Should progressives appear on Fox News? A couple of weeks ago, I was personally confronted with this very question when the following email appeared in my inbox:
Would you be available to come on the program Hannity & Colmes tonight or another night this week to talk about the hiring of Professor Delahunty?
For the backstory, my response, and the debate this incident raises, continue reading after the jump:
First, a bit of background on who I am. My name is Jason Stahl and I am a 29-year-old PhD student in U.S. History at the University of Minnesota. My area of study is post-1945 conservatism. In addition to working on my dissertation, I also write a weekly Monday column in the University newspaper (The Minnesota Daily). It is a great gig which allows me to write about any topic of my choosing.
In my capacity as a columnist, I was contacted by a student at the law school in late November asking if I was interested in writing about a new one-semester professorial hire that the law school was bringing in for the spring semester. The hire is Robert Delahunty, and for those who don't know, Delahunty co-authored with John Yoo one of the now-infamous memos regarding how al Qaeda and Taliban detainees would be treated after being captured. The memo can be found here. As I stated in the column I eventually wrote on the subject:
The overall conclusion of the memo was twofold. First, it concluded that domestic and international laws of warfare (such as the War Crimes Act or the Geneva Conventions) did not apply to al-Qaida and Taliban fighters because they were "non-State actors." Second, it argued that "customary international law has no binding legal effect on either the president or the military because it is not federal law, as recognized by the Constitution."
In other words, the memo, and others like it, set the stage for torture and indefinite detention without charges which have become commonplace since the memo was written in early 2002. Given that I had written about these issues in the past, I was eager to write about Delahunty's hiring. For more background in the news section of my paper, see here and here.
My column generated a lot of response both via email and letters to the editor, but what caught me completely off guard was when I received the email cited in the intro of this post from a producer at Hannity and Colmes. So, this leads to the subject of my post: should progressives appear on Fox News when given the chance?
I'll spare you the suspense and tell you that I decided not to go on. Here is the response I sent to the Fox News producer:
Thanks for the offer, but I'll have to pass. Since I'm not in the law school, I'm just not the right person to speak against Delahunty's hiring. You should try one of the law professors who signed the letter against his hiring.
This response only gets at a part of why I decided not to go on. Here is the full reasoning:
- They chose to invite me, and not a professor, for a reason. They clearly did not want anyone who was an actual expert in the law, but rather someone who could stand in as a caricature of the leftist ideologue on university campuses. In other words, they didn't want to talk about the underlying issue (abandoning the Geneva Conventions, etc.) but rather to use the issue to "prove" that liberals are biased against conservatives on college campuses. If they had actually wanted to talk about the legal issues behind the appointment, they could have spoken with any of the professors who signed the letter against his hiring (the letter is linked as a pdf document within this news story.
- I didn't want to speak for the movement of professors and students who had been organizing against his appointment. I know of two students in this movement (no professors) who were also asked to appear on H & C, but also declined to appear.
- I didn't want to look like a fool. Let's face it: I've never been on TV before and I would have been on a satellite feed with a hostile interviewer who would be able to control the discussion. I just didn't want to do this and end up looking like a fool. Shows like this are clearly rigged against open debate.
So, did I make the right decision? Why or why not? I'm not so sure anymore. Part of me thinks that I should have done it and given it my best shot while another part of me thinks that it is naive to believe that I would have accomplished anything with an appearance on the show.
Much more importantly, should progressives in general do these types of appearances on right-wing media outlets? I remember awhile back Howard Dean said something along the lines of: I don't do Fox because it is a propaganda outlet for the Republican Party. But then, some time later, he appeared on Chris Wallace's show. So which is the way to go? I can see making a case for both, so I wanted to throw it out for everyone to discuss. Also, take the poll if you so desire.
Thanks for reading,
Jason