Rather than deal with accusations that their own Steven Crowder deliberately provoked an altercation with Michigan labor unions and then hyped a questionably edited video as proof of their “thuggery,” Fox News pretended that the big issue surrounding the demonstrations over the so-called “right to work legislation” is left-wing violence and President Obama’s failure to condemn it.
As I posted on News Hounds, Crowder’s behavior in the wake of his confrontation with union activists has been bizarre, coy and downright suspicious. Last night, Crowder did not deny shoving to the ground the protester who later punched him.
As John Amato wrote in a recent post,
Guys like Crowder have been with us forever. They rooted for the strikebreakers in the 1920s and '30s, and they delighted in going to civil-rights protests in the South in the '60s and pouring sugar on lunch-counter protesters. They aided and abetted the worst of American politics then, and now, with their provocations… Remember Kenneth Gladney?
The big difference in this case, though, is that unlike Gladney, Crowder is on the Fox News payroll. And even Steve Doocy gave a hint that Crowder’s credibility was less-than-ironclad when he said on Fox & Friends this morning that the anti-union Americans For Prosperity tent was torn down, “looks like by a bunch of pro-union guys.” He almost surely knew, but didn't say, that this is in dispute.
Enter Michelle Malkin. She had nothing but praise for the “brave” Breitbart activists like Crowder. Nobody mentioned how much of Breitbart's “citizen journalism” has been discredited.
So many of these activists were inspired by the spirit of Andrew Breitbart. And it’s because of their commitment to citizen journalism that you can watch this video, that (union “thugs”) been exposed. Very brave. And how dare these feckless cowards who were mobbing and storming this tent do this? Particularly when there were so many women in the tent? What does that tell you about the manhood of these union activists who did such a thing?
There’s not an apology from a single one of them and we haven’t heard a word from President Obama. How come he’s not calling up these women who were… subjected to this? He could call Sandra Fluke up? He could have beer summits with Harvard professors who, um, concoct racism where it doesn’t exist? But when it comes to defending people who are subjected to such incivility? Nothing from this White House. Nothing from this administration.
Of course, I don’t recall an apology from a single Fox News host when it turned out that Breitbart’s ACORN videos were a sham after ACORN lost its federal funding. In fact, Fox host Megyn Kelly slobbered so much over Breitbart’s undercover “prostitute,” Hannah Giles, I half expected Kelly to stand up and demand Giles be awarded a Pulitzer Prize.
Even now, not one of the three Curvy Couch denizens voiced a reason to withhold judgment on what had happened. Nor did anyone add any larger context to the picture, such as the police brutality that occurred against the pro-union side. I don’t hear any complaints on Fox that Obama hasn’t spoken out against that.
Instead, Carlson piled on by suggesting that Obama doesn’t care about violence against people he disagrees with:
That should come as no surprise, I guess, because… these people in the tent don’t agree with what the president had just said in Michigan the day before which was that he was hoping that Governor Rick Snyder would veto that right to work.
Carlson later went on to falsely assert that “voters actually wanted” Michigan's anti-union legislation.
Meanwhile, Fox News producers echoed Malkin with a banner on the screen “asking,” Why is President silent on union violence?
