The Obama Crew: Biased about Bias

Okay, NOW I'm bugged.

Let me say right up front that I am not a diehard fan of Fox News, though I watch it regularly. I do happen to be an anti-fan of MSNBC (with the possible exception of Chris Matthews), but I watch that station regularly, too. And if I had to choose, I would probably pick CNN over either one of them.

But, here's the thing. I don't have to choose. I do, however, have to actively listen to news programs from both sides of the spectrum, liberal to conservative, and then try to find out where the truth lies. Which is why I watch all three stations for my news. So I can be as "fair and balanced" as possible.

That's the background. Now let me tell you why I am angry with Obama and his administration, before whom the vast majority of MSNBC reporters prostrate themselves as the most toadying of sycophants. Honestly, Keith Olbermann and Rachel Maddow go well beyond the pale in their extreme left liberalism, and I don't hear senior Obama adviser David Axelrod complaining about them. Instead, he insists that only Fox has bias, supporting his claims with statements like, "...they're (meaning Fox) not really a news station. It's not just their commentators, but a lot of their news programming. It's really not news. It's pushing a point of view."

Don't misunderstand my position here. I fully agree that folks like Sean Hannity, Glenn Beck, and to a slightly more even-handed extent, Bill O' Reilly, are pushing a point of view. They are conservative to the core; and to be honest, I have a little trouble listening to any of them, mostly because of their presentation and often because of their black-and-white paradigms. But where does Axelrod get off insinuating that the Fox commentators are any more biased than MSNBC is? Has he not heard Olbermann's saliva-spraying rants about any and all things conservative? There isn't a man or a woman on Fox who even comes close to his rabid partisanship. (Seriously, his co-workers should get vaccinated...for their own safety!) And Rachel Maddow, with her failed attempts at humor and her unappealing brand of canned, cloying cynicism, is no better. I'd rather listen to Hannity, Beck, and O'Reilly all day long (which would be fairly torturous for me, by the way) than spend even half that time suffering through the one-sided slings and barbs hurled by their counterparts on MSNBC. To say nothing of the lock-step Obama worship. And that's the truth.

No wonder I was so turned off when Axelrod appeared on "This Week with George Stephanopoulos" saying that Fox News shouldn't be treated as a news organization. Where does he get off saying that?!...especially when he and the administration are practically in bed with MSNBC. He then compounded the offense by adding, "And the bigger thing is that other news organizations, like yours, ought not to treat them that way, and we're not going to treat them that way."

Excuse my freedom of thought, but when did the White House become the arbiter of which mainstream news organizations will or will not be treated with respect? Must TV stations idol worship the president in order to be deemed legitimate? Seriously, who do the members of this administration think they are? The media is supposed to keep them honest, not the other way around. Hello. Let's just let the public––that's right, the citizens––decide which networks are being honest and support or deride them accordingly. (I believe it's called democracy...And what was that other word we seem to be losing sight of?...Oh, yeah...capitalism.)

Frankly, I long for the days when news was presented in such a way that the listener couldn't even tell which direction the commentator was leaning. The former professionalism of TV news networks and reporting is well worth mourning. But that's a post for another day.

For now, let's face it. Fox and MSNBC are identical in their approach, two opposing sides of the same bias-driven coin. And if Fox isn't a "real" news organization, then neither is MSNBC. Methinks Mr. Axelrod needs to remind himself that agreeing with his point of view isn't necessarily the same as being right...or blameless...or even above reproach. And last time I checked, there is no king's ex for liberals. In fact, there is no king at all.

Not even Barack Obama.