Has Clarence Page ever actually watched Network?

Because the Chicago Tribune columnist completely botches the facts of the film in the process of becoming the latest media elite granted access into the CW Kingdom by dutifully concluding the White House should not fact check Fox News.

Here's Page's complete misreading of the classic 1970's film:

In fact, Fox is what their defenders say it is, not a political organization but a news operation. It just happens to have some strong right-wing voices like Beck and Hannity who happen to be two of Fox's biggest audience attractions. Such phenomena were forecast in the movie "Network" in 1976. Back then the idea of a half-deranged demagogue set loose on a national audience for the sake of ratings still sounded far-fetched. These days the movie looks almost like a documentary.

Um, wrong. That's not what Network was about, although Page is hardly alone in misstating the facts of the film. It routinely gets referenced, incorrectly, in media profiles of Glenn Beck, who we're told is just like the stark raving mad man from Network. In fact, Beck loves to push the idea that he's a modern day, I'm-mad-as-hell everyman like Howard Beale 

It's BS.

Beale's unvarnished on-air rants from Network targeted conformity, corporate conglomerates, and the propaganda power of television. (Ironic, no?) Beale was non-partisan and rarely even mentioned politics in his (fictional) primetime rants. Beck, by contrast, is uniformly partisan as he unleashes his anger against, and whips up dark scenarios about, the president of the United States.

Big difference.