The Nixon administration is back. Team Obama has identified the enemies, and found most of them working for Fox News. First, White House communications director Anita Dunn opined that Fox News was "opinion journalism masquerading as news." I took Dunn's initial criticism with a grain of salt, because this is a woman also cited the mass murderer Mao Tse-Tung as one of "my favorite political philosophers." Dunn ain't gonna make it with anyone anyhow, but unfortunately, it has now become clear that Dunn wasn't just expressing her opinion. It has become clear that her words are part of the Nixon Obama administration's orchestrated attempt to marginalize and shut out a single media outlet, one that coincidentally happens to be more critical of the Obama administration than the rest. When asked about Dunn's comment, White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs said of Fox News, "I have watched many stories on that network that I have found not to be true." It would have been helpful if Gibbs named even one of those news stories, but he did not. On sunday, more White House officials joined the Team Obama 'Blackball Fox News' movement. White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel lectured CNN, telling it that President Obama does not want "the CNNs and the others in the world [to] basically be led in following Fox." White House senior advisor David Axelrod urged other media outlets not to recognize Fox News as a news organization, by telling ABC's George Stephanopoulos, "Other news organizations like yours ought not to treat them that way. We're not going to treat them that way."
The Obama administration's blackball of Fox started in August. As Chris Wallace of Fox News Sunday said on his show, "We wanted to ask Dunn about her criticism, but, as they've done every week since August, the White House refused to make any administration officials available to 'FOX News Sunday' to talk about this or anything else." The White House stopped making itself available to Fox News Sunday, (which, for the record, is not a right-wing show), after Wallace had the audacity to act like a journalist by fact-checking statements made by Tammy Duckworth, the assistant secretary of the Department of Veteran Affairs. Anita Dunn said fact-checking an administration official was "something I've never seen a Sunday show do." I can only assume Dunn never watched Meet The Press or any number of other sunday political shows in her entire Mao-worshipping life, because they fact-check politicians routinely. Tim Russert made a career out of it. Chris Wallace added, "They didn't say that our fact-checking was wrong. They just said that we had dared to fact-check."
Yes, how DARE Fox News question the great and powerful Obama administration. The last thing we need in this country are media outlets questioning the politicians in charge. What we need is a complacent and non-questioning media that blindly follows the party line disseminated by the Obamans. That's how Mao did it, and that's how almost every dictatorial government does it. They try to suppress and intimidate the media. Stalin, Castro, Chavez, and on down the line. It's standard operating procedure for practically every propaganda-spewing banana republic tyrant.
What really gets my goat about this is that Team Obama doesn't mind one bit when the media furiously spins things in Obama's favor. Everything the White House is saying about Fox News is true in reverse about MSNBC, who ceaselessly bashes the right, but no complaints from the administration about MSNBC's opinion journalism. No sir. They're perfectly fine with that. The White House is alright with opinion journalism when it represents the opinion of the White House.
Of course, the Duckworth fact-checking isn't really the issue. The Obama team isn't going to blackball an entire news organization over a couple statements by Wallace that contradict statements from a Veterans Affairs representative. The other phony excuse for blackballing Fox News is that they didn't carry one Obama speech (even though Obama has been on television more than any President in history, by far) . Democratic operative Terry Mcauliffe, who said he had spoken to White House officials, used that lame excuse on this week's Fox News Sunday program, but in fact, Fox News DID carry that Obama speech. It was the Fox network affiliate that didn't carry it. Mcauliffe also brought up Glenn Beck calling Obama a racist. I didn't like it when Beck said that, but think about this for a second. The left routinely calls people on the right racist, from the Tea Party protesters, to Rush Limbaugh (by attributing false quotes to Limbaugh), to a number of southern politicians, and on and on. Playing the race card is one of the left's standard political tactics. If it's reprehensible when Glenn Beck does it, it's reprehensible when liberals do it too, and liberals do it far, far, far more often. Even Obama did it. His operatives played the race card against both Bill and Hillary Clinton during the Democratic primaries. Obama spouted that "typical white person" remark, not to mention this almost universally ignored comment from Obama, "Are some voters not going to vote for me because I’m African-American ? Those are the same voters who probably wouldn’t vote for me because of my politics.” What is that, but Obama calling conservatives racists ??? And I'm not even going to go into Obama's Pastor, Reverend Wright, who Obama said was "like a member of my family" (until he became a political liability, after which Obama removed him from the family).
In retrospect, perhaps my Nixon administration reference is incorrect. Nixon had an enemies list, but I don't recall him or any other American president blackballing a major news organization before. I'm not saying it never happened. I'm just saying I don't remember it happening. This makes the Obama administration appear petty and small at best.
