“Fair and Balanced” at LA Fitness

LA Fitness certainly strove for “Fair & Balanced”. It placed the monitors tuned to Fox News and CNN adjacent to each other. Yesterday, patrons on the stationary bikes or treadmills saw the same video feed as the House attempted to choose a Speaker. Quick readers of closed captioning got very different analysis of the proceedings from Fox and from CNN.

A Republican Congressman told Fox that he was disappointed that Congress cannot get to the “important business that our constituents elected us to address — like Hunter Biden’s business dealings.”

I nearly fell off my stationary bike. Apparently, GOP priorities have changed from whipping inflation, securing the border, and eliminating crime to conducting televised hearings that will embarrass the President’s son.

As Kevin McCarthy went down to defeat once again, a Democratic Congressman told CNN that “the adults in the room” anticipated chaos when the 2023 House convened. That is why they passed much of next year’s budget before Christmas. “It would not look good for anyone if soldiers and sailors were not paid and had to line up for unemployment.”

America’s two-party political system has advantages and disadvantages. A multi-party system like that in most of Europe finds the whack-a-doodles like Marjorie Taylor-Greene, Lauren Bobert, and Matt Goetz in their own minority corner of Parliament unable to shut down the government by denying their party its slim majority. Middle-of-the Road Democrats and Republicans could form a coalition government. The GOP gets to run Treasury and State. The Dems get to run Defense and HEW. Everyone is relatively happy.

The disadvantage is that a disciplined minority party can seize effective control. Hitler became Chancellor of Germany with about 1/3 of the vote in 1933.

Maybe I will ignore the TV monitors on my next visit to LA Fitness. “Fair & Balanced” is confusing.

By Ed Dufton