The Sleuth reports that Barack Obama is freezing out Fox News:
Sources tell The Sleuth that the Obama camp has “frozen out” Fox News reporters and producers in the wake of the network’s major screw-up in running with the erroneous Obama-the-jihadist story reported by Insight magazine.
“I’m still in the freezer,” one Fox journalist said, noting that the people at Fox “suffering the most did nothing wrong.” (It was “Fox and Friends” host Steve Doocy who aired the Insight magazine piece, which reported that operatives connected to Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) found out that Obama, as a child, was educated at a Muslim madrassah in Indonesia.)
Another Fox journalist called the network’s airing of the story “unfortunate” for the network’s journalists who have to cover Obama and who are being adversely affected despite not being involved in the incident.
Since the madrassah incident, Obama has given interviews to ABC, CNN, CBS and NBC — pretty much every other network except Fox. Sources close to Obama acknowledged that they’re not thrilled to play ball with Fox journalists, but they stopped short of saying they are freezing the network out.
Fox argues that a candidate can’t afford to write off Fox News, but I wonder how many Democratic primary voters get their news from Fox. In contrast, seeing him take on Fox might increase support from Democratic activists, and offers a contrast for those who feel John Kerry lost because he didn’t do enough to counter unfair media coverage. Besides, it is doubtful this is intended to be permanent, and coverage from Fox News would be more important in a general election campaign than it is now.
It would be to Obama’s benefit to have less coverage on Fox now if it meant making the coverage a little fairer should he be in the general election campaign. I don’t really expect to see Fox News change their ways, but this is a step in the right direction:
John Moody, vice president for news at Fox, issued this missive to staff in his daily editorial note on Jan. 23: “For the record: seeing an item on a website does not mean it is right. Nor does it mean it is ready for air on FNC. The urgent queue is our way of communicating information that is air-worthy. Please adhere to this.”
Fox News has a lock on the 30% who cling to George W. Bush. Freezing them out, I think, could only help a Democratic candidate.
When an African-American Harvard educated civil rights lawyer preaches righteous sermons about respecting the doctrine of separation of church and state but then offers only a religious rationale for denying ‘fundamental’ civil rights the cognitive dissonance should assail the ears of anyone with even a mere thimble full of legal knowledge. Enough is enough. This sham and travesty have gone too far.
“If a civil rights lawyer walked into court and argued that fundamental civil rights should be denied solely for metaphysical reasons one could fairly wonder if he were a charlatan who found his law degree in a box of Cracker Jack. Legally, Obama’s position on civil marriage is intellectual rubbish. Audacity indeed!”
To read the entire article see “Untangling Barack Obama’s audacious mumbo jumbo,” by John P. Mortimer, Bay Area Reporter 11/16/2006 at http://ebar.com/common/inc/art.....article=73 .
Obama, this so called “civil rights lawyer” is the ONLY Democratic candidate who has opposed marriage equality for purely religious reasons. And notice that not one lawyer/lawmaker has provided one LEGAL reason for denying this civil right. Is it really asking too much of lawyers and lawmakers to provide LEGAL reasons for denying civil rights? It’s not so much about “marriage” as it is about punching a big hole in the wall that separates Church and State.
I’ve been watching Obama with regards to some of his religious statements. Ultimately what matters is not his personal religious beliefs but his position on separation of church and state. I’ll have to go back and see what he says about gay marriage in his book. I don’t recall him opposing it on purely religious grounds but without reviewing the book I can’t be sure.
Unfortunately we will never find a candidate we agree with on everything. While I’d prefer that everyone backed legalization of same sex marriage I wouldn’t use this as a litmus test on a candidate as long as they support civil unions and oppose the right wing efforts to ban gay marriage. I’m afraid that only supporting candidates who are outrignt pushing for gay marriage would exclude too many people, and as a pragmatic matter I think that having people become accustomed to civil unions (especially in the red states and even in the blue states where anti-gay marriage amendments have passed) might be the best way to ultimately achieve full legalization of gay marriage.