If you searched for news about “The Muppets” on Monday, you were treated to hundreds of stories and blog items debating whether Disney’s lovable creatures were Communists or not. You can thank Fox Business Host Eric Bolling for that.
Bolling of ‘Follow The Money’ set the stage on Friday when he hosted a 7-minute segment that argued that The Muppets film – featuring bad guy oilman Tex Richman — promotes a left-wing agenda.
“We’re teaching our kids class warfare. Where are we, Communist China?” Bolling said.
That line – along with the rest of the conversation – annoyed critics, journalists, and the progressive watchdog group Media Matters. That night, the Media Matters slapped its logo on a video of the segment and sent it around the Internet, and by Monday it had gone viral.
“Liberal Hollywood depicting a successful businessman as evil – that’s not new,” Bolling said while introducing his first guest, Dan Gainor of the Media Research Center, a conservative watchdog organization.
“It’s amazing how far the left will go just to stop – to manipulate your kids,” Gainor said, “to convince them – to give them the anti-corporate message.”
“Is liberal Hollywood,” asks Bolling, “using class warfare to kind of brainwash our kids?”
Conservative Dan Gainor answers ‘yes’ and lists as examples Ted Turner’s ‘Captain Planet and the Planeteers’, Disney’s ‘Cars 2’ and Nickelodeon’s ‘The Big Green Help’. According to Gainor, all these cartoons brainwash kids into believing corporations pollute the planet and are only concerned with earning money.
“Ultimately, what they’re telling kids is what they told you in the movie ‘The Matrix’ – that mankind is a virus on poor, old Mother Earth,” Gainor said.
Eric Bolling’s next guest agreed. “It’s brainwashing in the most obvious form, right? I just wish liberals could leave little kids alone,” said Andrea Tantaros, co-host of The Five on Fox News.
The Washington Post picked apart the argument, as did the New York Daily News. The item got the most traction, though, at more partisan outlets on both ends of the political spectrum.
One writer at The Huffington Post could not resist responding to Eric Bolling. He wrote, “It ain’t easy being green, but according to Fox Business, Kermit the Frog and his Muppet friends are reds…. The Teletubbies were unavailable for comment. Mahna-Mahna.”
