Wherein Chris Wallace tries to rationalize the deliberate editing of his Fox News Interview with Jon Stewart:
Some of his statements are fair, but still deluded.
Wallace: If you were a liberal you thought he wiped the floor with me, and if your were a conservative you thought I wiped the floor with him.
For starters both of these things can't exist at the same time. Sure, Liberals and Conservatives may view things differently, and they may prioritize different facts - except that in Wallace's case, he didn't have any facts. He just had a paranoid argument.
Like this:
Wallace: I think he lives somewhat in denial about the bias of his program, and more importantly the mainstream media. And he lives in denial about his ambition. He says "I'm just a comedian"....
Imus: That's nonesense.
Wallace: I don't think he wants to be just a comedian.
I don't think Wallace wants to be just a biased moronic tool, but you have to call 'em like you see em'. His premise here is that the Dailyshow is somehow deliberately ignoring Democratic Ridiculousness while attacking Republicans. That's just a LOAD OF CRAP!
It doesn't take two seconds to find him going after Democrats just this week:
Besides the segments that slam Fox: We have Twitter Jokes about Weiner, we have pointing out the ATF's ridiculous "Radio Shack" Plan, Making fun of the Greek Protestors, Making fun of Obama for having a huge announcement that we're trimming back on Afghanistan Troops -
a little.
And Stewart is the one who's biased?
It's not Stewart's fault that the Nutty Bullshit that Republicans try to Pull all the time is just Much Funnier!
Imus: He's claiming you edited the video to make him look bad.
Wallace: If he looks bad it's his fault. We edited just like he does, and put the entire video up on the web. Frankly, he filibustered and talked for 24 minutes.
No, you didn't edit like he does. Although some of the edits were clearly removing fluff for time, others changed the context of what was said.
For example Stewart didn't say "I'm Just a Comedian" - he said "I'm a Comedian, and my comedy is informed by my ideology - (Edit) - but I'm not an Ideologue".
They really didn't have time for the extra four words? From right in the middle of his sentence?
What about here where they edited out Stewart Mentioning Fox Managing Editor Bill Sammon - who actually did give partisan marching orders to the News Division at Fox?
An an email sent to the network's journalists during global climate talks in 2009, Sammon instructed news staff to cast doubt on established climate science. His directive came fifteen minutes after Fox reporter Wendell Goler had accurately reported on-air that the United Nations' World Meteorological Organization announced that 2000-2009 was "on track to be the warmest [decade] on record." Sammon's directive placed him at odds with the overwhelming majority of climate scientists, not to mention News Corp honcho Rupert Murdoch.
During the height of the health care reform debate, Sammon sent an email to news staffers instructing them to avoid uses of the phrase "public option" and instead use variations of "government option" - language that had been recommended by Republican pollster Frank Luntz to turn public opinion against Democrats' reform efforts.
Shortly after President Obama's June 2009 speech in Cairo, Sammon sent an email to Fox's journalists pointing out that Obama did not use "the words 'terror,' 'terrorist' or 'terrorism.' " Sammon's criticism, however, was miseading. Obama devoted a significant section of his remarks to denouncing and confronting Al Qaeda and other "violent extremists who pose a grave threat to our security." Nevertheless, the critique was repeated -- both by Sammon and other network personalities -- throughout the network's coverage of the speech.
Sammon also ginned up false allegations that Obama "is a Socialist" and gee, we didn't hear that one on Fox News repeatedly did we?
Or how about editing out Stewart's own criticism of the Mainstream Media for being Lazy and Sensationalistic? And pointing out how all the Cable Networks, every one of them, cut away from Nancy Pelosi when she wouldn't talk about Anthony Weiner and instead went on to talk about what the media said they wanted to hear about - Jobs.
Sure makes it much easier to pretend that Stewart never criticizes the mainstream media - which I guess is everyone but Fox - when you EDIT OUT when he happens to criticize the mainstream media.
Stewart doesn't cut conversations in the middle, he lets them start the way they start and if the go over and extended he puts the remainder up on the web. He doesn't pick and choose which portions to put on the air.
