How Fox News Robbed Me of a Mother

My earliest memory is at age 3. I’m lying on a cot in between two tables wide awake during naptime. I was one of the only kids in fulltime nursey school because both of my parent’s worked. I had a fulltime nanny who stayed with me Monday-Thursday and a driver who took me to nursery school because my nanny didn’t have a license. Even at a young age, I was very proud that I was the only one I knew who had a mother who worked. My mother owned her own fashion buying business and on the exciting days I went to work with her, she would take me to different showrooms where I could to try on and keep all of the sample clothing. Her commute was over two hours one way and her days were long, but I was always impressed by her ability to navigate New York City like she’d grown up there. She was one of the first of my friend’s parents to have a beeper and a cellphone and she always looked so official when she used them. She had attended college that she had paid for herself and was one of the only women to major in business. My mother worked with a diverse group of people and from my perspective she respected them all and treated them equally.

Unlike my friend’s mothers, my mom took the occasional business trip. On September 11, 2001, my mother was in South Carolina. I often think that the children who witnessed 9/11 have now become such a big proponent of the work from home movement because their earliest associations with office buildings was having someone fly a plane into it. While I can vividly remember 9/11, I don’t remember it changing my relationship with my mother. In fact, the event that served as catalyst is relatively unknown. In August of 2003, New York City experienced a severe blackout. Both of my parents were still working in the city at that time and believed that this was another terrorist attack. They had to hitch hike but eventually made it home. 2004 was the last year my mother worked. Out of fear that a terrorist attack would render me an orphan, my dad made my mother give up her career and stay home with me. I was about to enter third grade and was ecstatic.

I don’t remember much of the first few years my mother stayed at home. She became the class mom, my girl scout leader and volunteered to run fundraisers. As far as I can remember, my mother never turned on the TV and if she did it was only to watch CSI. Politics were rarely discussed at our household but as we approached the 2008 election, all of a sudden it consumed every conversation. My mother told me that the election of Barack Obama would be so detrimental we wouldn’t be able to afford to live in our home or afford the tuition for my school. This of course was untrue, but I was 13 and vulnerable so I believed her. In 2009 my father bought cable television for the first time. What I didn’t know at the time was that the introduction of cable would also introduce Fox News, the ultimate weapon for killing the relationship with my mother. She would pick me up from school and Fox News radio would be on in the car. I would do my homework with Glenn Beck in the background. Fox News quickly became a toxic member of our extended family.

As my body started to change, so did my mother’s opinion of me. I did not look like the super models Fox News used for television hosts. My curly hair was not acceptable to be seen in public, something had to be done about my unseemly acne. I was starting to become my own person at the same time Fox News was brainwashing my mother with radical traditionalism. By the end of 7th grade, I was fighting with my mother constantly. But we weren’t fighting about my clothes being too short or my inappropriate behavior with boys. We were fighting because I didn’t fit the profile that Fox News had convinced her that young women should be in society. She wanted me to look up to people like Megyn Kelly and Gretchen Carlson, women who knew their place. I wanted to be like Meryl Streep, women who was a little rougher around the edges and spoke up for what they believed was right. Someone my mother used to be.

Our relationship continued to be strained in high school. I spent as little time at home as possible and threw myself into every extracurricular activity I could find. With the added freedom gained from having a license, I lived at my friend’s houses and spent any time at home locked in my room doing homework. Fox News wasn’t on 24/7 at their houses. My friends actually did things with their moms, they went to yoga classes and movies and read books together. The only thing my mother and I did together was get our nails done or go shopping, both very superficial in nature. My mother was embarrassed that I spent more time studying than I did fixing myself up. She was horrified by my unladylike language and I started to notice that she had become critical of the same types of people with different sexual identities and religions that she once called friends and coworkers.

With each passing year, my mother had lost more of her ability to reason. If Fox News told her the sky was pink, she followed in line. Once a successful career woman, she could no longer operate her cell phone or her computer and asked me how to spell words she would have had to know to be taken seriously in business. It was as though the more she watched Fox News, the dumber and more dependent she became. Not only was it problematic that I did not look the part of the person she wanted me to be, I did not have a man to support me which the radical right has convinced her is the only true way to show my worth to society. Even though I graduated with the highest honors from a great college and have a job at a very respected company, I was not Fox News’ version of a successful woman and therefore my mother’s. I was finally at the age where it was time to start being friends with my mother, not fight even more intensely with her.

When the 2016 election began to become the focus of conversation, I actually felt hopeful. I hoped the election of Donald Trump would allow us to begin to restore parts of my very broken relationship. With her man in the office, she could turn off Fox News and find other interests. However, instead of rejoicing in the four years of Trump’s presidency, she sulked in the criticism he received. Although it seemed impossible, my mother and I have fought even more intensely. She gradually became an obsessive Facebook poster, the only source of her news outside of Fox. Each day her posts became more and more radical. Soon to follow was the horrifying moment I caught her watching QAnon videos. Our relationship now is basically non existent.

While I am humiliated to admit it, in a final effort to save my deteriorating relationship with my mother, I voted for Donald Trump because I really thought that his win would make her happy. At the time I hadn’t pieced together that my mother’s negative opinion of me was directly related to the radical views she had picked up from Fox News. Since making this catastrophic mistake, I have taken the time to educate myself on the dangers of this sensational news source. Voting for Donald Trump was not a mistake I made again in 2020 because I understand now that no matter who is in the White House, the mother I once knew is gone forever. Sometimes I wonder how I could have ended up as an independent woman trying to be a trailblazer, but I like to think that I am the woman my mother would have been proud to raise, before Fox News started dictating her thoughts.