Are Democrat presidential candidates a bunch of pussies?
Recently, John Edwards, the man with perfect hair (I know - I've been 2 feet away from it) decided that he would not participate in a debate hosted by Fox News. Now, the other two front runners, Hillary and Obama, have declined to take part in the same debate.
Is it now acceptable for presidential candidates to pick-and-choose which forums they want to get their message across in? Why are they cutting and running from Fox, instead of stepping up to the plate?
I don't care if Fox News is considered "biased". Name me one news service that isn't biased in some way or another. CNN and MSNBC are just as bad, although in the other direction.
As a potential leader of the Free World, will Edwards, Clinton, and Obama pick and choose who they want to have attend their White House briefings? Will they select only journalists that meet their left-wing leanings? Will they cut and run once a tough question is lobbed at them, then ban the journalist from the grounds forever?
If you want to show the country that you have any sort of spine, get on the Fox debate and stop whining. Otherwise, you're telling the country that you and your message are not capable of being carried in the arena of public debate; instead, its over in a corner, protected by handlers and bodyguards, and dissenters are removed.
Is it now acceptable for presidential candidates to pick-and-choose which forums they want to get their message across in? Why are they cutting and running from Fox, instead of stepping up to the plate?
I don't care if Fox News is considered "biased". Name me one news service that isn't biased in some way or another. CNN and MSNBC are just as bad, although in the other direction.
As a potential leader of the Free World, will Edwards, Clinton, and Obama pick and choose who they want to have attend their White House briefings? Will they select only journalists that meet their left-wing leanings? Will they cut and run once a tough question is lobbed at them, then ban the journalist from the grounds forever?
If you want to show the country that you have any sort of spine, get on the Fox debate and stop whining. Otherwise, you're telling the country that you and your message are not capable of being carried in the arena of public debate; instead, its over in a corner, protected by handlers and bodyguards, and dissenters are removed.
posted by bgunzy at 4/10/2007 07:33:00 AM
11 Comments:
You make a valid point; most Democrat presidential candidates are indeed pussies. One exception that comes to mind, however, is the governor of New Mexico, Bill Richardson. In one regard at least, he seems to debunk the pussy trend.
Richardson recently announced he would, if elected, support legislation that would forbid federal prosecution of medical marijuana users. He said he has this stance because it is the "right thing" to do, albeit a rather unsafe position for a presidential candidate to hold.
I haven't researched this, but I speculate that if a citizen/journalist were able to solicit Obama's, Clinton's, and Edward's stances on the subject, they would maintain the ridiculous FDA status quo: a natural drug that has not ever directly caused a death and which produces genuine relief for some conditions is deemed to have no "currently accepted medical value" (marijuana); while a manufactured drug that has some pretty scary side-effects, including death (Vioxx), is easily approved.
Your comments about a president being incapable of carrying a debate in a public arena and having dissenters removed sure sounds like exactly what occured to the so-called "Denver Three" who were kicked out of a public town hall meeting Bush was conducting for his ingenious Social Security overhaul, because it was suspected they may disagree.
To the hippie writing about Bill Richardson-
Let's only convey accurate information on this fine blog. I'll need to correct you. Gov Richardson said that stuff after signing an act allowing the medical use of pot for seriously ill New Mexico patients - not to protect them from federal prosecution - that's an entirely different piece of legislation that was heard on the federal level. Darn hippies!
CNN is as biased in the other direction as Fox? You've got to be kidding. CNN ran a headline about Pelosi's trip to Syria as "Meeting with Terrorists", ignoring that several Republican congressmen visited Syria just before her.
Other than Fox, networks try to give the appearance of fairness, but by and large they give way too much benefit of the doubt to the right wing. Failure to do so would be perceived as "unpatriotic" by people who can't endure honest criticism.
All the networks are owned by huge corporations. Major defense and nuclear contractor General Electric owns 80% of NBC. It's no accident that GW Bush was able to sell us a war on phony claims, because the "liberal" media weren't aggressive enough to call him on it. That would have been “biased”, not to mention unfair to the corporation that writes their paychecks.
Now they’ve all leaned so far to supporting the powers-that-be that they’ve almost accidentally discovered that much of the rest of the population has a different viewpoint than what they’ve been telling us to have. The evidence? Keith Olberman’s ratings have suddenly skyrocketed on MSNBC as a lone voice willing to go mano y mano with the right wing.
BTW, it's also why Hillary has long been considered a front-running contender. She is being stuffed down our throats because she has the support those in power, including the powerful media. THEY like her--not the mass of Democratic voters, who are much farther to the left on critical issues like the war than she is--so the media have been telling us for months that she’s the frontrunner. The powerful and their hirelings, the media, know that she'll play ball with them.
