Sherman R. Frederick/Properly Subversive
The migration of political thought in America toward common sense governance is evident in the new ratings for cable news.
Get a load of what Fox News did this summer: Fox not only beat all of its cable news peers, but it also beat the pants off CBS, ABC and NBC in a key time slot.
Data from Nielsen shows Fox News — from the period spanning June 20 through Sept. 1 — finished as the No. 1 network in all of broadcast television during the primetime hours of 8-11 p.m.. During those hours, Fox News averaged 2.43 million total nightly viewers in primetime — topping ABC at 2.38 million, NBC at 2.21 million, and CBS at 2.03 million. It is the second time in the network’s history they accomplished that feat — with the other coming in the summer of 2020.
Fox News nearly doubled CNN and MSNBC viewership combined. MSNBC drew 783,000 average nightly total viewers during the primetime hours, while CNN posted an average of 444,000 viewers. CNN did fare better than MSNBC in the advertiser-coveted 25-54 age demographic — edging out MSNBC 78,000 to 72,000 in nightly viewers among that category. But Fox dramatically outpaced the competition in that metric as well — pulling in 237,000 nightly primetime viewers in the 25-54 age range.
These numbers indicate a shift away from the politically correct values as expressed by the old guard of the Democratic Party — Obama, Clinton, Biden — and movement toward a more pragmatic demand for government performance.
Don’t teach first-graders that there are boys, girls and inbetweens, teach them to read. Instill a sense of pride in America, not a sense of dread. Don’t say you’re against drug traffickers and then do nothing to stop shipments on the high seas of the raw materials to make those drugs. Shoot the bastards out of the water before they reach our shores. Make our cities safe again and there’s nothing — zero, nada — wrong with holding hands with the federal government to make that happen.
Look, I know you can’t draw a solid straight line from Fox viewership to support Trump-style actions, but you can draw a pretty convincing dotted line between the two.
Those who refuse to see the connection (Yes, I’m talkin’ to you Chuck Schumer, AOC, Elizabeth Warren et al) do so at their own peril.
Yet, Democrats continue to look silly as they make almost surreal arguments for why big cities don’t need federal assistance to control crime.
Consider this exchange between a reporter and Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker:
Reporter: 54 shot, 7 dead, they’re gonna say the city’s not safe.
Pritzker: Look, big cities have crime. Let’s just pay attention to what President Trump is doing.
It’s weird thinking such as that leads to memes like this:
That meme stems from Congressman Jamie Raskin, who argued against President Trump’s crime crackdown because crime has “always been part of our history.”
“He’s trying to militarize the society and intimidate his political opponents […] Always, crime has ALWAYS been part of our history.”
We’re witnessing another example in the Age of Trump where the president has found an 80/20 issue in which his Loyal Opposition can’t bring themselves to agree and do the right thing.
I’m not talking about the false issue of the dangers of federalizing local law enforcement. Save that for the Ivory Tower discussions about how many angels can dance on the head of a pin. I’m talking about the well-known, rubber-hits-the-road solution to crime: Increased presence of law enforcement.
The president proved that in D.C.
The presence of the national guard and other federal law enforcement in the nation’s capital has significantly reduced violent crime. The president is floating the logical extension of that principle in saying he could do the same in other big cities, like Chicago, New York, and Baltimore.
Instead of talking crazy like Rep. Raskin, above, or ignoring the problem of crime, like Gov. Pritzker, the better path is to acknowledge and embrace the lesson.
More law enforcement on the streets = lower crime.
Period.
Instead of cutting a city’s police force, expand it. Instead of undercutting good police work, reinforce it. Support it. Cherish it. Stop throwing up a white flag to crime areas. Instead, flood the zone and take back the city in the name of civilized society.
I fully understand how Trump can be the proverbial bull in a china shop sometimes. But he’s right to expose the short- and long-term answer to crime prevention. Big cities ought to take it.
The weather is turning, ladies and gentlemen. The stupid arguments against crime prevention should be too.
(Sherman R. Frederick is a longtime Nevada journalist. You can find more of his writing at shermanfrederick.substack.com.)
