In the mind of Barack Obama, his own policies and failures aren’t the source of his political problems. It’s all the work of Fox News, according to a new book by lefty David Corn.
Corn writes that after the midterm elections, Obama told labor leaders in December 2010 that he held Fox partly responsible for him “losing white males.” “…Fed by Fox News, they hear Obama is a Muslim 24/7, and it begins to seep in…The Republicans have been at this for 40 years. They have new resources, but the strategy is old,” Corn recounted Obama as saying.
Along with the whiny baby act, we get nostalgia for a past that never was:
[T]he president told Rolling Stone, “The golden age of an objective press was a pretty narrow span of time in our history. Before that, you had folks like Hearst who used their newspapers very intentionally to promote their viewpoints. I think Fox is part of that tradition — it is part of the tradition that has a very clear, undeniable point of view. It’s a point of view that I disagree with. It’s a point of view that I think is ultimately destructive for the long-term growth of a country that has a vibrant middle class and is competitive in the world. But as an economic enterprise, it’s been wildly successful. And I suspect that if you ask Mr. Murdoch what his number-one concern is, it’s that Fox is very successful.”
When was that “golden age?” When NYT reporter Walter Duranty intentionally hid the Soviets’ intentional mass starvation of undesirables? When Walter Cronkite declared the Vietnam War “lost?” When NYT reporter Harrison Salisbury accused the US of intentionally bombing civilians in Vietnam, reports that led President Johnson to end Operation Rolling Thunder and lose that war? When the mainstream media papered over Oil-For-Food, hid Obama’s own radical past, feared that the US military would be stopped by the “brutal Afghan winter,” etc etc etc? I would really like for Corn or some other reporter to ask the president to fix some dates on that “golden age.”
Like Rutherford B. Hayes’ Ludditism, the “golden age” of an objective media never really existed. Media is made up of humans who bring their biases and experiences to everything they write. The only relatively new thing is that we have one channel that strives not to run the usual reactionary lines from the left. So that channel, of course, must be destroyed.
It doesn’t serve the country well, to have a man given to delusions occupying the presidency.
By the way, speaking of David Corn, I have a blogish story about him I’ll write up sometime.
Join the conversation as a VIP Member