Oh, and guess who's NOT on the White House enemies list any longer ? The indicted war criminal Omar al-Bashir, the Sudanese leader who has engineered genocide and slavery in Darfur. Obama has dramatically softened his previous position on the Sudan. Maybe Fox News should slaughter huge numbers of people like al-Bashir or Mao to get Obama to push the reset button with them too. I don't know. I can't figure out the formula. The One pursues diplomatic relations with Iran and a genocidal beast, but those Fox News conservatives right here in America…nope, can't handle them. They must be blackballed.
The creepy factor with this administration continues to rise.
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The signs are all there for anybody to see.
"If you don't want a man unhappy politically, don't give him two sides to a question to worry him; give him one. Better yet, give him none. "
Ray Bradbury – Fahrenheit 451
I will always wonder how that "typical white person" wasn't just a wee bit, no a helluva lot racist. Now the words did come from Oba mao"s mouth so they must have come from the mouth of a racist.
I love the way the White House has declared war on Fox. Now they are in a spot where they have to outlaw Fox, in some way, so they won't be there to threaten the Oba maos.
Reality-based bloggers are currently suggesting that we've hit "peak-wingnut".
I disagree…although King does his best here to prove I'm wrong.
By definition, "peak-wingnut" cannot possibly be attained.
larry… I agree with you….the "signs" are all there for any reality-based American to see. "Signs" like King's post here.
Well, well, well…..what have we here….
http://videocafe.crooksandliars.com/david/rove-accuses-white-house-keeping-enemies-list/#comments
King is channelling TurdBlossom.
Rev, I didn't know you were such a big Nixon fan. Who'd a thunk it ?
And your link didn't work.
And once again, you didn't offer anything but name-calling. I accept your tacit admission that I'm correct about this.
this from Counterpunch………
"Many presidents have seen political benefit in setting up the press as irresponsible mudslingers, overpaid, lazy and politically biased, which is most people reckon it is anyway. The champion here was Richard Nixon who unleashed Pat Buchanan and the late William Safire, and those famous lines for vice president Spiro Agnew, including the rather playful “nattering nabobs of negativism.”
Actually it’s a measure of how sloppy the Nixon people were that across the entire Watergate Scandal they failed to excavate Carl Bernstein’s family ties to the Communist Party, nor the fact that every few weeks Bernstein would take time off from his investigative labors with Bob Woodward and drive up to Vermont to visit his cousin Shoshana who at that time was living under an alias in Brattleboro, one jump ahead of the FBI which had her on its Ten Most Wanted list as a radical bomber. People often overestimate the surveillance capacities of the state. One leak of that info to one of Nixon’s pet columnists and the Watergate scandal would have been over.
Nixon’s chief weapon of coercion before the 1972 election was the Joint Operating Agreement, which suspended normal anti-trust rules so that competing newspapers in one town could, in the name of newspaper preservation, collude in fixing advertising rates. In the ’72 race Nixon collected a record number of newspaper endorsements.
Another weapon in the wars between White House and press was a tax audit or an indictment. In the 1930s,Moe Annenberg, with close mob ties and co-owner of the Race Wire, ATT’s fourth biggest customer, owned The Philadelphia Inquirer and used it to support Republican politicians in Pennsylvania and attack Roosevelt. FDR promptly turned for help to David Stern, publisher of the Philadelphia Record and the New York Post. Stern promoted an IRS investigation and Moe pulled three years in jail. (Moe was the father of a former US ambassador to the Court of St James, Walter Annenberg – who spent many diligent years winching his family’s reputation out of the mud.)"
if Chris Wallace and Fox News were around for the Nixon era Nixon would still be president today
http://www.counterpunch.org/cockburn10162009.html
look, a poll from Fox News……..
http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2009/10/19/white-house-attacking-fox-news/
howcum there's no question about the republican party being the political arm Fox News and Rupurt Murdoch on there?
Try this one…
http://videocafe.crooksandliars.com/david/rove-accuses-white-house-keeping-enemies-lis
Only an idiot could watch Fox or read Drudge and think he was getting straight news. That idiot would be you,king.
Bush just didn't also have a enemies list but he spied on them illegally with wire tapping. At Least Obamas up front and saying it as is. Fox is a organization to promote one sided opinion.
walter,
Up until your weird last sentence about Chris Wallace, you were reinforcing my point.
FYI – Fox News is the network QUESTIONING this presidential administration.
Andrea says, "Bush just didn't also have a enemies list but he spied on them illegally with wire tapping"
Yes, but Bush's enemies were Al Qaeda and other terrorist groups, not American news networks. A not so subtle difference.
And why aren't any of my liberal friends here (or at the White House) complaining about MSNBC being operatives for the Democratic party ??? Why does only Fox draw their fire ??? Hmmm ???
