Apartheid liberalism takes a blow from Fox appearances

San Francisco Chronicle/Houston Chronicle:

Presidential candidates rarely turn down a network television interview, especially on a highly rated program. But some prominent liberals are wondering why Sens. Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama agreed this week to sit down for interviews on the Fox News Channel, for years the highest rated cable news network and the bastion of conservative TV news analysis.

The dilemma for the candidates: Is appearing on Fox a smart political move before Democratic primaries in two largely conservative states — Indiana and North Carolina — or not worth the effort to court what could be a small amount of persuadable Republican voters?

"I understand the need to reach out to different audiences," said Robert Greenwald, the director of Outfoxed, a 2004 film that described Fox as a Republican mouthpiece. He also produces an online series of Fox Attacks videos that chronicle the network's coverage of African Americans, Obama and Clinton. "But this is a decision that will have virtually no gain for Democrats."

MoveOn.org executive director Eli Pariser said Wednesday that appearing on Fox helps to "legitimize Fox" as a news source.

"It's a conduit for right-wing smears" Pariser said, citing an unsubstantiated Fox report -- later debunked by CNN and others — that Obama attended a radical madrassa as a child. Obama's campaign criticized the charges as "malicious" and "irresponsible."

Even though the story was debunked, being reported on Fox "allows these stories to get picked up by other mainstream outlets" and enter the national political conversation, Pariser said.

On Wednesday night Clinton appeared for the first time on The O'Reilly Factor, hosted by Bill O'Reilly, who has been a longtime critic of Clinton and her husband Bill's administration -- and a nemesis to much of the left. But Clinton didn't mention any previous remarks by O'Reilly Wednesday, nor the online petition drive on her campaign's website, where supporters are told that O'Reilly "likes to take a few comments out of context and use them to smear broad groups of grassroots activists."

Instead, sitting face to face with O'Reilly in South Bend, IN, Wednesday morning, she fielded questions about Obama's pastor the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, and her tax and energy policies. Clinton parried O'Reilly's declarative questions ("You're going to bankrupt the country with Hillcare," O'Reilly said). She even name-dropped the ultimate conservative icon ("I learned something from Ronald Reagan," Clinton said, citing a bipartisan commission he agreed to that would study Social Security.)

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In March, Wallace began running an on-screen "Obama Watch" graphic -- modeled in part on the Fox program 24. It counted down the days, hours and minutes from the time in 2006 when Obama promised Wallace he would appear on the program.

Obama opened Sunday's show with a Watch joke. "Well, it takes me about 772 days to prepare for these questions," he said.

Organizers at MoveOn.org, the 3.2 million-member online liberal hub that endorsed Obama, weren't so amused. They weren't just ticked at Obama for appearing, but for not challenging Fox. More than half of the dozen-plus questions in the first segment of Wallace's interview were based on some sort of racial premise, an attempt to marginalize his candidacy, Obama supporters said.

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In case liberals ever get concerned about their reputation for being whiny they should read this story. Both candidates were asked questions about issues that have surfaced in the race. Liberals need to learn that they are not the only people who get to frame the issues in a race. They do themselves and their candidates great harm by trying to invalidate the issues of others without responding to them head on. Ask John Kerry.