War on Christmas and blaming EVERYTHING on President Obama, has set their sights on a new target: The Muppets.

Obviously, Fox and their legion of nitwit dittohead zombies are the only ones in the entire country who dislike The Muppets, one of the best-reviewed films of the year. Their complaint? A supposed hidden pro-environmental message.

Last week, on the network’s “Follow the Money” program, host Eric Bolling went McCarthy on the new, Disney-released film, “The Muppets,” insisting that its storyline featuring an evil oil baron made it the latest example of Hollywood’s so-called liberal agenda.

Bolling, who took issue with the baron’s name, Tex Richman, was joined by Dan Gainor of the conservative Media Research Center, who was uninhibited with his criticism.

“It’s amazing how far the left will go just to manipulate your kids, to convince them, give the anti-corporate message,” he said.

“They’ve been doing it for decades. Hollywood, the left, the media, they hate the oil industry,” Gainor continued. “They hate corporate America. And so you’ll see all these movies attacking it, whether it was ‘Cars 2,’ which was another kids’ movie, the George Clooney movie ‘Syriana,’ ‘There Will Be Blood,’ all these movies attacking the oil industry, none of them reminding people what oil means for most people: fuel to light a hospital, heat your home, fuel an ambulance to get you to the hospital if you need that. And they don’t want to tell that story.”

Indeed, there was no mention of the benefits of oil drilling in the Muppets, but there was also no discussion of any other aspect of the industry. Richman, played by Chris Cooper, was out to destroy the Muppets theater. Kermit and his friends, then, were not committed environmentalists (though one must imagine the frog is concerned with his swampy homeland) but simply puppets looking to save a place they once loved.

Still, Gainor blamed the film, and its predecessors, for Occupy Wall Street and the environmental movement.

“This is what they’re teaching our kids. You wonder why we’ve got a bunch of Occupy Wall Street people walking around all around the country, they’ve been indoctrinated, literally, for years by this kind of stuff,” Gainor said. “Whether it was ‘Captain Planet’ or Nickelodeon’s ‘Big Green Help,’ or ‘The Day After Tomorrow,’ the Al Gore-influenced movie, all of that is what they’re teaching, is that corporations is bad, the oil industry is bad, and ultimately what they’re telling kids is what they told you in the movie ‘The Matrix’: that mankind is a virus on poor old mother Earth.”

First of all, you don’t have to turn to fiction to figure out oil companies are not the paragons of moral virtue this kabuki theater parading as a news outlet wants you to believe they are. Or do we just have to remember only a little more than a year ago as oil flowed almost unencumbered into the Gulf of Mexico.

Second, Fox News-- pick your battles. There is real evil in the world. Even if you count liberals as your enemies, and even if you’re right about evil leftist propaganda hidden in the film, you have to go pretty damn far down the list before you get to Kermit, Piggy, and, lest we forget, Sam the American Eagle (my personal favorite Muppet).

Third, I just have to ask: Really?  I mean, REALLY? The villain is an oil baron? And from that you go all McCarthy on this?  Really?

Fourth, let me just talk about one of your quotes here: “…all these movies attacking the oil industry, none of them reminding people what oil means for most people: fuel to light a hospital, heat your home, fuel an ambulance to get you to the hospital if you need that.” Yup. Also, no need to tell the story about how the emissions from refining that oil and burning it in our cars gave kids asthma, forcing them to go to the hospital in the ambulance to get a breathing treatment. It’s a vicious cycle, I know. Or maybe the story about how the despot we bought the oil from used the money to brutally crack down on people protesting in his country. Let’s instead just go on all Pollyanna on the oil and just use it blithely unconcerned about the effects of our actions on others.

But if I wanted to watch propaganda like that, I’d just watch Fox.

And fifth and finally, quit comparing Muppets to things so much lesser in quality (Captain Planet? Even in the 80′s we knew that $#!t was lame! Or Cars 2- the worst movie Pixar ever made) and in completely different leagues (There Will Be Blood). Although, I must admit, I love that Fox claims There Will Be Blood is indoctrinating children. I know my kids are always clamoring to watch more Paul Thomas Anderson. Oh, and the hours I spent on my Super Nintendo playing “Super Empire Strikes Back”, “Super Return of the Jedi,” and “Super There Will Be Blood.”

Sigh. I don’t know what’s sadder. Fox News saying The Muppets are commies, or the fact that they didn’t realize just. how. long. they’ve. been. indoctrinating. children.

In short, Fox wouldn’t know real environmentalism if it hit them over the head with an organic tofu mallet manufactured using only renewable energy.  And I say this confidently as I type from the comfort of my eco-friendly hotel in San Francisco, where I’m attending a work retreat with the Sierra Club.

So, yes, I’m biased. But no less so than Fox, who I shudder to think people actually consider “News.”

What about the rest of you robots? I’d especially love to hear from our conservo-bots, Republi-droids, and libertaria-trons. Do you really see hidden pro-liberal messages in The Muppets? (And are you currently high?)