Tbomb,
Who DOES provide the real news ? Crooksandliars, DailyKos, Huffington, etc ???? Inquiring minds want to know.
FYI – Drudge just provides links to various news stories from others, in case you didn't know that.
Good post, King. It is always interesting to see how Obama's local acolytes rush to support him. None can actually defend Obama. So instead they attack Fox. Or Bush. Is it not amazing the powerful hold that Bush still exercises on the imagination of the Left?
The White House attack on Fox News has the added benefit of exposing one of the central myths of Obama. I had always assumed that he was an intelligent man. Often wrong on matters of policy, yet intelligent. But picking a public fight with a news organization is not a smart move. Fox's ratings go up and more attention is paid to Obama's mistakes.
Obama apparently lacks the will to keep fighting in Afghanistan. Isn't it ironic that he started a new war with Fox? Where is Harry Reid to counsel that this war is lost?
King….you first….you say that the republican party is the political arm of Fox News and Rupert Murdoch and I'll throw Jon Stewert and Comedy Central under the bus and say they are democrat propagandists.
how can you pass that up?
King, I want to suggest that this post of yours has caused more name calling and normal left-type name calling and attacks on the messenger than any in recent times. Why they have even gone so far as to call you and I idiots because we accept Fox as news channel. I really wonder how many of these left leaners watch Fox at all and even if some do, it may well be only be during the "prime time" hours. I listen to them talk about news events all day, every day and don't see a whole lot of propaganda up to 7:00 your time.
Walter, I looked at the poll and found that of 165,200 who answered it 53% thought that they are just wanting to shoot the messenger. Isn't that about the same percent that voted as OMG voters last year?
Why would you think that they would include the very thing that crooksandliars, DailyKos, or Huffington would put in a poll for their readers? I guess you think they are somehow more like Countrepunch, your seeming favorite source of news about Fox. Nope, they are just trying to get some reak numbers instead of attacking the messenger. Your suggestion would be a very likely attempt at drawing in leftward votes. LOL
What usually happens in this debate is righties concede Fox tends to lean toward a particular perspective, while the lefties can't acknowledge that even sources like MSNBC show similar biases. It's odd, but explains why the lemmings see nothing wrong with an administration that attempts to delegitimize the leading national cable news network at the same time as it's attempting to legitimize the Huffington Post.
walter says, "King….you first….you say that the republican party is the political arm of Fox News and Rupert Murdoch and I'll throw Jon Stewert and Comedy Central under the bus and say they are democrat propagandists."
I think it would actually be Fox News being an arm of the Republican party rather than the other way around, but I've said repeatedly that Fox News has a conservative bent. I even said it in this post. It's not like I'm trying to hide it. It's not like it's a secret, and it's also not like there's anything wrong with it, no matter what our wannabe media-controlling Soviet White House says.
Okay, your turn. Admit to me that MSNBC, Bill Maher, Jon Stewart, Stephen Colbert, NBC, CBS, most of CNN, most of ABC, the N.Y. Times, about 90% of the rest of the daily newspapers in America, Hollywood movies, and college campuses all have a liberal bias.
And to think, with all that media advantage, liberals still complain about Fox News and talk radio. Pretty funny.
Roy,
I think the biggest source of liberal complaints is about the primetime Fox News lineup (although that's not what the White House said. They trashed the whole lot of Fox News).
But if our liberal friends actually watched O'Reilly or Hannity, they would see that the view of the left is represented in the debates on those shows. The only show where that is not always true is Glenn Beck at 5pm. Beck usually has people on who agree with Beck, just like Olbermann does. I can't think of a time when I've seen Olbermann have anyone on to challenge his views. At least Beck does sometimes. Hannity and O'Reilly do that regularly. They aren't afraid of a debate. In fact, they want that debate.
So much evidence has piled up, that I can only conclude that what liberals really want is for conservatives not to be heard at all.
Man, I totally missed out on much of the action by being busy all day!
I actually think that the whole thing is hilarious. Obama gets upset that a single news outlet in America features opinion shows that are primarily conservative. How dare they question his supreme authority? No other network allows its show hosts to disagree with him.
What if President Bush had gone on the offensive against CNN for doing much of the same? Would he not have made himself a laughingstock? I used to believe that, even if I didn't agree with his politics, Obama was intelligent. I'm starting to doubt that now.
To tell the truth, CNN used to be my primary source of news. But I got disgusted with them for their lopsided portrayals of conservatives and Christians. Now, I hardly read CNN at all. I figured that, if they're all going to have a slant, at least I'll get my news from a network that doesn't have a slant that p***es me off. If I can only check one site, I'll check Fox News. Obama is missing a whole slew of liberal reporters they employ, which is why I actually trust the news they give to be basically fair and balanced.
