DOWNLOADS: (1214)

PLAYS: (2634)

Embed

[Heather noted this earlier, but it deserves its own post. -- ed.]

While the other cable-news networks ran President Obama's conversation yesterday with House Republicans in its entirety, Fox News cut in midway -- particularly as it was becoming startlingly clear that Obama was making eminent sense and scoring Republicans for the phony "solutions" they keep throwing up to counter his health-care proposals.

Best of all, Fox's Trace Gallagher immediately leapt in with a popular GOP talking point -- namely, that Obama was "lecturing" the congressmen:

Gallagher: The President at times being a little bit combative, and supporting -- I mean, he did acknowledge a couple of mistakes along the way, but much like he did in the State of the Union, has very much held firm to the beliefs in what his administration has done.

I want to bring in the host of Special Report, Bret Baier, he's with us now. He has watched along with us. And the Republicans, before they went into this session had said, you know, we don't want to be lectured by the president. There was a little bit of lecturing there, and the president was a little bit combative at times.

Baier: Yeah, a little bit of that, Trace, but I also thought there was a decent, good give and take on the specifics.

Just remember: All the partisanship at Fox is on their "opinion" shows. Their news shows always play it straight and objective. Or, ah, fair and balanced.

Right.

Amanda Terkel at Think Progress points out that Fox then turned to Rep. Peter King, who then slagged Obama, for the duration of the event. She has screen shots of the other networks during that same time period.

You all remember how Jesse Watters of Fox News ambushed ThinkProgress's Amanda Terkel while she was on vacation. It was one of the more obscene examples of the routine violations of basic journalistic standards that Fox indulges when it sends out these ambush crews.

Well, a ThinkProgress writer caught up with Jesse while he was in the hallway at a right-wing gathering in D.C., and managed to turn the tables a bit. In the process, Watters just barefacedly lies on camera:

We pointed out to Watters that O’Reilly has said he always contacts people to give them a chance to respond before ambushing them. Watters attempted to stall several times before answering the question, but eventually responded:

WATTERS: We called her office.

Q: She said she got no call.

WATTERS: Yeah, no — I called her office twice.

Q: Who in the office did you call?

WATTERS: I called the main number.

Q: The main number?

WATTERS: Yeah, I called the main number and asked if Amanda Terkel was there.

Watters then began to say that he contacted Amanda Terkel “before we went after –” but stopped himself before finishing the sentence and instead said, “Yeah, before we went there.”

Watters is lying, just like he did when he claimed he contacted Hendrick Hertzberg before accosting him in New York City. No one at the Center for American Progress ever received a call from Jesse Watters or anyone else at Fox News about having Amanda appear on the show.

Watters previously had a little taste of turnabout. He deserves a whole lot more. Because karma is a bitch.

DOWNLOADS: (1563)

PLAYS: (4869)

Embed

Anyone notice how right-wing behavior toward President Obama so far is mimicking, structurally speaking, their behavior toward President Clinton in the 1990s: encourage anti-government hysteria, freak out about incipient totalitarianism, accuse him of destroying the country and making it weaker, and then constantly attack his appointees and demand their firing? What's next, an investigation of his investments?

Does it surprise anyone, then, that the first object of Republicans' ire -- the first Cabinet appointment whose resignation they're demanding -- would be a woman named Janet?

Greta Van Susteren and Byron York last night on Fox were fairly representative (check out the Limbaugh rant at the beginning), though the fire-Napolitano talk has been bubbling up everywhere. As Amanda Terkel notes this morning, John McCain even went so far as to falsely claim that the person responsible for the report had been fired.

Still, as York says, the cold reality is that Napolitano is on perfectly solid ground and there is no likelihood, imminent or otherwise, that she'll be forced out. But the reason for that is that not only was what the report said in fact perfectly accurate, she only bears glancing responsibility for it: It had, after all, been commissioned by the Bush administration and authored by Bush administration hirees.

Continue reading »