Punching Down
There he goes again — President Obama picking on a news organization by name:
Officials in the Obama White House have long made Fox News a punching bag, launching a full blown offensive last year when aides declared the network to be “opinion journalism masquerading as news.” Then-White House Communications Director Anita Dunn said the cable outlet “operates almost as either the research arm or the communications arm of the Republican Party,” and top aide Valerie Jarret called Fox “clearly biased.”
But the new comments from Obama constitute the president’s most direct attack yet on the network owned by business mogul Rupert Murdoch.
Fox News pushes “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,” Obama said.
Get that? Fox News is destroying the vibrant and competitive middle class with its point of view!
If you’ll recall, the Administration got pretty much nowhere with this line of attack last year, when Obama’s approval numbers were hovering around 60. Now that they’re bouncing around not much higher than 40, does Obama really expect better luck?
If it’s ratings Obama is looking for, maybe he should be phoning Rupert Murdock for advice, rather than slamming him in a wet-nurse faux “news outlet” like Rolling Stone.
Not merely doubling down on stupid, now Dear Liar is tripling down on stupid. His arguments remind me of college freshman bull sessions. When the bong was being passed around.
Mr. President, I have The Definition of Insanity on Line 2.
James Taranto at WSJ’s “Best of the Web” made a great point about this idiotic Obama answer:
The president’s disparagement of Fox doesn’t bother us. He has a right to free speech, and we’re proud to work for News Corp., which owns the only network that consistently fulfills the press’s adversarial role.
But suppose he had ended the answer after the first sentence, simply stating that he supports Fox’s rights under the First Amendment and declining to express an opinion about how the network uses those rights? That would have matched precisely his approach to the Ground Zero mosque.
If President Obama is willing to criticize Fox for the way in which it uses its First Amendment rights, why does he refuse to urge the Ground Zero mosque people to move to a less obnoxious site? Or, to put it another way, why is the Ground Zero mosque the only case in which Obama has ever defended anyone’s First Amendment rights without qualification?
**I think we all know the answer.
No specifics, as usual. Exactly what is it about Fox’s “point of view” that makes it “dangerous for the country”?
Name one thing, please, Mr. President!
Excuse me, correct that: not “dangerous” but “destructive to the long-term growth” of this country.
Fox is trying to destroy growth?
Again, how, exactly?
Now, it sounds less like rice paper thin skin and more like desperation. Clearly the Democratic Party cannot seriously be suggesting that news organizations that operate as a wing, a front, a shill…can be NOW …finally…something they find objectionable, can they?
What a cosmic joke. The entirety of the family of stooges and shills littered throughout the NBC family of Baghdad Bobbysoxers whose legs tingle as Barack “Johnny Angel” passes by. They don’t want to ask a single hard investigative question, they would rather sit and wait, they would rather contemplate….at least according to the Immelt Doctrine.
The NYTimes, Paul Krugman, Frank Rich, and the rest are clearly paragons of “middle class protectionists”, right? They LOVE the heartland and all its people.
The Weatherman Underground has a circadian rhythm. They have bubbled up and oozed out into the light of day. They had their fun in the sun in 2008 and now they are dying en masse, crunching beneath the feet of Tea Party folks walking on their sidewalks.
These attacks on Fox, the Grayson “Taliban Dan” ad, the Colbert tragi-comedic testimony,…these are the signs and signals of a frustrated Roberto Duran getting pummeled and having no answers for Sugar Ray Leonard administering a beating.
And proof positive that a Rolling Stone gathers “no mas”.
It’s OK. About 50 million of us will get to express our own points of view early next November.
Man, if he’s this testy dealing with a powerless news organization that opposes him how is he going to react when the very powerful Congress is his opponent.
You know, when the word “Nixonian” pops up, that’s not a good thing.
Poor Obama… It’s that blasted First Amendment and free speech thing again!
You know he’s constantly thinking … “This presidency thing would be so much easier if the US was a dictatorship. Why can’t people just trust that I know what’s best, sit down and shut up?!”
Not to worry. There might soon be a job opening for President in Cuba and North Korea.
All right-thinking people such as myself dislike Fox News. I’ve discussed this will all my friends in the New York TIMES, WASHINGTON POST, NBC, CBS, ABC, et al; and we all agree that if there’s one thing we hate, it’s biased news reporting.