Don't worry, though, libs. I balance it out with other news sources, and I'm sure to research things that don't seem right. When I've researched Fox stories, they've always been correct. Go figure.
Exactly, Tory. Obama, who has at least 80% of the media serving as his water carriers, goes after the other 20%. It would be hilarious if it wasn't so pathetic. The White House comes across as Hugo Chavez wannabees with this behavior.
Off course, Fox is the media arm of the Republican Party and isn't doing news.
And it is the intelligent thing for the White House to do in calling Fox out. Fox propagandizes daily, most of it attacking Obama. The White House is only saying what needs to be said….in light of Fox's constant propaganda-attack on the White House. The key to understanding what the White House is doing by stating the obvious about Fox, is the message they're sending to the other media. The White House is calling out the other media biggies to not be so quick to pick up on Fox's propaganda….and pass it along in all it's deceitful glory.
Score one for the White House, job well done. If Fox doesn't like it, or even if they do…..just call 'em a waaambulance.
It feels safe in The Machine, doesn't it Reverend?
Computational constraints on syntactic processing in nonhuman primates. ,
Rev is fine with Oz-bama excluding Fox News. Figures.
I wonder if he would have felt the same way had the Bushies excluded NBC and CBS. Somehow, I think Rev's reaction would have been quite different, with talk of Nazis, wingnuts, freedom of the press, and such. Everything is subjective with the Rev. So many double standards that he should provide us with a flowchart.
To whom it may concern – my point here was not to defend Fox News. It was to criticize the double-talking, hypocritical Obama administration, who is inclusive of it's favorable opinion media, and exclusive of it's critical opinion media.
What a bunch of mindless sheeple! FoxNews is no more truthful than any of the "liberal" news channels. FoxNewsMSNBCNN, whatever. They are ALL establishment propaganda. They ALL play the false "left/right" game (or good cop vs. bad cop), when they are ALL the same. "Liberal" is just a buzz word to confuse people. The Republican and Democrat parties are run by the same people. They are elitists and they use both parties to further their agenda. Just look at all the "liberal" policies the Bush administration continued, created, and pushed through. How can so many "Christians" be deceived by these Satanists? Wake-up you stupid retards! Stop voting for evil.
this from Counterpunch…….
Bring It On!
Fox News vs. Team Obama
By NORM KENT
This past week the Obama Administration said that it does not view the Fox News Network as a credible news organization because it has an agenda and a perspective inconsistent with neutrality.
As if to prove the point for them, Fox’s terror dogs immediately went on the attack, led by Karl Rove, asserting that the President is creating a Nixon-like ‘Enemies List.’ Talk about stretching the truth. The ‘enemies list’ created by 1970’s-era President Richard Nixon was a master list, created by the President, to engage in secretive and illegal surveillance on prominent citizens who disparaged or disagreed with the government. Rahm Emanuel, on the other hand, stated rather routinely that Fox News ought to be called out for its transparent lack of neutrality while presenting news to the American people. Quite a difference.
Bill O’Reilly, Tucker Carlson, Glenn Beck, Greta Van Sostern, and then Bill Hemmer, also entered the fray for Fox News, championing their individual liberties, while remarking that Obama’s team was trying to silence a free press; that they were being ‘bullied.’ So the most powerful network on television struts out its stars to reach their massive audiences, and comes to the table shrieking that their rights are being infringed, their freedoms shattered, their lives ruined. Boo hoo! Cry me a river. Who are they kidding? This is hardly a network being silenced."
"Fox’s terror dogs immediately went on the attack" that would be King
walt,
Do you have money invested in Counterpunch, or what ?
If you can't stand up and admit it's wrong when a presidential administration excludes one of the major networks, then I feel sorry for you. The press isn't supposed to consist only of the friendly press. The press is supposed to be a watchdog, not a lapdog.
King….we've had this conversation before when it was the berfers. You suggested that Obama should placate the berfers by producing a long form berf certificate. I posted a couple of lawsuits filed by the berfers (Roy v. Obama and the Christian Insane Posse v. Obama) showing these people are nuts and why even bother. Fox is the same way. The agenda of Aussie Rupert Murdoch, his media machine Fox and his political arm the republican party is to bring Obama down……..period.
Again, like I said, why would Obama even bother?
Because it looks very petty and creates doubt to refuse to spend then bucks to appease a group of American citizens? And because, combined with the refusal to release any kind of academic records, it creates doubt in folks outside that circle as well?
"…..creates doubt to refuse to spend then bucks to appease a group of American citizens?"…….I doubt that roybot could have said it any better
It has been a few days since we have heard from King. Maybe the rumor that he has voluntarily entered the reducation camp is true.