Fox News Channel's Outnumbered, displayed onscreen as Out#, using what was regularly used as the number sign, should be called Outhashtagged, a word sounding like the name of an H.P. Lovecraft deity.  The show features four pairs of women's crossed legs, right wing opinions, and a lone male in the middle looking stupid and acting deferential.
     In today's episode, actress/Republican mouthpiece Stacey Dash called Hillary Clinton "a sociopathic criminal," and defended Donald Trump's ejection of prominent Univision journalist Jorge Ramos from a Dubuque, Iowa, press conference.  Ramos had the gall, or, from my perspective, guts, to ask Trump logistical questions about the candidate's plan to deport eleven and a half million people.  Trump was vague, grew irritated with a journalist--from the TV channel that dropped Trump's Miss Universe Pageant--and had his bodyguard push Ramos from the room.  Outside, a man "not connected with the Trump campaign," but probably inspired by it, told Ramos to get out of the country.  Trump let Ramos back in; they engaged in an exchange heated by the candidate's apparent inability to offer details--a character trait of this particular broad-brush megalomaniac.  His police state fantasy plan of deportation, of course, resides in Trump's head like a sketch for an outline of a never-to-be-written novel.
     Stacey Dash, a Black woman whose ancestors were abducted from their home continent to work as slaves on another continent, called Ramos's questioning a "rant," a word often associated with the mad.  Her Outnumbered co-hostess, Harris Faulkner, also descended from people abducted from their home continent to work as slaves, castigated Jorge Ramos for speaking out of turn.  When one is in the presence of an exemplar of goodness like Donald Trump, one must observe protocol and play according to his arbitrary rules, which include sociopathic tweet-pestering of one of Faulkner's co-workers, Megyn Kelly, because Kelly, like Jorge Ramos, also had the guts to ask the great man a relevant and penetrating question.
     Dash, Faulkner, and the other two ladies on the show obviously approve of Trump.  Their call-in poll asked, "What's the first word that comes to mind when you think of Trump?"
     Andrea Tartaros read four of the five results out loud, "Arrogant" coming in first.  The third result, "Idiot," she left out.  It merely reflects that some Republican voters don't like Trump, and it's not Fox News policy at this time to call Donald Trump an idiot.
     Stacey Dash clearly supports Trump.  Fifteen years ago, when I first saw her in Clueless, I would've been startled to hear my present opinion of this beautiful woman with the extraordinary hazel eyes.  Before I heard her political views, I enjoyed her presence on the screen in various movies.  I may disagree with someone's politics without objecting to the person, but when their views are so densely unaware, with no regard for the subtle thread of things, I get turned off.
     I enjoyed, I admit, in typical shallow male fashion, looking at Stacey Dash for many years, until I heard her talk about politics.
     Ann Coulter, trying to get people interested in reading her new book, has joined Trump on his look-at-me trampoline.  Coulter complained recently that she's not sought out in the news media like she used to be.  Her vicious sound bites used to draw a great deal of attention, like the one right after 9/11: "We should bomb their countries and convert them to Christianity," a line rivaling Sarah Palin's "Waterboarding is how we baptize terrorists."
     Coulter, attaching herself to the Trump cause, can perhaps regain some lost celebrity territory, but it might be too late.  She does, as she insists proudly, write her own books, a process involving months and years--vanishing from public view during research and writing.  She now finds herself in a world less interested in reading books, and more devoted to informational bits, coming into minds like M&Ms popped into consumption holes without thinking.  I haven't heard about any Coulter tweets--she's old-fashioned, like me; she writes books and other pieces without resorting to cute abbreviations--but consider that Donald Trump, in twenty minutes a few nights ago, wrote five anti-Megyn Kelly tweets, flinging his own mental disease of vindictive pettiness at American minds much faster than Coulter can ever do by writing volumes that require time to compose.
     I can't stand Ann Coulter, I'm not defending her, but I see the news media landscape curdling into a new phase of quick judgments and quicker con artists manipulating a rich and developing information space characterized more and more by a growing stupidity and fascination with illusions built on flair.

                                                                         Vic Neptune