Fox News wrong again about Obama
This might shock you, but Fox News is at it again. Your shock could stem from the question, “When did it stop?” It hasn’t. It’s been exposed, again, for its unyielding devotion to phony news-telling. New York Times editor Bill Keller didn’t mince words about Rupert Murdoch (the CEO of Fox News’ parent company, News Corporation), and his (supposed) negative effects on America’s increasingly “cynical, polarized and strident” discourse.
Keller called Murdoch’s influence “unhealthy,” although he didn’t provide any specific examples. I will.
In recent days, it’s been discovered that just before the 2008 presidential election, Bill Sammon, the Fox News’ deputy Washington managing editor at the time, sent out a staff memo reminding his co-workers to highlight candidate Barack Obama’s connections to Marxists, Marxism and, worse, liberals.
Sammon had read Obama’s 1990’s autobiography “Dreams from My Father,” and he wanted everybody to know that the future president had gone to a rally where a couple people handed out Marxist literature.
Oh, the humanity.
He pointed out that after Obama was enrolled at Occidental College in Los Angeles in 1979, he’d associated with a variety of politically active people, including “Marxist professors.”
Thus Sammon painted Obama as the reincarnation of Josef Stalin. It didn’t matter to him that Obama had merely been acquainted with those professors nearly 30 years before he ran for president.
Sammon overlooked the fact that one’s exposure to a specific political philosophy needn’t prevent them from developing their own political identity.
Meghan McCain, Ron Reagan and Barbara Bush are prime examples of that. They grew up in homes with highly conservative parents. McCain stood in direct opposition to her father’s opposition to the repeal of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.” The openly liberal Reagan carries no political water for his conservative father. And young Barbara Bush recently filmed a public service announcement in support of gay marriage.
To Sammon, though, Obama’s pores ooze Marxism.
His pre-election memo served as marching orders to his Fox News co-workers who’d been groomed to define the tiniest chink in Obama’s armor as a crater the size of Moscow. It didn’t work. But the Obama/Marxist rhetoric continues ’til this day.
It only abates when somebody (usually Glenn Beck) implies he’s really a secret Nazi in disguise. Nazis, and Nazi-related references, I might add, are among Fox News anchor’s and news analyst’s favorite way of describing anything they don’t like.
On Jan. 20, Fox News anchor Megyn Kelly was confronted by a Democratic strategist who claims Fox News makes frequent use of the “N” (as in Nazi) word. “The leading (Fox News) commentators use that kind of rhetoric,” Richard Socarides explained. Kelly, though, shot back, “Just not true. I don’t know if you sit and watch our programming everyday. I watch it everyday and you’re wrong,” she shouted with typical Gestapo-like force. (Did you read that Fox News? Hire me.)
She was the one who was wrong.
Four nights later on Comedy Central’s Daily Show, Jon Stewart proved it by showing 10 Fox News clips with Nazi-related references aimed by on-air personnel at the people they oppose.
Included was Fox News President, Roger Ailes, saying of National Public Radio, “They are, of course, Nazis.”
There’s nothing new about launching ill-conceived attacks against the opposition. (That’s providing you admit, say, Democrats and liberals make up the opposition.) But there is a line to be drawn. When you attack, you should try to make a little sense.
Cue Fox News Contributor Sarah Palin. She strongly questioned Obama’s use of the phrase a “Sputnik moment” during his recent State of the Union speech.
He’d called for America to make investments in technology and in education to compete with China, the same way we did to beat the Russians after it sent Sputnik into space.
It was a simple message that flew right over Palin’s head. She thought Obama was congratulating the Russians. She questioned why the president would ask Americans to “aspire to celebrate” the Russian accomplishment.
At least she didn’t call him a Nazi.
Edward A. Owens is a three-time Emmy Award winner and 20-year veteran of television news. E-mail him at freedoms@bellatlantic.net.