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Punching Up

In taking on Fox News, the White House appears to be committing the cardinal political sin of punching below their weight. You’re supposed to take on political opponents by punching up, rather than down. To do otherwise – especially for the federal executive/leader of the free world – is a kind of self-inflicted lèse majesté.

ABC’s Jake Tapper shows how it’s done.

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14 comments to Punching Up

  • Gibbs – he’s stamping his feet and basically crying Because I said so.

    It would be funny if it was based in any fact. They are pissed at opinion shows. Which, given Gibb’s own argument of it’s our opinion you’d think he’d see the irony.

    But he never will – this Administration really is a bunch of whiny-ass crybabies.

    Of course it’s all a distraction from the real world of economic collapse, terrorism on the rise, our warriors going unsupported and whatever Michelle Obama is wearing to dinner tomorrow night. Everyone jump on the hate-Fox-News-bandwagon so you are less likely to see how little money you have left at the end of the month, how our warriors are dying while our very own personal Caesar fiddles.

    We really are living in a sick cult of personality and it will prove to be a very difficult mess to clean up. Let’s get started in 2010 and move on to 2012 next.

    • StupidSNA

      I think the problem is that a large number of people don’t treat opinion shows (and I don’t mean only Fox News opinion shows) as such. I know plenty of people who get their “news” from Hannity or Olbermann or what have you, which is very stupid on the part of the viewer, but also partly the responsibility of networks that deliberately blur the line between news and opinion. I also think it’s a bit silly for the Presidency to target a specific news channel (although I probably disagree with most readers here on rating the validity of specific stations), both because the idea of nonpartisan for-profit journalism is a bit of a myth and because I think all tv news is equally useless. But I wish we’d drop the opinion hour/ news hour distinction, because a huge proportion of viewers simply don’t treat the shows that way.

      • xairboss

        Not so Stupid SNA. Wait till you have kids and grand kids who quote a movie as fact. It will drive you crazy. I think I need another shot of Black Seal. Boss.

  • Curtis

    Oh drat, just been over punching up Skippy and friends. Didn’t know we had to punch up. Nobody told me!

    I heard a journalist member of the White House Press Corps had H1N1 and was delighted that he was still going to work everyday.

  • Akin to the days of the Nixon WH, they have decided in O-Bot land that they need an enemies list and that they alone are the supreme deciders of all things under heaven & on earth….sounds like something that President Bush was HIGHLY criticized for during his tenure.

    In the Caine Mutiny, Captain Queeg shows his true self by telling his staff that on his ship there are four ways to do things….” There’s the right way, the wrong way, the Navy’s way and MY way…on this ship we do things my way. ” sounds awful familiar to what the WH has been pushing….

    Later on at the trial, the Defense lawyer for Lt. Maryk sums it up describing a doctor’s diagnosis of Captain Queeg for the court,

    ” Doctor. You have testified that the following symptoms exist in Captain Queeg’s (or in our case President Obama’s) behavior. Rigidity of personality, feelings of persecution, unreasonable suspicion, a mania for perfection, and a neurotic certainty that he is always in the right. Doctor isn’t there one psychiatric term for this illness? ”

    Yeah – Ego Maniac with delusions of adequacy…

    Sounds like the Obama White House all right…. The problem is they (The O-Bots) don’t even see a problem….The prosecution rests.

  • Marianne Matthews

    Seems to me that Jake Tapper just proved he’s too smart to stay a Democrat forever. Gibbs, on the other hand …

    Marianne

    P.S. And Lex, you’re right. No good ever comes from using the Bully Pulpit to, well, bully.

  • Humble1310

    Meh, I have no use for Fox News personally, but this reeks. I mean, if they’re not a real news agency, how are they ever going to become one if you don’t let them into the press conferences? Seems like this might be goign the wrong direction.

  • Marianne Matthews

    Come on, friends. All is not lost, although I’m worried that our basic speech freedoms are being threatened. We *can* fight back. And we will. As my granny used to say, when she heard something outrageous; “Consider the source, dear, consider the source.” We’ve got Chicago-trained mob folks in the White House, who have accumulated every rag-tag-and-bobtail fringe socialist they can around them, and that’s scary, I admit. But, as our extremely clever host will tell you, they’ve been making some big mistakes already, in reading the mood and purpose and determination of their constituents, who are getting more and more disgusted with the direction things are taking.

    After the Washington demonstration on 9/12, the word among the Democrats was that it wasn’t important and the Republicans would soon lose interest. Lose interest?! One million seven hundred thousand protesters turn up in Washington, D.C., not funded by the dreadful George Soros and his coven of witches but by the protesters’ own hard-earned money. They protest peaceably but determinedly. And they clean up after themselves, like grown-ups, not like the rowdies at the inauguration. And those idiots think we’re going “to forget about it?” Gimmie a break!

    The anger is just beginning to bloom in all those hearts. And it will only increase as each new ignorant outrage is perpetrated.

    We’re off the simmer now, friends, and coming to a boil.

    Marianne

  • Gmac

    Never get into a fight with someone that has unlimited airtime to present the facts.

    My corollary to the quote about newsprint and ink.

    That they are afraid of a broadcast news organization proves two things.
    1. They are rank amateurs.
    2. They didn’t study history.

  • How can anyone profess to be surprised by this? It was readily apparent when The Man energetically campaigned against a departing incumbent an a presumptive VP candidate.

    He doesn’t punch beneath his own weight as he is, after all, a tiny little thin-skinned man, but he does fight (and lead) well below the level of his elected office.

  • Lee

    Rather than take on the entire FNC, they could have picked their targets, and refuted the accusations point by point. Prove Glen Beck and the other protagonists at FNC wrong in their points, and win points with the Oba-Mau Bots. But they can’t. Because he’s right. And they know it. So, they have to villify the entire news organization that is FNC, “it’s my ball and I’m not playing” and all that. They picked the wrong time to jump into the fray, as they came unarmed in this battle of wits.

  • Mongo

    This whole business continues to escalate from the WH through PMSNBC, focusing as Lee says, through the boresight towards certain opinion based shows, rather than through the general news broadcasts at FNC. A lovely brief interlude at, I swear that I ‘ralph’ at the thought of even mentioning this, a discussion between certain entities at the Major Socialist National Bifurcated Stupification Network.

    Okay. Dinnae think that multi-furcated… wuz a wurd…but bifurcated sounds better in the context of the statement.

    Apologies to those who disagree, and regrets to those who draw their swords. Whisky afterwards…or now, as ye please…

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