PLANO, Texas — Local veteran and longtime Fox News viewer Ronald Merchant spent most of Tuesday afternoon convinced he was watching live coverage of Manhattan, despite the fact that the “broadcast” was actually the 1981 John Carpenter film “Escape From New York,” which his grandson had apparently left playing on Syfy after crashing stoned on the couch the night before while visiting from college.
“This Snake fella reminds me of a buddy I had in ’Nam,” Merchant said, gesturing at the television. “Mean so-of-a-bitch. I watched him kill women and children. He had a cool eye patch too. Anyway, he’s doing real good work cleaning up all the lunatic drug addicts and punk trash in Democrat-run New York. I went there once in the ’70s, and this looks about right. This is what they get for electing a socialist mayor. If this Plissken runs for office, he has my vote. I don’t care if he went to prison, he’s a veteran damn it. My ‘Nam buddy went to prison too. Tax fraud.”
Merchant’s grandson said he immediately recognized something was off when his grandfather began yelling at the TV about “why the anchors were not saying anything about the Duke and all his thugs running wild in Manhattan.”
“It’s so fucking funny. He hasn’t changed the channel from Fox News in 10 years. I think the last time he switched stations it was to watch a rerun of ‘Gunsmoke,’ but he turned it back because ‘the commercials were too homosexual.’ I tried telling him it’s a movie, but he didn’t believe me,” Travis Merchant said. “He just said this was ‘Obama’s America.’ I think he forgot who the president is now. I think I’m putting on ‘Predator 2’ next to give him a taste of LA. Thanks to Tucker Carlson, he already believes in aliens anyway.”
Experts say the 68-year-old Merchant’s confusion is not especially unusual in today’s political climate.
“We see this a lot,” said Dr. Marla Kingsley, a media studies professor at the University of Texas. “For many older viewers, the line between dystopian fiction and Fox News blurred sometime around 2009. The shock of seeing a Black president caused mass derealization amongst boomers. Honestly, Ronald’s approach to this reality break might be the healthiest outcome. At least when he’s preoccupied watching a pretty solid film, he’s not posting patriotic AI slop on Facebook. And there are fewer commercials selling gold, which is a plus.”
At press time, the grandson, in an effort to push the limits of what his grandfather would believe, went too far when Merchant lost interest in “RoboCop” after he “killed that hard-working businessman” and “didn’t back the blue enough.”