Why does President Barack Obama’s White House continue to be mired in distraction? Since the president took office there has been Gates Gate; the international snub in Copenhagen, Denmark, after the president flew there overnight to make a bid for Chicago to host the 2016 Summer Olympics; the call for New York Gov. David Patterson not to seek election to a full term; and now the puerile decision to attack Fox News.
“What I think is fair to say about Fox — and certainly it’s the way we view it — is that it really is more a wing of the Republican Party,” White House Communications Director Anita Dunn said on CNN. “They take their talking points, put them on the air; take their opposition research, put them on the air. And that’s fine. But let’s not pretend they’re a news network the way CNN is.”
A real network the way CNN is? So now the White House is in the business of defining what a real network is and is not? I thought the role of the White House was to govern, not to endorse or legitimatize networks. Should we now expect that the White House will be telling us the difference between “real butter” and “real margarine” next? This is the theater of the absurd.
In a representative democracy, government does not get to tell the people which networks are real and which are not. We decide for ourselves. Is the White House comfortable engaging in a propaganda campaign? Surely Ms. Dunn does not think that this edict from the White House will distract from the real issues. Or, perhaps she does.
