By Jim Hoover

Five faces tell the story – or stories, as it might be — of Fox News Network. It tells a narrative of angst and spectacle that bends minds, heaves hearts, presses attitudes, and makes pupils wide.

Bill O’Reilly, a Fox news icon, is depicted with a swelled head, a condition often described by O’Reilly critics, who call him arrogant, supercilious, and rancorous, only to name a few descriptive qualities mentioned. Of course, the photo is a caricature.

Bill won a Governors’ Award a few years back, given by the New England board of governors of the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences, which called him a journalist.

A few past, members of the board had second thoughts. One, Roger Lyons, said that “his indiscretions, inaccuracies and prejudices disqualify him for such a lofty honor.[i]”

There is some evidence that Bill engineered the firing of a low-level Comcast executive who criticized the choices of O’Reilly[ii]. After all, Bill is a star on Fox News which Comcast carries as a big part of its TV offerings.

Comcast is now Comcast-NBC.

Then there is Legs Laurie Dhue, who is/was only one of the short-skirt crowd who still occupy Fox couches with legs, legs, legs. The gentleman sitting with her is trying to be subtle with his eyes. Need I point her out?

She was a friendly fox on Fox and Friends. I haven’t seen her lately.

Lower left is Glenn “Cry-me-a-River” Beck, whose emotions/impressions run the gamut from a John Boehner imitation to a circus clown to a Revolutionary War patriot to a human being. I’m not sure if this is a caricature.

Glenn makes millions writing on chalk boards and inventing government conspiracies, of which we must be fearful.

Lower right is Sean “I will water-board for charity” Hannity. He wanted to show all those torture critics that enduring water-boarding is a piece of cake (not torture).

Of course, he didn’t do it. But he may surf, using a board.

Fox News rose to prominence soon after Ronald Reagan’s suspension of the FCC-required Fairness Doctrine. Before then, the FCC granted broadcast licenses on public airways to broadcasters who acted as public trustees, in that broadcasters were required to act in the public interest by granting equal time to all ideas.

With Fox as one of the few monolithic companies that own the media now, such rules obviously don’t apply anymore.

We must say that with the five characterized above, joined by a large team of other actors, we don’t have to wait long for news and distraction.

Well, at least distraction.