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President Clinton gave Fox News (so-called) something it is not accustomed to – the truth – and a direct rejection of their pattern of manipulation of their hearers and of their guests. Or, as an article in The Nation put it, an intended target of our drive-by media shot back.
Keith Olbermann on Tuesday offered some comments on the event and others’ reactions to it.
It is not important that the current President’s portable public chorus has described his predecessor’s tone as “crazed.”
Our tone should be crazed. The nation‘s freedoms are under assault by an administration whose policies can do us as much damage as al Qaida; the nation’s marketplace of ideas is being poisoned by a propaganda company so blatant that Tokyo Rose would’ve quit.
…The headline is this:
Bill Clinton … has spoken the truth about 9/11, and the current presidential administration.
Olbermann mentions FDR, President Hoover, and Lincoln (“even President Lincoln assumed some measure of responsibiility for the Civil War”) as Presidents who were blamed for not accurately reading all the evidence of tragedies that were coming.
Does Bush accept responsibility for his actions and inactions?
But not this president.
To hear him bleat and whine and bully at nearly every opportunity, one would think someone else had been president on September 11th, 2001 — or the nearly eight months that preceded it.
That hardly reflects the honesty nor manliness we expect of the executive.
Emotion is not adequate. Stubborness is not adequate. Misleading people so they think you are truthful is not adequate. Only truth will be adequate to lead us out of our current dark night of public life. Clinton gave a heavy dose of it. “They” don’t like it. But we must have it.
Remember once when the religious right of his day was trying to intimidate Jesus?
They told him he’d better go hide because King Herod (of a very blood-thirsty and extortionist family of rulers) was trying to kill him.
Jesus answered, “Go tell that fox” that I’m on this road and in three days I’ll be in Jerusalem. That is, “Go tell that fox” that there’s no chance I’m going to restructure my life and mission out of fear of him.
Jesus showed no fear.
He did show complete commitment to his God, his people and his mission.
He was an earlier intended victim of a deliberately manipulative, politically motivated propaganda effort. He was neither intimidated nor misled. A good example!
We can’t say we have no good examples. Let’s exercise the courage needed to follow those good examples now in our days and places.
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This thing that bothers me about FOX News is that some of their “journalists” were once men and women I listened to and trusted when they were in a “real” news reporting situation. Chris Wallace and Brit Hume are two that would fall into that category. I’d like to know if they are at Fox now because the money was right, or if they gravitated there because that station is more of a reflection of their personal beliefs. I know that I would now take anything they report with a very large grain of salt just because of the “news” organization they represent.
The interesting part of the whole thing is how hard FAUX is fighting to keep people from watching that article. “(Zack) Gates said this is the first time he’s seen such a concentrated effort to get a video taken off YouTube.”