The relentlessly dishonest right-wing press is spending the Biden administration whipping itself into a frenzy over its own lies, fabrications, and distortions. Every day seems to bring a new hysteria: Joe Biden wants to take your hamburger! The left has canceled Dr. Seuss! The stories often total nonsense but touching on potent culture war fights burn through right-wing social and news media, turn into conservative canon, and are quickly replaced with fresh outrage.
Our late colleague Simon Maloy developed a concept during the Obama years to explain how these sorts of bogus right-wing stories kept turning into national news. He called it “the Fox Cycle”: The right-wing fever-swamps would generate a story; Fox News would give it copious, aggrieved coverage; the network would pressure mainstream news outlets to pick up the story; they would do so, even crediting Fox for being ahead of the curve; and the story would eventually be proved false or misleading but only long afte