But Fox News is off the charts with bias, nobody else comes close. Until they arrived on the scene there was still a professional ethic in journalism that news organizations tried to honor. Delivering the news was considered more of a public service, and news departments were not profit centers.
Fox, following Limbaugh's example, threw public service out the window and catered to the largest, meanest set of prejudices in the nation. Nobody is more prejudiced than a patriot. It's just natural self-centered human bias. Fox exploits that bias shamelessly.
Hurray for the candidates (even Hillary) taking a stand and refusing to grant an air of legitimacy to those hucksters. Perhaps the candidates took the old advice not to throw their pearls before swine, or foxes.
Sorry, but to say only Fox is biased is pretty laughable.
Here's a link to a report that did their best to rate different shows. It's not perfect, of course. Anything like this is objective..
http://www.newsroom.ucla.edu/page.asp?RelNum=6664
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Of the 20 major media outlets studied, 18 scored left of center, with CBS' "Evening News," The New York Times and the Los Angeles Times ranking second, third and fourth most liberal behind the news pages of The Wall Street Journal.
Only Fox News' "Special Report With Brit Hume" and The Washington Times scored right of the average U.S. voter.
The most centrist outlet proved to be the "NewsHour With Jim Lehrer." CNN's "NewsNight With Aaron Brown" and ABC's "Good Morning America" were a close second and third.
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I just think it's funny when the left gets all worked up about Fox News. Even if you live in a dream world where only Fox is biased, it does not matter.... Add up the total viewership of CNN, MSNBC, ABC, NBC and CBS, and the total # of people that watch them for news dwarfs Fox.. So get over it.
If they can't confront Fox News (who, to the best of my knowledge has blown up exactly ZERO Israeli buses or pizza parlors), how the hell will they talk to the Palestinians?
Dorf, I checked the media bias study you listed. It was the one that the conservative (by anyone’s estimation) Wall Street Journal ridiculed as being so flawed “that ‘research’ of this variety would be unlikely to warrant a mention at all in any Wall Street Journal story.”
--http://poynter.org/forum/view_post.asp?id=10808.
By the time the WSJ reached that conclusion they had already called the study “logically suspect” and “baffling” and pointed out that by the logic of the study, “a mention of Al Qaeda in a story suggests the newspaper endorses its views.”
The WSJ goes on and on with the study’s errors, but you get the point. They said nothing positive about it.
A liberal media analysis group, Media Matters, pointed out that the UCLA study oddly rated the American Civil Liberties Union—the group that Bush #1 accused Dukakis of being a “card carrying member of”—as a conservative group. And the WSJ reported that the study found the grandaddy of all conservative defense think tanks, the RAND Corporation, to be more liberal than Amnesty International !!!!
Media Matters also pointed out that the authors of the study had long histories of employment with right wing think tanks, which they failed to disclose in the study. Journalists make it point of honor to disclose their potential conflicts of interest, but the authors of the UCLA study did not. Nor did any of the major media outlets that reported on the study.
See http:/mediamatters.org/items/200512220003.
Which brings me back to my point that ALL the major news outlets are biased to the right. (Which you misinterpret or misstate in your opening.) If, for instance, the major outlets were biased to the left, then they would have done the very simple research that reveals the UCLA authors’ backgrounds, and they would have made a point of mentioning it to cast some doubt on the study.
You make a good point when you compare total viewership of all the other networks to Fox, though. But I could flip that argument and say that it gives a rationale for ignoring Fox.
To Russ, I say that the candidates did confront Fox. You don’t face off with Fox on Fox’s turf with them controlling the entire framing of the debate pre and post-game. And it cost Fox money, advertising revenue, was well as respectability, so Fox might tone down its attacks.
This is the problem with today's Democratic Party (don't blow a gasket, I used "Democratic" instead of "Democrat"): They have no interest in representing those with conservative politics. They don't even pretend to appeal to conservatives anymore.
We're seeing both on the national stage & here in Iowa that once Democrats win control the Conservatives might as well be shouting at the wall instead of talking to their opponents in government.
Mango, I'm sorry, but I think you're all wet here. The candidates weren't going to "face off with Fox"....they were SUPPOSED to be facing off with each other. Will you now give President Bush credit for not meeting with the NAACP for several years (a group which has treated Republicans 100x worse than Fox has treated Democrats)?
Russ,
Well, you were the one who criticized the Democrats for not "confronting" (your word) Fox.
No, I won't credit Bush because as an elected representative he should be willing to meet with reputable, large groups of the people he governs.
The NAACP is honest about who it advocates for. Fox is not.
But a Democratic president should give interviews to Fox News.
The point is that there are already a bunch of debates that are sponsored by the DNC. The Faux News debate was not. The question is how many debates should the candidates be doing.
US President Tim Kalemkarian, US Senate Tim Kalemkarian, US House Tim Kalemkarian: best major candidate.
Greatt reading this
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