Posted by
Corthell on Wednesday, September 29, 2010 8:03:58 AM
The very real threat of an unreal president
- Obama gives his audience permission to be selfish, greedy, grasping, bigoted and xenophobic...
To use the Presidential bully pulpit as a blunt instrument against a news organization, to label its approach destructive, to label its content destructive, that is -- to coin a phrase -- destructive. Think back to our first clue that Hugo Chavez was an autocrat, bent on subverting those national institutions which did not refract his glory.
We live in a surreal time. The Presidency we are experiencing does not merely bend the rules of civility, it alters the outlines of reality. The danger posed by someone filling the vessels of our national institutions with bad content is limited. The next custodian of the vessels can refill them more healthily. The greatest danger occurs when the vessels are smashed or vitiated by misuse. There is no guarantee that a successor will be able to effectuate repair.
I want to say that I am shocked by the President's latest utterance about FOX News, but I fear that we have moved past shock into numbness. Mister Obama, in a chatty colloquy with the publisher of Rolling Stone, while being treated with deference befitting a royal, thought it sporting to hound FOX. That network is destructive to America, he said, hawking a clearly discernible viewpoint like the Hearst papers of yore. It has been a successful strategy in fiscal terms, he noted: "wildly successful as an economic enterprise." Good for Rupert Murdoch, bad for America. (Well, shiver me timbers, our fearless President has managed to unmask yet another profiteer!)