Right Where They Want Us

In a very curious article over at The Daily Beast, John Bachelor argues that the White House going after the legitimacy of FOX news is not only foolish, it's the worst possible thing they could do on all fronts becuase only by the White House attacking Roger Ailes' little outfit there is there any way they can get legitimacy in the Obama era.

The worst mistake Axelrod and Emanuel are making by confusing Fox News with the Republican Party is that they are confusing campaigning with entertaining and then letting this mistake blind them to the fact that the White House is for governing, not just staging.

Fox News is not in the news business; it’s in show business. The Republican Party, like its blood kin the Democratic Party, is in the campaign business. The White House is in the government business, though, from the evidence so far, it doesn’t know how to break out of the campaign business.

Axelrod was responsible for a mythical run for the presidency, but that was last year’s story. Now Axelrod and Rahm Emanuel are responsible for satisfying a ragbag of players—a sweaty task that at least one person in the White House confuses with community organizing—and moving them in the current desired direction of national health-care reform, perhaps also worldwide disarmament, no date given, and through the latest strategic review on Afghanistan before the next strategic review.

None of the Obama administration’s policies, if and when there are policies, requires approval or even acknowledgement by Fox News in order to succeed. Would David Axelrod ask the very clever Peter Gelb of the Metropolitan Opera Company for a moment on stage in Puccini’s Tosca to speak dryly of a second stimulus bill? Then why demand of Ailes that his opera bouffe company treat you as anything other than an interloper? When you are offered the stage, gratis, why go out of your way to deny Ailes the spectacular voice of Obama singing his aria of health-care reform?

To return to the secret, caffeinated “cordial conversation” of Sept. 30, there is plenty of evidence to conclude that Ailes is a genius impresario for fooling Axelrod into thinking that Fox News is not only for the Republican Party but is the Republican Party and the principal opponent against Obama that requires the evil eye of the White House. Fox News thanks heaven each morning for a foil as handsome and boundless as the president, and on its best days sighs over the puny, tongue-tied, bilious characters called conservatives.

On the other hand, Clinton tried to keep above the fray and when he didn't bite, the media said he was out of touch and elitist anyway.

While he's correct that FOX is not a news outfit but an entertainment one, dismissing them as an entertainment outfit that can't do any damage to the President (and then later saying the President's real foe is Jon Stewart of all people) is just as far off the mark, just in the other direction. FOX will continue to attack the President because they believe he is the enemy. They are trying to bully him. Yes, Axelrod is risking much by responding, but he risks even more by doing nothing.