Rahm Emanuel put a horse’s head in Roger Ailes’s bed.

[DarrinS]

http://article.nationalreview.com/?q...Q0ZjJlODM0MzA=

Rahm Emanuel once sent a dead fish to a live pollster. Now he’s put a horse’s head in Roger Ailes’s bed.

Not very subtle. And not very smart. Ailes doesn’t scare easily.

The White House has declared war on Fox News. White House communications director Anita Dunn said that Fox is “opinion journalism masquerading as news.” Patting rival networks on the head for their authenticity (read: docility), senior adviser David Axelrod declared Fox “not really a news station.” And Chief of Staff Emanuel told (warned?) the other networks not to “be led (by) and following Fox.”

Meaning? If Fox runs a story critical of the administration — from exposing White House czar Van Jones as a loony 9/11 “truther” to exhaustively examining the mathematical chicanery and hidden loopholes in proposed health-care legislation — the other news organizations should think twice before following the lead.


The signal to corporations is equally clear: You might have dealings with a federal behemoth that not only disburses more than $3 trillion every year but is extending its reach ever deeper into private industry — finance, autos, soon health care and energy. Think twice before you run an ad on Fox.

At first, there was little reaction from other media. Then on Thursday, the administration tried to make them complicit in an actual boycott of Fox. The Treasury Department made available Ken Feinberg, the executive pay czar, for interviews with the White House “pool” news organizations — except Fox. The other networks admirably refused, saying they would not interview Feinberg unless Fox was permitted to as well. The administration backed down.


This was an important defeat because there’s a principle at stake here. While government can and should debate and criticize opposition voices, the current White House goes beyond that. It wants to delegitimize any significant dissent. The objective is no secret. White House aides openly told Politico that they’re engaged in a deliberate campaign to marginalize and ostracize recalcitrants, from Fox to health insurers to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.

There’s nothing illegal about such search-and-destroy tactics. Nor uncons utional. But our politics are defined not just by limits of legality or cons utionality. We have norms, Madisonian norms.

Madison argued that the safety of a great republic, its defense against tyranny, requires the contest between factions or interests. His insight was to understand “the greater security afforded by a greater variety of parties.” They would help guarantee liberty by checking and balancing and restraining each other — and an otherwise imperious government.

Factions should compete, but also recognize the legitimacy of other factions and, indeed, their necessity for a vigorous self-regulating democracy. Seeking to deliberately undermine, delegitimize, and destroy is not Madisonian. It is Nixonian.

But didn’t Teddy Roosevelt try to destroy the trusts? Of course, but what he took down was monopoly power that was extinguishing smaller independent competing interests. Fox News is no monopoly. It is a singular minority in a sea of liberal media. ABC, NBC, CBS, PBS, NPR, CNN, MSNBC vs. Fox. The lineup is so unbalanced as to be comical — and that doesn’t even include the other commanding heights of the culture that are firmly, flagrantly liberal: Hollywood, the foundations, the universities, the elite newspapers.

Fox and its viewers (numbering more than CNN’s and MSNBC’s combined) need no defense. Defend Fox compared to whom? To CNN — which recently unleashed its fact-checkers on a Saturday Night Live skit mildly critical of President Obama, but did no checking of a grotesquely racist remark CNN falsely attributed to Rush Limbaugh?

Defend Fox from whom? Fox’s flagship 6 o’clock evening news out of Washington (hosted by Bret Baier, formerly by Brit Hume) is, to my mind, the best hour of news on television. (Definitive evidence: My mother watches it even on the odd night when I’m not on.) Defend Fox from the likes of Anita Dunn? She’s been attacked for extolling Mao’s political philosophy in a speech at a high-school graduation. But the critics miss the surpassing stupidity of her larger point: She was invoking Mao as support and authority for her impassioned plea for individuality and trusting one’s own choices. Mao as champion of individuality? Mao, the greatest imposer of mass uniformity in modern history, creator of a slave society of a near-billion worker bees wearing Mao suits and waving the Little Red Book?

The White House communications director cannot be trusted to address high schoolers without uttering inanities. She and her cohorts are now to instruct the country on truth and objectivity?

[clambake]

thats weird. a fox commentator (thats on fox every day) complaining about the white house.

what do you think. DitheringS? you forgot the latest catch phrase.

[DarrinS]

thats weird. a fox commentator (thats on fox every day) complaining about the white house.

what do you think. DitheringS? you forgot the latest catch phrase.

What did you think about this part, you stupid ?

The other networks admirably refused, saying they would not interview Feinberg unless Fox was permitted to as well. The administration backed down.

[clambake]

you think its unusual for them to want to maginalize fox news, DitheringS.

it looks like the other networks have integrity......unlike the "he's an arab terrorist anti-christ" network.

