The Sunshine Empire

The initial appeal of George W. Bush to the wretched voting masses was his apparent down-to-Earth have-a-beer with me nature. No one has really every commented on the irony of Bush’s suitability as a beer-drinking companion when he is a teetotaler, but the premise itself has proven to be sufficiently lacking as a prerequisite for the Commander-in-Chief threshold. Yet this man with this initial plus has turned out to be the present day man who lives in the snow globe of denial. A figure rivaling Nixon in his warrior insularity. The petulant boy President is keen only to sit down and talk with the cheerleaders at Fox News and it’s Newscorp spawn. Yet the new war between the White House and NBC and their proxy war via Fox News has me gagging on irony.

First, Fox News and Jabba the Ailes still live in the delusional world of 2002, when the public was cowed with fear and no word against the President was tolerated. Fox introduced the flag as marketing tool approach and slathered everything in their studio with it to infer that they were better than you. Their exclusive access to the Bush interview softball game was their ticket to ratings, and they still feel that everyone believes the President is an alright guy. Meanwhile Bush has been discovered as the boss’s son who got the job and drove the company into the ground, and MSNBC essentially took the Fox template and turned it from fellating the President to pillorying him. Their ratings are skyrocketing and Fox’s are stagnant. Fox has reacted as any 8 year old would when they are put on video game restriction.

The coordinated reaction of the Bush Administration and Fox reveals for all the sham that Fox is fair, balanced, or even news. Take Bill O’s reaction to every little schoolyard taunt thrown at him from Keith Olberman, and the calls from Jabba the Ailes asking NBC to call off Olberman. To paraphrase Ailes, those who can’t face Olberman can’t face al-Qeada. They stand with the ultimate tough-guy image but run home to Mommy when someone calls them a bad name or insults Daddy(Bush). Sack up you bunch of pussies. Just because MSNBC has an original format that criticizes the Bush administration does not mean that they are some new phenomenon, they’re doing exactly what you did during the Clinton years.

They are also fighting a political proxy war on behalf of the administration, that cannot take any question that strays from the script. When Richard Engle had the unmitigated gall to challenge the President’s assertion that Iraq and the middle east were the set of Willy Wonka and the Chocolate factory, conservatives claim this as nothing more than political editorializing on behalf of NBC. Lets just conveniently forget that Engle has spent more time in the Iraq hell-hole Bush made than any other journalist. After human retro-virus Ed Gillespie shot off an indignant letter calling shenanigans for NBC using the President’s own words, Fox News picked up the ball and began to criticize NBC. Bill O had been doing his best to link NBC’s parent company to business in Iran, but never do you get an explanation as to why they employ Oliver North, when he sold weapons to the Iranian government and lied to Congress. North even had the gall to jump on Obama for saying he might talk to the Iranians.

Only in a world full of supposed liberal media cabals could such convoluted logic prevail. Asking tough questions of the leader of the free world is politics and editorializing and bias, asking about why Democrats seem to hate America and how the President’s daughter’s wedding was is the sign of an unbiased news organization. War is Peace, Freedom is Slavery, Ignorance is Strength, Fox News.