That Wasn’t Thought Out: MSNBC Columnist Encourages People to Cut Their Cable to Hurt Fox News

 The American Spectator

“If that fails, I will drop my cable subscription.”

Dean Obeidallah

"MSNBC’s Dean Obeidallah published a column Wednesday urging his readers to pressure their cable companies to offer packages that don’t include MSNBC’s biggest competitor, Fox News. He encouraged them to join him in canceling their cable if the companies do not comply.

“ 'This is about using our wallets to have an impact on issues that matter,” he said. “I refuse to fund a channel spreading bigotry and undermining our democracy.”

"Obeidallah explained that a basic cable subscription funds Fox News hosts like Tucker Carlson, Sean Hannity, and Laura Ingraham, as well as MSNBC hosts like Joy Reid and Nicolle Wallace because cable providers bundle channels into a package and customers pay for all of the networks they receive. Cable operators then pay carriage fees to networks. He said that Fox News receives almost $2 billion in revenue from these fees. 

“ 'If you pay for any basic cable package, you are helping fund everything that Fox News airs,” he said. “It’s infuriating that on some level you and I are complicit in the toxic fodder being peddled on Fox News by helping fund its content.”Obeidallah acknowledged that MSNBC is itself funded by these cable packages and receives these fees, but noted that these fees are much lower for his own network since its viewership is so much smaller. 

"The average customer pays around $2 a month in fees to Fox News, which is the most-watched cable network. In comparison, they pay around $0.33 to MSNBC. During primetime hours, Fox News has nearly twice the viewership that MSNBC does.

"Obeidallah is not alone in calling for cable companies to scrap Fox News, but he might be the first person employed by a network to call on people to stop purchasing a cable package if the companies don’t comply and to pledge to “drop” his own subscription alongside them." . . .

After four years spent painting Trump as a unique threat to the nation, progressive pundits have begun moving on to new villains.

"Delivering into the political ether a line that had hitherto been reserved to satirists, MSNBC’s Dean Obeidallah proposed on Tuesday that Florida governor Ron DeSantis is “more dangerous than Trump.” “Former President Donald Trump is a clear and present danger to our nation, at least, if you support our democratic republic,” Obeidallah wrote. “But DeSantis is more dangerous.”

"That was quick.

"The proximate cause of Dean Obeidallah’s ire is that Ron DeSantis isn’t setting the same masking rules for children as Dean Obeidallah would if Dean Obeidallah were the governor of Florida." . . .

MSNBC Contributor Spews HATE: Fox News Is Al Jazeera, Trump Is Bin Laden