As if there was any doubt that Fox News Channel is a Republican agitprop outlet, further evidence was offered on this week's edition of "Media Buzz." That program saw grist added to not just one, but two Clinton Derangement Syndrome memes. They not only joined the vulture flock suggesting that Chelsea Clinton had timed her pregnancy to help her mom's all-but-certain presidential campaign, but also had the gall to suggest that it was intended to fend off claims that Hillary is too old to run. RawStory got the full exchange--watch it here (sorry, it won't embed).
Host Howard Kurtz was looking into whether the press was overanalyzing the announcement when panelist Lauren Ashburn quipped, "You've been in this town for how many years, and you don’t have a cynical bone in your body? I think a lot of reporters think maybe this was planned." To his credit, Kurtz tried to keep some decency in the discussion by suggesting that--gasp--Chelsea and her husband have as much right to have a kid as the rest of us schmucks.
But that apparently fell on deaf ears with another panelist, Jim Pinkerton, who suggested that the media were trying to turn Hillary's first grandchild into America's "royal baby." Later on in the discussion, Ashburn seized on the "royal baby" meme, claiming that the whole reason there was so much coverage of Chelsea conceiving was because a lot of people think Hillary is too old for the presidency. Kurtz rightly called that out as the sexist bile that it was.
There is only one appropriate response to this kind of garbage.
We already knew the wingnut fringe has taken it as an article of faith that the media is trying to gin things up for Hillary in 2016. After all, they claimed we were ganging up on Chris Christie for that purpose. Now that it's obvious Christie is going down in flames, they have to find a new smear to support the meme. But did they have to scrape this far down the barrel. After this, Faux News ought to change its slogan to "we distort and degrade."