I can appreciate the Wow quality of someone, Ben Smith at Politico in this case, quickly and concisely naming what we’ve been debating for some time – why is the WH focusing so much on Fox News push back? The reality is, it’s still a bad idea because of this WH’s limited, top down view of the world.
But I think Mike Allen and Josh Gerstein nail the real explanation in their story today: The White House is working to prevent stories born on Fox from crossing over into more widely-viewed media. Most Americans still haven’t heard of Van Jones, for instance; and the strategy is now all about containment…
So what if Fox and some others, Right wing talk, for example, are effectively walled off, somehow? In the first place it likely won’t work. But even if it did, it’s still the American people with ever more media and sources to get their news that you ultimately have to control.
The American people are smarter than this White House in my opinion. They have an inherent ability to see and appreciate good information and BS when they come upon them, no matter where it turns up. That’s why more and more people have already begun tuning into Fox.
That sounds about right – and I agree it won’t work. In the throws of a national, political campaign, the Obama team managed to finesse its way around Obama’s cowardice, ignorance and radicalism…but now its just all about Obama, and the Administration doesn’t want people getting too long and good a look at just what is happening. Able to rely on the dying MSM, Team Obama has decided if they can just knock off Fox, they’ll have the functional equivalent of Orwell’s Ministry of Truth: the true goal of all good liberals.
But, the cat is already out of the bag – and let loose, in the final analysis, by Obama, himself. The fundamental problem is that in order to finesse their way around Obama’s flaws in 2008, Team Obama had to get Obama to say things in direct opposition to what Obama is currently up to. We’re supposed to be going all out to win Afghanistan; we’re supposed to already be out of Iraq; we’re supposed to be watching the Democrats and Republicans negotiating together (on TV!) about the way forward; we’re supposed to be coming together in gigantic, loving embrace. None of this was on the actual agenda, but it is what Obama was made to say. And now they are hoist upon their own petard – and are absurdly hoping that if they can just derail Fox, all will be well.
Ah, what tangled web we weave when first we practice to deceive – nothing will give me greater pleasure than to watch Obama and Co fall flat on their face, tripped up by their own lies.
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