Every once in a while a Fox personality says something so outlandish he shocks himself. Such was the case when Fox Business host Charles Payne got amped up over Michael Moore’s American Sniper criticism and unleashed a bizarre reading of America’s overseas military efforts. “We have saved the planet,” he shouted at the camera, to the visible discomfort of his cohosts, “and if we go away as America’s policeman, it will be hell to pay.”
The statement was outrage click-gold, but its virality obscured a crucial quality: even a market-drunk paleocapitalist like Payne doesn’t actually believe the American-produced quagmire in Iraq was the real-world equivalent of the Avengers.
Payne’s outburst followed a solid week of escalating rhetoric against Moore, Seth Rogen and other critics of the film. Fox hosts first mounted defenses of Chris Kyle, then of snipers, then of the military, and finally of the Iraq debacle. By the time Payne was plied with Moore’s quote, the network had made the saintliness of the U.S.’s war effort a precondition of Kyle’s defense. Though it sounded outlandish to the rest of us, it was actually just Payne walking that sentiment one step further.
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