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You Got Politics In My Shakespeare!
I don't know what side of the US Political system you fall on, or for that matter if you're in the US at all. Or, if you are, if you care. But I couldn't let this one pass by.
Apparently Fox News is doing to Obama what Iago did to Othello.
Have fun with that.
6 comments:
"Rumor doth double, like the Voice, and Eccho,
The numbers of the feared."
Warwicke. 2 Henry IV, 3.1
I...don't get it. For one thing, I don't think Fox News is really casting the kind of aspersions on Obama that the writer says (When has Fox implied Obama is secretly a Muslim?). For another, what does this have to do with Othello? Iago doesn't operate primarily by slandering Othello, but by inciting his jealousy with calculated equivocation. I feel like the writer just picked Othello because Obama is black and everyone agrees that Iago is a bad guy, argal, Fox must be Iago. Unthinking literary allusions do not a compelling argument make.
I wonder if it might make more sense to draw the comparison between America itself and Othello, Obama and Desdemona, and Fox News and Iago. (Although I dearly hope Fox News, or any single news source, doesn't have the kind of sway over America as Iago had over Othello.)
Alexi-Although I wholeheartedly agree with you on the Othello referencing, 71 google pages say something quite different re: your question on Fox and the Muslim thing.
google: fox news obama muslim
http://www.youtube.co
/watch?v=ouKJixL--ms
http://articles.cnn.com/2007-01-22/politics/obama.madrassa_1_islamic-school-
madrassa-muslim-school?_s=PM:POLITICS
While there's no doubt that Fox is no friend of Obama's, I think the author's analogy is a bit of.
If Fox is Iago, then America is Othello and Obama is Desdemona. It is Iago's lies about Cassio and Desdemona that inflame Othello's anger. Thus, Fox wants to inflame us against the one we fell in love with, but who has proved unfaithful, etc.
I'm not sure who Cassio is in this somewhat labored comparison. Maybe Socialism, Islam, Communism, or some combination of them?
I like JM's evocation f Rumor, a narrator of sorts in Henry IV as an analogue for Fox (aptly named in this context) and the other mongers of falsehood as fact so prevalent today.
I think I agree with most of the other commenters. Fox's actions regarding Obama are sleazy, but the comparsion to Othello and Iago is that Obama is a black leader, and it ends there. Fox has neither the same motives nor the same methods as Iago.
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