I Hate It All

Bill Clinton had enough. He finally stopped giving lip service to the idea that Fox News Channel was some sort of objective, professional media outlet and laid them out for what they are: a partisan arm of the Republican Party.

I’m not saying FNC is biased. CNN is biased, tending to lean left, but generally not letting that get in the way, largely, of reporting the news fairly straightforwardly (you’ll remember how CNN’s ratings spiked during Hurricane Katrina, as even FNC fans knew serious news coverage only happens on CNN). I’m saying FNC is a mouthpiece, a very expensive, high-tech Jeff Gannon which has existed for more than a decade as an off the books campaign contribution from Rupert Murdoch and News Corp. to the Republican Party.

And yet Clinton showed no fear of striking back at FNC and snarky Chris Wallace — finally saying what so many have thought but so few have been brave enough to say: FNC is a sham and has enabled the Bush Administration to lie, supported and reenforced those lies — so much so that the transition from FNC anchor to Bush spokesman was effortless for Tony Snow.

Before you rant about this being some left-wing diatribe — it’s not. FNC could have just as easily become a left-wing outlet supporting the lies of a liberal administration and it would be just as disgusting. The media is supposed to exist as a watchdog — attempt to find out the truth and expose it for fair and reasonable debate. While the media in general has failed, FNC is the posterchild of psuedojournalism — propaganda no less calculated than that used by the Nazis in Germany.

FNC took a decades-long process of turning news first into entertainment and then, finally, into whatever people wanted to hear — in the end blaming all of our problems on some version of “them.” “Them” includes gays, immigrants (legal or otherwise), liberals, those opposing the war — anyone not in lock-step with the mantra of the moment.

The other news networks, CNN and MSNBC, getting blasted in the ratings, scrambled to find new formulas to compete — ranging from mimicking Fox News (Joe Scarborough? What the hell were they thinking?) to trying to become a liberal version of it and few things have worked. What no one seemed willing to try for the long haul, was serious, sober journalism. Not that I blame them — try to get Americans to focus on the facts of the matter and engage in serious, thoughtful debate and watch how quick they flip the channel to “Survivor.” Like our government, we’re getting the crappy media we largely deserve.

But Clinton, a deeply flawed man who seems to be remembering that character matters,  went after FNC — on their air (and subsequently, virtually everywhere on the Internet until Fox got all bitchy about it) and scored.

Clinton ate Wallace for lunch and of course, this passage, the one that points out the lack of intellectual honesty on the part of Fox, really hit the heart of the matter:

“But you know we do have a government that thinks Afghanistan is 1/7 as important as Iraq. And you ask me about terror and Al Qaeda with that sort of dismissive theme when all you have to do is read Richard Clarke’s book to look at what we did in a comprehensive, systematic way to try to protect the country against terror. And you’ve got that little smirk on your face. It looks like you’re so clever…”

But these quotes get to the real issue:

“There’s a reason it’s on people’s minds. That’s the point I’m trying to make. There’s a reason it’s on people’s minds because they’ve done a serious disinformation campaign to create that impression. This country only has one person who has worked against terror…[since] under Reagan. Only one: Richard Clarke.  And all I’d say [to] anybody who wonders whether we did wrong or right; anybody who wants to see what everybody else did, read his book. The people on my political right who say I didn’t do enough, spent the whole time I was president saying ‘Why is he so obsessed with Bin Laden?’ And that was ‘Wag the Dog’ when he tried to kill him. My Republican Secretary of Defense, - and I think I’m the only person since WWII to have a Secretary of Defense from the opposition party - Richard Clarke, and all the intelligence people said that I ordered a vigorous attempt to get Osama Bin Laden and came closer apparently than anybody has since.

“And you guys try to create the opposite impression when all you have to do is read Richard Clarke’s findings and you know it’s not true. It’s just not true. And all this business about Somalia  – the same people who criticized me about Somalia were demanding I leave the next day. Same exact crowd.”

In short, it was ballsy. Instead of playing the game, Clinton took on FNC and spanked them badly on their own air — in front of their own audience — by hauling out the facts of the matter and making his arguments on the merits. He admitted the errors he made in attempting to go after Osama Bin Laden, but also makes the point that his people were much more focused on the threat of terrorism than the Bush Administration.

FNC, acting like the opposition party to Clinton, tried to counter, trotting out Secretary of State Condi Rice who offered weak arguments:

"The notion somehow for eight months the Bush administration sat there and didn't do that is just flatly false — and I think the 9/11 commission understood that," she said.

Except of course, the fact that the 9/11 Commission Report — and Richard Clarke — suggested exactly that — that the Bush Administration sat on the terrorism issue and really didn’t take it all very seriously (and some would argue that they still don’t — based on the assets tasked to Al Qaeda, versus those deployed to attack a two-bit dictator and the civil war following his ouster).

So the gauntlet has been laid down. The media is being challenged to report the facts — finally — and maybe people are beginning to listen. The GOP and Bush Administration is worried enough about it that they have been feverishly spinning, hoping to stop what could be a painful series of questions, sparked by the Clinton interview and the leaked National Intelligence Estimate that points out that the Iraq War has increased the risk of terrorism — not decreased it.

So the question is this: will the mainstream media grow a pair and finally start doing its job again? Maybe more importantly, will we care?