Chris Wallace has been whining at an accelerated pace lately about President Obama and that doesn't bode well for him or his show. WALLACE: ...Th
September 22, 2009

Chris Wallace has been whining at an accelerated pace lately about President Obama and that doesn't bode well for him or his show.

WALLACE: ...That’s exactly my position: I think Fox News Sunday is a truly fair and balanced show.

O’REILLY: You’re not an ideological show at all.

WALLACE: No. And it’s like they refuse to take “yes” for an answer. There’s a kind of childishness or pettiness about them…

O’REILLY: You know, that’s a…it’s an immaturity that if you don’t …if you don’t hold our line, we’re just gonna ice you.

He used to maintain the appearance of a neutral talk show because the media would never dare to call out a fellow Villager even though we've been exposing him for years now as a political hack.

Here he is again whining the night away on his own show:

Chris Wallace continued to criticize the president Sunday. "Every president is thin-skinned, but I wonder whether this administration, this White House, has a particular problem with criticism," he said.

His rating were always terrible for FOX on the Sunday Talk Show circuit and on Sept 13, he remained firmly at the bottom of the barrel. And ratings are the GOD that drives all TV shows, but I still find it unlikely that Rupert will fire him.

Eric Boehlert's column hits the mark on Wallace:

The subsequent whining and childish name-calling from Fox News Sunday's Chris Wallace became incessant and, of course, revealed more about the bitter and bruised host than it did the White House. No doubt the pity party that the thin-skinned journalist threw for himself in the wake of the embarrassing snub was genuine. But it went on for so many days and became so consuming that it seemed there was more to it than Wallace being forced to watch the Obama newsmaking parade from the sidelines. I think the slow-motion temper tantrum perhaps reflected Wallace's larger realization that his days of being taken seriously as a journalist are fading and that he can no longer be associated with the collectively unhinged Fox News family and maintain any dignity in the process.

{}

By contrast, Fox News anchor Shepard Smith had the courage and the decency earlier this year to call out the right-wing "crazies" on the fringe who targeted Obama and were feeding off incessant, conspiratorial hatred -- hate "that's not based in fact," as Smith stressed. (Naturally, right-wingers online immediately called for Smith's firing.) At least that Fox anchor expressed a commonsense concern about what that kind of raw, irrational hostility does to a democracy. But not Wallace. He knows to sit on his hands and to keep his mouth shut.

Except, of course, when he's not busy spreading nonsense like the charade about the "death book," an absolutely absurd conspiracy theory that Wallace must have known came without even the faintest hint of reality to it. (Here's the theory: In order to contain health care costs, the federal government under Obama is using a booklet on end-of-life counseling to urge U.S. veterans to kill themselves; it's trying to convince them that their lives aren't worth living.)

It was the type of patented foolery you'd expect a proud partisan like Sean Hannity to push. But it was Wallace who signed on as the smear's chief sponsor. It was Wallace who sat through two Fox News Sunday segments teasing out purposefully ignorant questions about how bureaucrats were trying to off veterans. Wallace played dumb like it was an Olympic sport. While the other Sunday shows were at least trying to engage in actual civic debate, Wallace spent his Sunday clowning on air.

And as a bonus, Wallace may have made the single dumbest statement uttered on a Sunday-morning talk show this year. Playing dumb, Wallace wanted to know why anyone would think about end-of-life counseling unless they're, you know, dying [emphasis added]:

Usually people don't even contemplate end of life until they're in an irreversible coma.

Flash to Wallace: When somebody slides into in "an irreversible coma," it's a little late for them to begin end-of-life counseling.

With the "death book" production, Wallace didn't merely engage in lazy journalism or allow his guest to sidestep important questions, he served as archetype -- as a co-sponsor -- of the debacle. He plucked the story (a smear campaign, really) from relative obscurity, and then he trampled the facts in hopes of launching the story nationally...read on

Maybe FOX will decide to bump him and make Glenn Beck the host of their Sunday Morning talk show. You know, a kind of Jerry Springer format for politics where white supremacists come on and throw chairs at African American guests and other guests call each other racists and socialists and Beck hands out apple pie to them as long as they agree to spend a week in his imaginary FEMA camps whose existence he can't disprove.

Can you help us out?

For nearly 20 years we have been exposing Washington lies and untangling media deceit, but now Facebook is drowning us in an ocean of right wing lies. Please give a one-time or recurring donation, or buy a year's subscription for an ad-free experience. Thank you.

Discussion

We welcome relevant, respectful comments. Any comments that are sexist or in any other way deemed hateful by our staff will be deleted and constitute grounds for a ban from posting on the site. Please refer to our Terms of Service for information on our posting policy.
Mastodon