His bark is worse than his bite.
Just a year ago, Fox News Channel was considered a pariah in many Democratic circles. But it appears that the cable news network is no longer on the outs.
Fox may indeed be more unfair to Democrats than Republicans (and I believe this to be the case), but some would say that this simply makes up for the unfairness that Republicans have had to endure from CNN and MSNBC. It is unfortunate that those doing the squawking on this, do not oppose bias per se, but only bias against their views and their candidates.
At what point are we going to get past this myth that news reporting should be unbiased? At what point are we going to realize, in postmodern fashion, that neutrality is impossible? At what point are we going to insist that all news should be reported, not in an unbiased way, but in a fair way? It is indeed possible to be biased and fair at the same time.
I try hard to be “fair and balanced” when I look at these kinds of things, but I have to confess that, in this long election season, my patience is running out with the left-wing and right-wing political extremists, who in their self-righteousness, believe that their views should be taken more seriously than the views of everyone else.
Fox, like the American Enterprise Institute, the Heritage Foundation and the Washington Times, is a conservative counterestablishment institution designed to ape the functions of the real thing, doing double duty by firing up the troops with custom-crafted ideological spin, "analysis" and phony scholarship while confusing the rest of the world with nonsense disguised as news.
The question of Fox's malevolence is settled. What remains is a disagreement among liberals over an appropriate response. Some argue that liberals ought to refuse to participate at all because it is impossible to do so without playing by Fox's fixed rules. But by sitting it out, the counterargument goes, they are shutting themselves off from cable's largest audience, and inviting the accusation of fear and wimpiness.
As John Edwards explained when announcing his withdrawal from a Fox debate, "There's just no reason for Democrats to give Fox a platform to advance the right-wing agenda while pretending to be objective." He also noted that he had appeared on the network more than 30 times. Edwards is right. The proper response to a Fox attack disguised as a question is, "Well, Brit, I appeared on this biased show of yours to set your viewers straight about the BS you and your fellow right-wingers have been handing them. Now here's the truth..."
Sen. Chuck Hagel wants to declare independence from party politics.
U.S. Sen. Chuck Hagel, R-Neb., suggests that the United States needs independent leadership and possibly another political party. "In the current impasse, an independent candidate for the presidency, or a bipartisan unity ticket ... could be appealing to Americans," Hagel writes in his new book, "America: Our Next Chapter," due in stores next week.
Is Hagel right? Does America need a viable, independent alternative to the Democratic and Republican parties?
A third party can sustain itself if it has a geographical base to work with because our elections are geographically based. So, it can win some states and develop some viability in that way. Barring that, it needs some kind of big personality to drive the campaign, to use media attention to reach its group of potential supporters, who are dispersed across the country. Without such a personality, the party lacks the resources to communicate its message -- and it goes nowhere.
Whether or not we need a third party is one of those questions that shows up every election cycle. The general perception is that, if neither the Dems or Repubs are offering intelligent policies, then a third party could. Unfortunately, a third party would still be a party – meaning even if it’s more “centrist” than the current parties, it’ll quickly succumb to the same internal power games and distasteful compromises that afflict our blue and red friends.
What we need, I think, is not a new party but a revitalized commitment to independence within the two major parties.
This crowd is about to get much smaller.
There were no major blowups at Thursday's Republican presidential debate in Florida. Mitt Romney repudiated Washington's management of the economy. John McCain repudiated war critics. Rudy Giuliani repudiated the New York Times. Mike Huckabee repudiated those who attack his faith. And Ron Paul repudiated ... everybody else.
What did we learn from the Republican debate.
I don’t think there was an enormous margin between the candidates this evening. One of the challenges of covering this race is getting a sense of how these candidates and their messages are perceived to folks who don’t follow politics day-to-day, who just begin to tune in to the race in the closing days before they head to the polls.
If you were an apolitical Floridian, and you just tuned in tonight, I think you were probably impressed by Romney. It was his most unflappable performance in a while. Everybody else – McCain, Giuliani, Huckabee, even Paul – they were all more or less their regular selves.
Perhaps all of them saw how both Clinton and Obama killed each other in that CNN debate earlier this week and were afraid of turning off voters. Either way, tonight's debate was the tamest GOP affair in weeks. This, despite the fact that half of this field could be out of contention after next Tuesday.
Overall, the tame affair was good news for both Romney and McCain, the two frontrunners in Florida; both got to sound and look presidential. Romney, in fact, may have had his best debate performance in a long time because he wasn't attacked.
