(Credit: Screenshot: Chris Matyszczyk/CNET)
When two of our most respected institutions progress to conflict, it is best to cover one’s ears and eyes.
However, today, has seen merely two of our most powerful institutions in apparent disharmony.
For Fox News is accusing Google of not loving the U.S. of A. quite as much as Fox News does. Or Microsoft does, for that matter.
What could have been the subject of this friction? Privacy? Or politics? It is a reasonable assumption that Google is slightly to the western side of Fox.
Sadly, it’s even worse than politics. For Fox News believes Google is unpatriotic.
In a searing, scalding piece, Fox News is appalled, sickened, nauseated and spitting innards at the fact that there is no Google doodle for Flag Day. Which would be today.
“June 14 is Flag Day, a national holiday celebrating the Stars and Stripes since 1949. But don’t ask Google about it,” begins the erudite J’Accuse.
Today’s Google home page. Feel the bareness.
(Credit: Screenshot: Chris Matyszczyk/CNET)
Fox pointed out that some people on Google’s forums were miffed at this omission.
But it’s how this slicing diatribe ended that will surely cause fog over Mountain View, Calif. For Fox noted: “On Tuesday, Google did highlight national pride, however: a doodle presented on some local versions of the site honored Russia Day.”
The implication was clear: “Dear Google, you’re left-coast, louche-liberal Commie sympathizers. You ain’t no Americans.”
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Should you yourself be currently shuddering at the idea that you didn’t know today was Flag Day, Fox would like you to not merely blame Google. It would prefer you to wander along to Bing. For Bing’s home page is a veritable flurry of unfurled national color.
Perhaps, indeed, we should all blame Google for not reminding us of a date that has been a national holiday for so long. Without Google, we are so bereft of information. Perhaps, too, there’s been a hacking of all the doodlers’ Google Calendars and they thought Flag Day was July 4. Or December 25.
Some might be unduly influenced by the recent publication of David Frum’s painfully entertaining novel “Patriots,” in which a news organization with heartily similar identity and values to Fox News is seen to be, well, slightly unpatriotic.
But it’s important to be fair and balanced. I have contacted Google to ask what on earth has happened to the company’s sense of history, its sense of occasion, its sense of national priorities, and its sense of art.
I did so trying not to be influenced at all by this morning’s Fox News celebration of nationhood in which a female anchor, Gretchen Carlson, walked off the set after co-host Brian Kilmeade offered these words of brotherhood: “Women are everywhere. We’re letting them play golf and tennis now. It’s out of control.”
Related Links:
Bing gets social, but it’s too quiet in here
Google doodle honors synthesizer inventor Robert Moog
Microsoft images used in Maps for iOS 6
Pirate Bay cordially accepts RIAA’s quest for censorship
EU competition chief: We’ll settle with Google over antitrust
via CNET Latest News http://news.cnet.com/8301-17852_3-57453552-71/fox-accuses-google-of-being-unpatriotic/?part=rss&subj=latest-news2&tag=title
