NEW YORK — With unprecedented crises engulfing the world, millions of television viewers are finding the news too stressful to watch — and are turning to the Fox News Channel instead.

“Things are so bad in the world right now, many people are afraid to watch the news,” says psychologist Davis Logsdon of the University of Minnesota, who studies the relationship between news consumption and stress. “For them, Fox News represents a welcome break from reality.”

Tracy Klugian, 37, a systems analyst from Lansing, Mich., said that he was flipping the channels to find “anything but news” and found himself watching Fox for the first time. “They had this guy on — something Beck I think his name was — and he was just going on and on, making stuff up,” he said. “I was like, this is the kind of mindless junk I need right now.”

Klugian says he now records the program and watches it every day when he gets home from work: “For one hour at least, I know that I can kick back and not hear anything that’s going on in the world.”

He said that watching Fox had also introduced him to “my favorite new comedian — this hysterical woman named Michele Bachmann.”

“She was doing this bit about how the American Revolution started in New Hampshire, not Massachusetts, and then she started mixing up where Lexington and Concord were,” he said. “OK, I know it sounds really stupid, but I almost peed myself.”

Elsewhere, Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker said he is not worried about how history will remember him “because if I have my way, there won’t be any history teachers.”

Award-winning humorist, television personality and film actor Andy Borowitz is author of the book “The Republican Playbook.”

© 2011 Creators Syndicate