Stuart Varney of Fox Business says his network doesn’t try to characterize the poor and even claims it’s the “honest messenger” when it comes to issues of poverty.
But on Wednesday night’s “Daily Show,” host Jon Stewart was having none of it.
“That is such a rich buffet of bullshit,” Stewart said. “It’s a three-course prix fixe. I’m sorry — prick fest.”
Varney and others on Fox News took exception to President Barack Obama’s recent speech at a forum on poverty that pointed out how the network was spinning a narrative that the poor were lazy and didn’t want to work.
As Stewart showed, Fox has definitely and repeatedly characterized the poor this way. He turned the rest of the segment into a “prick fest,” with clip after clip of Fox News portraying the poor as “a nation of takers” and a “moocher class” living off of entitlements.
“How fucking removed from reality is Fox’s perception of their own coverage on poverty? The main defender of your network’s attitude towards those in poverty is the main offender,” Stewart declared. “He does segments that would make Ebenezer Scrooge go, ‘Hey, take it easy, these are people we’re talking about.’”
For the final course of the “prick fest,” Stewart served up some “baked alasshole,” showing a series of clips of Varney doing exactly what what he said he didn’t — insulting the poor, and at one point, even declaring, “I am being mean to poor people.”
Check out the “prick fest” in the clip above.