Yes folks apparently, the beltway establishment is completely at a loss. Barack Obama is driving them crazy. Richard Cohen is railing against Obama. Ruth Marcus is obsessed with defending Fox's right to smear the White House.
Steven Benen puts it best:
I do wish the establishment would pick a theme and go with it. President Obama can be a weak, risk-averse, overly-conciliatory neophyte, or he can be a ruthless, cut-throat, political-machine boss out to destroy anyone who gets in his way. But he can't be both.
Oh Steve, of course the establishment doesn't have to pick a theme. They can say and write anything they want.
Eric Boehlert of Media Matters breaks it down today in a post called "Enough with the Foolish Obama/Nixon Comparisons"
http://mediamatters.org/...
Here is my favorite part of his post:
Lots of media Villagers are suggesting that the White House's public push back against Fox news, which consists entirely of publicly criticizing the cable channel's brand of faux journalism, is just like when Richard Nixon was president, declared war on his enemies (including news outlets), and used the full power of the federal government to exact his bouts of revenge.
That any semi-serious journalist would so casually compare Obama to Nixon because the Democratic doesn't like the openly partisan programming on Fox News is just embarrassing. (Did I mention Nixon illegally used the federal government to target his media foes?)
But Beltway pundits don't care. They think Obama is just like Nixon because Obama's aides have an opinion about wildly dishonest coverage from Fox News.
I love how the media seem to want to White House to just accept the fact that Fox News is the propaganda arm of the Republican Party. They are supposed to "just rise above it." And yet the same villagers keep yelling and screaming that the President should be knocking heads in Congress (publicly). So the White House is simultaneously aggressive and weak???
Anyway, I am proud to report tonight that Democrats have no intention of backing off their criticism of Fox News.
Mike Madden in Salon today has a priceless quote from a Democratic official who is slamming Fox News for its coverage of the "White House is stealing your information" story now that Michelle Bachmann seems to be soliciting information on her site. I love how the official characterizes Fox News "reporting."
So far, though, Fox hasn't done any sort of follow-up about Bachmann's newsletter -- quite predictably, Obama allies say. "Given how obsessed they were to make a federal case out of this when it came to the White House, you would think that Fox 'News' would be asking all sorts of questions of Republicans about the same practice," one Democratic official said, adding the quotes around "News." "But apparently not. Maybe there's a breaking story about how ACORN is planning a swine flu vaccine that will indoctrinate children so they will support a world currency that will undermine the dollar that they are covering. But more likely, the disparate treatment here is just further evidence that Fox 'News' is an arm of the Republican Party."
http://www.salon.com/...
It seems to me that the Democrats are not going to back down from slamming Fox News at EVERY TURN and nor should they...
P.S. I would like the White House to rebrand FOX News as GOP 24/7.