[DarrinS]

http://www.commentarymagazine.com/bl...p/rubin/138612

In its mindless war against Fox, the White House tried to ban Fox News from the White House press pool that was to interview the “pay czar,” Kenneth Feinberg. (Yes, it was a nice touch of imperial irony that the effort to cut off access to a particular news outlet came in the context of an interview of an administrative official who is not subject to congressional confirmation or oversight and whose job it is to dictate compensation rules to private firms that were bullied into taking government bailouts.) The mainstream media’s collective spine stiffened, and the administration was forced to back down.

This is hugely revealing for several reasons. First, the administration is digging in and doubling down even though its conduct has invited scorn from pundits of every political persuasion and become the object of ridicule. The belligerence is remarkable and suggests that the White House behaves in illogical and self-destructive ways. (Attention pundits: stop looking for rational explanations for the Obamis’ irrational behavior.)

Second, the administration is doing the impossible — offending the mainstream press and forcing some of Fox’s toughest critics to ride to its defense. Nice work, fellas.

Third, it’s disturbing that at a time when we still lack a strategy decision on Afghanistan, unemployment is sky high, and health-care reform is in disarray, this is what consumes the White House. For an administration that was supposed to transcend petty partisanship, it has become, yes, the spitting image of the Nixon White House — defensive, vengeful, and self-destructive.

It’s a cringe-inducing moment, both for those who oppose the White House on policy grounds and those who cheer its every move. As surely as Richard Nixon and Bill Clinton allowed their personal flaws to erode the office of the presidency, Obama seems bent on allowing his own flaws (thin-skinnedness, hubris) to do potentially grave damage to the office as well. And over what? Not some grand policy matter or some key personnel matter, but over the desire to exclude a news network that has criticized him. For those who suggested that Obama’s main selling point was his “superior temperament,” we anxiously await an admission of grave error. It seems they were terribly mistaken

[clambake]

thanks for posting another hate rag, DitheringS.

[ChumpDumper]

Darrin thinks this is really important.

[boutons_deux]

Typical less right-wingers, like Faux, they love to sling the , but when somebody slings it back, they and whine and whimper and claim persecution and foul play.

[DarrinS]

Typical less right-wingers, like Faux, they love to sling the , but when somebody slings it back, they and whine and whimper and claim persecution and foul play.

[Ignignokt]

The Washington Chief Bureaus think this is really important.

fify.

[ChumpDumper]

fify.

What do you think is important?

[Ignignokt]

What do you think is important?

God
Family
Country
Big 12 football
Spurs.

[ChumpDumper]

God
Family
Country
Big 12 football
Spurs.

So how does God work in your life to guide your posting on the internet?

[Ignignokt]

So how does God work in your life to guide your posting on the internet?

God is sovereign.. He allowed my post to occur, just like he allowed you to get pwned by your initial statement and your grammar problem in the other thread.

God works in obvious ways.

[ChumpDumper]

God is sovereign.. He allowed my post to occur.

So he has no real influence on your life.

I can believe that.

[Ignignokt]

So he has no real influence on your life.

I can believe that.

Ofcourse he does.. just not in the way you intend to.

[ChumpDumper]

Ofcourse he does.. just not in the way you intend to.

Sounds like he almost has an influence on your life.

[Ignignokt]

Sounds like he almost has an influence on your life.

I'll take whatever close to a compliment, even though sarcastic, i can get from you.

One day.. maybe all of us can almost have a genuine interaction with you.

Or maybe one day you could almost take a position on something.

Heck! you're almost over Yoni. Good job! LOL!

[ChumpDumper]

One day.. maybe all of us can almost have a genuine interaction with you.

Are interactions here with you genuine?

Do you really want a genuine interaction with me?

[Ignignokt]

Are interactions here with you genuine?

Do you really want a genuine interaction with me?

1. Depends on the subject.

2. That's a deep philosiphical and yet very comical question. Sure i'd like to meet a pitbull that doesn't bite.

[DarrinS]

Do you really want a genuine interaction with me?

Yikes!

[Ignignokt]

Maybe Chump is holding back all this deep and life changing insight.. if only we'd have faith in him and humankind and understand his nature, he'd reveal it to us.... Pffffffffffffffffffffffffttttttttttttttttttt!!!!!! !!!!!!! x10000

[ChumpDumper]

Perhaps gtown can relate the "genuine" online experiences he has participated in on this forum. Surely his faith in God led him to do so several times here.

[Ignignokt]

Do you want a deep and personal relationship with me? I promise to be genuine.

[ChumpDumper]

What does my faith have to do with your horrible credibility. Other than God allowing it?

It has everything to do with yours.