Numbers That Will Make You Sad

Here is a sad true fact: If your head is on the TV, talking, Americans will trust you forever, no matter what. In return for the collective sacrifice of our humanity, we are rewarded with shows such as According to Jim's Testicles, and The Beard of Wolf Blitzer.

TV is on my brain because ThinkProgress is passing along some pretty grim polling data from the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press.



TP focuses on the drastic down tick in positive reviews from Democrats over the period of 2007 to 2009. They write:

"In a new survey of how the public views the news media, the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press found that “partisan differences in views of Fox News have increased substantially since 2007.” Though the percentage of Republicans who view Fox News positively is virtually the same (73 percent in 2007 and 72 percent in 2009), positive views of Fox News have dropped significantly amongst Democrats from 61 percent in 2007 to 43 percent in 2009. In comparison, the view of CNN by both Republicans and Democrats is “little changed from two years ago.”"

My question, though, is how the fuck is it that in 2007, 2007, 61% of Democrats held a positive view of FoxNews. That seems remarkably high to me. I mean, O'Reilly had been in full effect for years by then, as had Hannity and the lobotomized goons over at Fox and Friends. What could have changed between 2007 and 2009? Well there's this:

Glenn Beck joins Fox News

And I suppose their coverage of the Democratic primaries might have turned a few people off, but, still, 61% in 2007? Yikes.