If You Can't Beat 'Em, Smear 'Em

Richard Milhous Obama Continues Assault on "Enemy" Fox

Fox News is "operating basically as talk radio," President Obama suggested in an interview airing today.

White House Senior Adviser David Axelrod said this weekend that Fox is "not really a news station."

FOX News:  The only TV station where real debate happens

Nile Gardiner identifies the key to Fox's success.  It is the only genuine arena where ideological combat takes place nightly.  No fall guys, no rigged fights, just smart, opinionated combatants duking it out in the arena of ideas:

Fox offers a highly opinionated, fast-paced and entertaining brand of political debate that includes all sides of the political aisle.

The top hosts may be largely conservative (though not necessarily Republican), but the guests frequently are not, creating an adversarial and combative arena that until recently was a rarity in American news coverage.

Unlike bloated, bloviating embarrassments CNN and MSNBC, Fox actually has real conservatives and more importantly, real liberals who know how to argue.  Would you want to go up against Bob Beckel or Juan Williams?  These men are unabashed liberals and they know how to defend their ideology.  Maura Liasson is no slouch either. 

Where is the equivalent conservative on MSNBC?

The reader comments on Gardiner's article were entertaining.  Here's a typical slobbering liberal:

Rosenblum:
Fox News is the worst. To call it news is questionable at best. Fox entertainment would be more accurate. That it appeals to the idiot faction in America is no surprise. As HL Mencken said, ‘no one ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the average American.’

That a nation that almost elected Sarah Palin and did elect George Bush should be drawn to the likes of Glen Beck is hardly a shock, though deeply saddening. This is what you get when you debase your educational system for a generation.

He doesn't even notice that his logic collapses in upon itself when you consider that this same nation of boobs he criticizes elected his empty hero Barack Obama.

Someone named TerribleTurk gave Rosenblum the torching he so richly earned:

RosenBum is just soooo much smarter than everybody else! Screwhog, blow-it-outcherass! I get so damned sick of the self-anointed, pseudointellectual, libtard jackasses like RosenBum, I could puke. RosiBum, up yours and Mencken’s both!

Also, jerk, I hazard the guess you haven’t read Mencken–I have–or you’d know that smartasses like you were also on his list!

Question:  When has CNN, MSNBC, or any of the "Big Three" ever sparked as much political and social debate as Fox News or Rush Limbaugh? 

No wonder the doctrinaire left hates them so much.

Telegraph
The Hill - Obama's Enemies

Barack Milhous Obama adds FOX to his Enemies List

An increasingly Nixonian White House is using the power of the presidency to attack a private news organization.  (Source:  NY Times)

“We’re going to treat them the way we would treat an opponent,” said Anita Dunn, the White House communications director, in a telephone interview on Sunday. “As they are undertaking a war against Barack Obama and the White House, we don’t need to pretend that this is the way that legitimate news organizations behave.”

"We’re not going to legitimize them as a news organization.”

So the president's staff now determines what constitutes a "legitimate news organization."  Does their criteria include tingling legs and fawning, uncritical coverage?

President Obama even singled FOX out, if not by name, earlier this year:

“I’ve got one television station that is entirely devoted to attacking my administration,” he said in June, though he did not mention Fox by name. He added, “You’d be hard pressed if you watched the entire day to find a positive story about me on that front.”

Boo hoo!  President Bush had every station attacking him when he was president, and he never whined about it.  The press corps was a pack of snarling, ass-biting curs during his administration. 

"If you can't stand the heat, get out of the kitchen."

A little less narcissism and a little more Harry Truman would do the current president and his staff some good.

Smear and Discredit replaces Rebut and Debate

This is the favored tactic of the intellectually bereft left:  Smear and discredit your opponent because you can't refute his message. 

If FOX is so unfair, why doesn't the administration send a staffer a day to go on their shows and fight back?  If the FOX meanies really are so dumb and unfair, a little debate and pushback should make their scurrilous attacks collapse like a house of cards, right?

Every Regime Needs Scapegoats

If someone were smearing and trashing me, I would relish a chance to go on one of their most-watched programs to expose their nonsense and prove them wrong.  But that's not what this is about.  It's about scapegoating. 

The most famous regimes in history have all used scapegoats, and now Obama is channeling Nixon the same weekend he's awarded an anticipatory Nobel Peace Prize.  Who'd a thunk it?

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