As part of Fox News’ live coverage of the London bombings from the 7th July, Brit Hume, head of their Washington Bureau told the anchorman Shepard Smith:
I mean, my first thought when I heard — just on a personal basis, when I heard there had been this attack and I saw the futures this morning, which were really in the tank, I thought, “Hmmm, time to buy.”
Media Matters: Hume’s “first thought” on hearing of…
via the Huffington Post
omg- what a prick. the type of person you just DON’T want to know.
Well to be honest, he has a bit of a reputation as a right-wing commentator. I don’t know what you take from that because I think it best not to libel him here but, I think that kind of behavior is embarrassing, distressing and shameful. But then he’s supported by the company, a company that owns the most reactionary paper in the world, The Sun! …and of course our ‘wonderful’ Times as well, not that I’ve read THAT in a good long while!
Another take on this is that this is what the markets always do (the typical free-market capitalist economist will nod his head vigorously and ecstatically proclaim this is what the markets are supposed to do) after world-shaking, tragic events. The impulse to “buy” in the aftermath is, at least in part, only a logical reaction to the immediate knee-jerk response which - in the currency market, anyway - was a massive sell-off of the US dollar and Sterling. Two days later, the sentiment has become conventional wisdom in the stock market: “London Bombings Buy Signal - Are You Listening?” If you actually follow the second link through to the end of the article, you will find this established market commentator actually quotes the Bible at the end of his article. But the quotation has nothing to do with the tragedy; he always quotes the Bible at the end of his commentaries - and God only knows why.
This is one reason why old men like me sometimes become hopeless cynics.
Pardon me, the second link above should have led here.
Ha ha! Just as I was editing your comment to include the correct address, you’ve posted an updated link! Nice one.
Great minds think alike, and all that…
Anwyay, I completely understand the reasoning behind it. The markets drop because traders are scared that the current financial system will be disrupted and outputs will slow and all the normal rhetoric. I have no problem with people analysing the way that markets react to tragedy, but here Brit Hume was making comments implying that his first instinct was to think about his wallet. This is a mere 9 hours after the bombs went off, when we know now, over 48 hours later, that there are still people/bodies trapped inside and underneath burnt out and bombed Underground train carriages. The remarks are callous and cruel and offensive and have no conception of the damage they do to others and to America.
No doubt there will be a contingent of Hume’s viewers who will nod their heads and say ‘right on’ for speaking ‘the truth’. He’s not scared of a reaction by any moderate press or viewers because everyone now admits that Fox News repeatedly lies in its on-air coverage, and there should be no reason to really pay attention to its words. But at the same time, the way Hume and his cohorts behave is still damaging because it perpetuates an image of aloofness and detachment from the rest of the world that hurts America. We learn today that only 2.2 million people watched MTV’s screening of Live8 coverage, we know that MTV thought it was an ‘brilliant success’ to get 18 million views to stay on the channel for 6 minutes of the broadcast. 6 minutes?! ABC’s rebroadcast of highlights were their worst-watched show of the evening on Saturday.
Is it that people don’t understand that there is terror and hurt and pain and death going on around the world or is it that they simply do not care? 2.9 million viewers? How is it that the right wing radio commentators get greater figures than a concert to save the lives of a billion people? Hume may be dismissed as an idiot, but he’s an influential one and that’s what is dangerous.
Absolutely. The theorists love to warble about how “the invisible hand” is efficient, free, impersonal and majestic; but it is also - as your observations about how the markets affected one particular person’s consciousness confirm - “callous and cruel and offensive.” It is absolutely blind to any calculation of human needs beyond what can be signaled through purchasing power.
Personally, I still fight against my own impulse to cycnicism and persist in believing the vast majority of people truly are caring and compassionate (hell, isn’t that how Bush got “elected” the first time? by pretending compassion was a part of his platform?), but feel alienated and utterly helpless to effect necessary changes to society. So they avert their eyes from the grim realities of the world around them and definitely change the channels when confronted by something that challenges them to expand their visions. Socialism has been so thoroughly demonized in the United States over the past century, that now even the definitely merely center-of-the-road “liberal” democrats are scornfully rejected as hopelessly muddle-headed utopians by half the involved electorate.
You are absolutely correct that America is damaging its own cause through its relentless and arrogant self-absorption. We have utterly no civic consciousness of “why” a group like Al-Qaeda, for example, would struggle so hard to hurt us; and anyone who even tries to initiate a discussion of the problem is shouted down immediately as an “un-American’” traitor. The official line is that we are “God’s elect,” “the greatest nation on earth,” and “the last, best hope of the world.” End of discussion.
The fact that the public forum here is dominated entirely by bullying, self-righteous religious fanatics and the hirelings of a few obscenely rich corporate interests is regarded apparently as entirely representative of the “natural order” of things. Nobody studies Greek or Latin any more, so of course Plato’s theory about democracies degenerating into oligarchies and tyrannies is entirely passed over and Tacitus’ observation “Corruptissima re publica plurimae leges” is surely considered as “quaint” as the Geneva Conventions in the Washington DC of today.
Now, who was it, who wrote (in connection with slavery): “I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just: that his justice cannot sleep forever[?]” My former fellow Virginian, Thomas Jefferson. The man, who political enemies excoriated in the press as an incorrigible atheist. Oh, well, the more things change…
The world will eventually snap this country back to reality, but I fear it may only be as the reaction to a terrible crisis of some sort, that could and should have been avoided.
Patrick - did you read that letter in Saturday’s Guardian from somebody in Seattle, who turned his TV on to watch /find out about the London bombngs, to find that it was normal programming…