CBS sitcom takes stealthy swipe at Fox News Nick Juliano

Published: Tuesday October 14, 2008





Print This Email This Sitcom producer Chuck Lorre has developed a cult following for the lengthy diatribes he includes at the end of his shows. The "vanity cards," which are too long to read during the two seconds they air following CBS sitcoms "Two and a Half Men" and "Big Bang Theory" serve as mini-journal entries for Lorre, who has taken pot-shots at other media outlets and even his own network executives.



A card that aired after "Big Bang Theory" Monday night takes a none-too-subtle dig at Fox News, comparing it to a state-run propaganda outlet charged with repeating lies until they become truth.



"We have once again arrived at a moment in history where the truth can be defined as 'that which you can make other people believe,'" Lorre writes. "The methodology for creating that belief is repetition. Say something enough times and it becomes, for millions of people, the truth."



To illustrate his point, Lorre peppers his treatise with the statement "I am endowed like a stallion, repeated eight times. This is why control of the media equals control of the populace. ... And also why a state run television news channel is so very dangerous. ... Now there are those who would argue this has already happened and that a certain cable news channel is actually a covert extension of our government. ... The fact that the channel is run by a high-ranking party official, an anchor person from the channel became a White House spokesman, and another top-ranking party official became an on-air news commentator is often used to make this argument. ... Of course, this fact would be entirely inconsequential if the oft-repeated falsehoods they attempt to imbed into the Zeitgeist were simply amusing, or at worst, inane. ... But, unfortunately, that is not the case. Lorre encourages his viewers to use every possible avenue to "disseminate the actual truth."



The Fox News dig was not Lorre's first shot at a conservative-owned news outlet. Before a profile of the producer ran in the Wall Street Journal earlier this year, Lorre authored a vanity card panning the paper, calling it "The Depressingly Inevitable Next Step Toward the End of a Free Press in America, Thanks a Lot Rupert, Journal."



All 221 of Lorre's vanity card, beginning with the pre-DVR card that followed "Dharma & Greg" are archived on the producer's Web site.







Lorre's anti-Fox card is reproduced below:







