Will Beltway Democrats never learn?


Digby at Hullabaloo documents yet another example of unfair and unbalanced reporting on Fox. This time it's Brit Hume claiming that Valerie Plame lied about her role, or non-role, in sending her husband to Niger.

It seems that the only Democrats that don't know that Fox is an arm of the Republican party live in Washington. Having successfully beaten back an attempt by the Nevada Democrats to allow Fox to host a presidential debate, the "base" (meaning most Democrats that don't live in Washington) are once again faced with the task of trying to get Beltway Democrats to stop conferring legitimacy on Fox.

This time it's the Congressional Black Caucus, which despite protests, continues to negotiate with Fox to hold a debate on that network. You can add your voice to other protesters here. This is doubly troubling because not only has Fox made a habit of libeling Democrats, it has also been part of the current right wing attempts to legitimize racism. Some of its history is documented at the link above. For instance:
• Commenting on Hannity & Colmes about the speakers at Coretta Scott King's funeral, featured guest Mary Matalin said, "I think these civil rights leaders are nothing more than racists" who are keeping "their African-American brothers enslaved." 
 
• Jesse Lee Peterson, a regular guest who is Black said: "Kwanzaa is a racist, pagan, Marxist holiday" and then claimed that the "so-called seven principles of Kwanzaa are socialist, Marxist, separatist ideas... if a white man started a white holiday, seven-day white holiday, black folks would be burning down America." 
 
• Erik Rush, another Black guest, labeled Sen. Obama's church as cultish and separatist for espousing values of black unity and black empowerment (Fox regularly selects Black guests it knows will undermine Black causes). Rush said he replaced the word "black" with "white" in the church's mission statement and "Suddenly, I was looking at this really scary doctrine. You know, it was something that you'd see in more like a cult or an Aryan Brethren church… I would go beyond saying they're Afrocentric. They're African centric. They refer to themselves as an African people and that somewhat disturbs me from the viewpoint of well, do they consider themselves Americans? Do they consider themselves Christians?" 
 
• On The Big Story, John Gibson, warned viewers that nearly half of all children under the age of five in the United States are minorities. "You know what that means? Twenty-five years and the majority of the population is Hispanic." He then urged viewers to "do your duty. Make more babies." He later repeated: "To put it bluntly, we need more babies."

More white babies, that is. Obama has already stopped giving interviews on Fox. If he were to announce that he wouldn't participate in this debate, it's hard to see how the Black Caucus could go on with these negotiations. It would have to be embarassing to the Black Caucus to hold a debate with the only black candidate boycotting.
Posted: Sunday - March 18, 2007 at 05:35 PM          

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