This entire argument reminds me of the James L. Brooks Movie "Broadcast News", where William Hurt and Holly Hunter.
Here Albert Brooks tries to let Holly Hunter know that William Hurt's character "Tom" is the Devil, because he's "just lower our standards a little bit - and turn us into salesmen.
In the end Holly breaks up with William when she realizes that he faked an interview by editing in his own reaction shot, but even with his subterfuge he becomes a Network Anchor even when even he admits he's not really a journalist, he was just a spokesmodel, not a writer.
That Wallace doesn't get the difference doesn't surprise me, but he should be considered as being as out of school in journalism for this as editing inside someones quote would be in a magazine because it changes the meaning of what they actually said. Any real journalist knows that's a major no-no and can get you sued.
And that's not all that Wallace and Imus don't get - the difference for Liberals and Conservatives in facing up to the consequences of your own words and actions.
Imus: Spare me the nonesense about "My jobs is lot harder than your job". Trying to pay the mortgage without a jobs is hard. And two) we played a clip of him doing his Amos and Andy Voice, and my question is what other White performer could get away with that?
Wallace: Imagine a conservative, imagine a Glenn Beck or a Sean Hannity did that - there would be torches at the gate. They'd be drawn and quartered
Here again we have the self-aggrandizing victimization of the Conservative. "Oh, none of us could ever get away with that?" (Could this be Imus bitter grapes over his own "Nappy Headed Ho's Comment?")
Excuse me but we don't have to imagine what would happen if a Conservative did a racially insensitive voice. All we have to do is listen.
LIMBAUGH: Eh, never mind. We're not gonna gyp Fox. I wanted to gyp it because the -- well, the -- Hu Jintao, he was speaking, and they weren't translating. They -- they, normally -- you have some translator every couple of words. But Hu Jintao was just going [mocking Chinese speech].
Nobody was translating. But that's the closest I can get. [Premiere Radio Networks, The Rush Limbaugh Show, 1/19/10]
So was he Drawn and Quartered? From what I can tell, not so much.
(NEWSER) – Stay classy, Rush
Most of the media hardly mentioned it, certainly not FOX. The only person to really talk about it was Stephen Colbert, and he was offended mostly because Rush was "stealing his own bad Chinese impression".
We already know what would happen if Limbaugh called Liberals "Retarded, Kooks", or Franklin Graham said that "Islam is Evil" and the Obama has "Muslim Blood", or if the Head of Tea Party Nation says "Obama is an Indonesian Muslim Welfare Thug-in-Chief" or Dr. Laura says the N-Word to Black woman almost a dozen times in a row.
We know exactly what will happen: Sarah Palin will Defend Them on FOX NEWS, Facebook and Twitter.
Via Huffpo.
Sarah Palin came to the defense of Evangelical minister Franklin Graham Friday morning, writing on Facebook that the man who was disinvited Thursday from the Pentagon's National Day of Prayer services is a "fine patriotic man" and that military's decision to exclude him -- "the army's loss" -- was a sign that "things have changed."
And...
Sarah Palin lashed out on Tuesday at the NAACP for the group's allegations of racism within the Tea Party movement, saying that the charges were unjust and undeserved.
"I am saddened by the NAACP's claim that patriotic Americans who stand up for the United States of America's Constitutional rights are somehow 'racists,'" Palin wrote in a Facebook note.
"I know how Tea Party Americans feel to be falsely accused," she said. Palin pointed to a charge of racism levied against her in a "frivolous lawsuit" which was later dismissed. "To be unjustly accused of association with what Reagan so aptly called that "legacy of evil" is a traumatizing experience, and one of which the honest, freedom-loving patriots of the Tea Party movement are truly undeserving."
This she wrote just before Mark William's and Tea Party Express were kicked out of the National Tea Party organization because of ridiculously racist letter he wrote to the NAACP.
Anyone think Sarah Palin is going to be defending Jon Stewart's use of silly voices any time soon?
Vyan