The Sons of Liberty

This just aired on American television. It’s a history lesson about the Liberty Tree in Boston by Sean Hannity, an entertainer on Fox who poses as a journalist to make people laugh. At about 1:20 he starts to explain Fox News’ “own Liberty Tree,” a cartoon that demonstrates to the people, over fife and drum music, just how Barack Obama is turning the nation toward socialism. You can watch for yourself how the apples of industry, commerce, and security (Fox News’ “fruits of our liberty”) fall from the bough and get boxed up into a crate:

Now, I have problems of my own with the somersaults being turned in Washington over the banking boondoggle. But for sheer news value, the Fox News Liberty Tree has a couple of antecedents. The first is cartoons like this:

And the second, more immediate antecedent is an illuminating cartoon from America’s recent culture wars:

... which is how Creation Scientists justify their war against teaching Darwinism in public schools. You see that axe? You see how it’s aimed at everything evil in the world — inflation, dirty books, hard rock, socialism — created by evolutionary theory and rational doubt? You see how it’s labeled “Scientific Creationists”? Don’t you want it to save the world? Of course you do. Now shut up.

     posted 10 May 2009 by Michael Scott Moore