President Obama doesn't have enough to worry about with the
tumultuous debate on the final version of his health care reform proposal,
continuing economic uncertainties, rising unemployment, and bank failures; two
wars he's inherited and the ongoing threat of terror attacks. Now he's being
criticized for not holding enough press conferences.
"Obama Going on Six Months Without a Press Conference" reads the headline on . . . you guessed it, Fox "News." The "article" continues to blast the President for being out of touch with the public. This from a "news" organization that just a few weeks ago criticized him for being overexposed. The article states, "Obama has given dozens of one-on-one interviews for television, radio and print, and Towson University political science professor Martha Joynt Kumar said presidents tend to favor media exchanges that best suit their particular goals,"adding that "some in the White House press corps are getting antsy for him to hold a news conference with reporters, something he hasn't done since July 22, almost six months ago."
Fox "News" and other, similar, Neocon media outlets continue
their selective amnesia about Presidential administrations. First, one of the
former Bush spokesmodels -- Dana Perino -- stated that there was no terrorist attack during the eight years Bush was in
office, magically forgetting the tragedy of 9-11-2001. Naturally, that
ridiculous statement went unchallenged as she was appearing on Fox "News" with
Sean Hannity at the time.
As they accuse Obama of avoiding the press (itself a
flip-flop from Fox's previous admonishment that he was always seeking
the cameras) they seem to forget that their own Favorite Son, George Dubya,
failed to hold a presser for his first nine months in office, and then
entered an extended press blackout from July of 2008 to January of 2009, a
(gasp!) six month period during which he avoided even a single reporter's
question. Darn those pesky facts that keep interfering with their "news"
reporting.
By the numbers, Bush only exposed publicly himself to the press
three times in 2004 and four times in 2008 . . . hmmmmmm, both of those
election years. Perhaps he was busy devising amusing new nicknames for the
reporters, or trying to remember which ones were vision impaired so he didn't
repeat his 2006 mistake of asking legally blind reporter
Peter Wallsten of the Los Angeles Times why he didn't remove his
"shades."
But, Fox "News" has become infamous for its many double standards, be it politicians and their private parts (Bill Clinton affair = impeachable offense, Henry Hyde affair = youthful indiscretion), criminal activity (witness the innocent victims of circumstance Tom Delay and Irving "Scooter" Libby), response to terror threats (Bush's delayed response to the shoe bomber vs. Obama's prompt response to the Detroit incident), or natural disasters like Hurricane Katrina. Don't even talk about the number of troops that have died under Dubya compared to Clinton. The amnesiacs at Fox never, ever touch that topic. Nor do they discuss how the Bush Crime Family sucked up the Clinton budget surpluses into a massive, personal war chest and spent billions of our taxpayer dollars on fomenting terror, death, and destruction across the oily, Muslim Mideast. That will never be a headline on The O'Reilly Factor.
Sarah Palin, with her murky understanding of the world outside Wasilla, will fit right in with the other factually-challenged misfits at Fox "News." And they won't even have to fix her face like they did before dragging Greta over from CNN. How long before Sarah Barracuda and Glen Beck are dueling it out on white-board challenges to see who can wax crazier about death panels, Obama's terrorist pals, God-inspired crusades in various Muslim majority countries, ACORN, and bogus birth certificates?
They deserve each other.
