White House vs. Fox News: The insanity continues

Sen. Obama campaigned last year on the premise of Change, Hope, and bringing people together. The Nobel group awarded Obama with the Nobel Peace Prize, not for what he has done rather for what he stands for; Change, hope, and bringing people together. So why is it then that White House officials were on Sunday talk shows imploring other news outlets alienate Fox News? White House communications director Anita Dunn claimed Sunday that Fox News Channel is "opinion journalism masquerading as news".

David Axelrod, Obama's senior advisor, claimed on to George Stephanopoulos Sunday that Fox is "not a new organization" and added "other news organizations like yours ought not to treat them that way." The biggest target has been Glenn Beck as is evident by the ongoing fact check blog page on the White House home page. The White House declaration of war on Fox News smacks of the paranoia of the Nixon years. The catalyst of the attack on Fox News appears to be over "Fox News Sunday host Chris Wallace's fact checking Tammy Duckworth this past August. Anita Dunn is aghast by the gull of Wallace to fact check since that is "something I've never seen a Sunday show do." The kicker in this tiff is that the White House never said the fact-checking that Wallace did was wrong; rather the White House is upset that Wallace did it in the first place.

Are we really living in an age where News channels cannot fact check anyone let alone an administration official? Although it does not surprise me because little fact checking was done by ABC, CNN, NBC, CBS, and MSNBC during the 2008 Presidential election. With unemployment over 10%, 2% points higher than the White House said would happen if the Stimulus Bill was passed, why isn't the White House focusing their efforts on job creation? Our economy, as many economists have warned, is on the brink of a second recession and need a stronger effort in job creation. The "war" on Fox News Channel is pathetic and smacks of Chicago politics which is something, I thought, Obama campaigned against. Rahm Emanuel, Chief of Staff for Obama, said Sunday on "Face the Nation" when asked about Fox News Channel, "It is not a news organization so much as it has a perspective."

Since Fox News Channel has a prospective that disqualifies them as a news channel? On the criteria alone it would eliminate all "news" channels. David Axelrod explained, on ABC's "This Week" on Sunday, that "The only argument Anita was making is that they're not really a news station. It's not just their commentators, but a lot of their news programming. It's really not news. It's pushing a point of view." I think that the White House is missing the mark here. Granted Glenn Beck, Sean Hannity, and Bill O'Reilly posses a conservative tinge that is just three hours of Fox News Channel programming. As I have been home finding a new job I have had the luxury of being able to watch programming on several news channels. The programming during the day on Fox News is no different than CNN.

At the end of the day the White House is attempting to exert their power to control the media. The White House has the majority of news channels in their hip pocket while Fox News chooses to fact check them. What happened to journalism? Isn't the journalist supposed to question, investigate, and report the facts of the situation? While true journalism has been going the way of the dinosaur for years, it fell off the cliff last year during the Presidential election cycle. Fox News Channel is reporting the news and their news commenter's – Beck, Hannity, and O'Reilly – have a 1^st amendment right to question and fact check the White House while putting their conservative spin on it. If Americans are not intelligent enough to realize this, just as MSNBC & CNN put their liberal spin on the issue, it is not the job of the White House to wage a war on Fox News. Again, I thought Obama was going to come to Washington to be above petty politics and usher in a new era of transparency and bi-partisanship????

Racism Card: Does it belong only to minorities?

Yesterday I posted a question on Facebook that resulted in 34 comments being made that never really addressed the question that was posed. The ponder made was “How is the words of Glen Beck in regards to President Obama being a racist any different than the words the left and other leaders in the black community used during Katrina calling President Bush a racist? Is this similar as we can have BET but not WET? Or NAACP vs. NAAWP?” The comments that followed ranged from questioning the validity of Glen Beck to “birthers” to Gates/Crowley situation.

My question was not to defend the actions taken by Glen Beck; rather to point out that people like Kanye West, Al Sharpton, and Jesse Jackson all asserted that President Bush “hates black people” because FEMA dropped the ball with Katrina and that was acceptable commentary.

Kanye West said, “George Bush doesn’t care about black people” during the NBC aired program “A Concert for Hurricane Relief”. Prior to the comment Kanye West had stated that “I hate the way they portray us in the media. If you see a black family, it says they’re looking. See a white family; it says they’re looking for food. They’ve given them permission to go down and shoot us.”
Rev. Al Sharpton said on Keith Olbermann’s “Countdown” on MSNBC September 1, 2005, “The real question is not only those that didn’t get out. The question is why has it taken the government so long to get in. I feel that, if it was in another area, with another economic strata and racial makeup, that President Bush would have run out of Crawford a lot quicker and FEMA would have found its way in a lot sooner.”

Rev. Jesse Jackson claimed President Bush was “incompetent” and “racist” and questioned President Bush, “How can blacks be locked out of the leadership, and trapped in the suffering?”

Today Mr. Gates, Sgt Crowley, and President Obama will be sitting down for a beer and discuss what took place during the events that led up to Mr. Gates arrest. One of those commenting on Facebook accused my question as a Rovian Ploy. I am not sure where that comes into play; perhaps someone is able to explain it further for me. During the Democrat primary, the Obama campaign tried to paint former President Clinton as playing the race card; Bill Clinton a racist? No!

President Obama waded into the Gates/Crowley case without knowing the facts of the case, the media reported without the full facts, and now things are coming to light. All this said, I am not defending what Glen Beck said nor giving credence to him; rather I am looking at the situation in a big picture format. The catalyst of the conversation just happens to be the Glen Beck’s exercise of free speech that has offended others in the nation.

The ultimate question is why it is okay, accepted by society, for minorities to claim racism or have exclusive organizations while white America is vilified for similar claims or exclusive organizations?