What Fox has wrought

I directed my Twitter followers to a piece by the Washington Monthly's Steven Benen. My tweet headline read: "If You're Having A Good Day, Don't Read This." And for good reason:

Take it away, Steve:

If you missed "The Rachel Maddow Show" reporting from Alaska last night, the episode was chock full of interesting content. There was one fairly brief segment, however, that stood out for me.

Rachel chatted with some Joe Miller supporters campaigning on a street corner, but before she could walk away, the activists wanted to emphasize that they resent Sen. Lisa Murkowski for being one of 19 Republicans to vote to confirm Eric Holder as the U.S. Attorney General. Rachel asked why that was a bad thing. That's when it got amusing.

One young man insisted that Holder is "the most anti-gun attorney general this nation has ever had." When Rachel asked how he arrived at this, he had absolutely no idea why he believes what he believes. He referenced Holder's "voting record beforehand," which made no sense, since Holder has never held elected office. Asked what it was, exactly, that Holder did on gun policy he didn't like, the Miller supporter -- who, remember, feels so strongly about this issue that he brought it up -- replied, "I, uh, I honestly, uh, I don't know enough about him to answer that truthfully."

"This is the world that Fox News has created," Rachel concluded.

Benen concluded, "Ignorance spreads like a cancer, and right about now, it's making our body politic pretty sick." Yeah. Scary, isn't it? Happy Halloween.