Kemstone's Journal

I don’t know about you, but I don’t remember voting for Glenn Beck for president. I don’t think many Obama supporters, upon casting their vote in 2008, were hoping that once president he would bend over backwards to do everything he possibly could to appease Fox News. I could be wrong—maybe Obama voters were really hoping for a president who would ignore progressives and listen only to the likes of Bill O’Reilly and Sean Hannity—but somehow I find that hard to believe.

Excuse me for ranting but I’ve got the need. Cenk Uygur’s epic rant over the Shirley Sherrod debacle on Wednesday’s Young Turks got me fired up. Between that and a dozen other columns and blog entries I’ve read these last couple of days, it’s clear that this story is far more significant than I initially realized.

At first my anger was directed almost entirely at Fox News. I couldn’t believe how so many people can still see them as an actual news organization when they clearly have a political agenda and will rush to broadcast any story that fits their pre-existing narrative with a deliberate disregard for what the actual facts are. Their #1 agenda is to do political harm to Obama. When presented with a heavily-edited video that seemed to show an employee of Obama’s department of agriculture boasting about how she discriminated against a white farmer, they didn’t waste a single moment checking to see whether it was what it appeared to be.

They could have found the entire unedited video but didn’t. They could have tried to contact Sherrod for her side of the story but didn’t. Most egregiously, they didn’t even try to contact the white farmers who were supposedly the victims of this discrimination, as if they had they would have learned—as the rest of the country learned when actual journalists stepped onto the scene—that Sherrod actually helped them save their farm, and that the story she’d been telling in that video was about how she learned that it was wrong to discriminate based on color.

But the Obama White House fired Shirley Sherrod before any journalism was done—before any basic questions were even asked. Sherrod told reporters that she actually had to pull over to the side of the road and submit her resignation via text message because she had to be gone by the time Glenn Beck went on the air.

Brillliant move on the White House’s part. Obviously they learned their lesson from the Van Jones fiasco, when they let Fox News hammer them for days before finally getting rid of him. No doubt they were patting themselves on the back for swift, decisive action when they got rid of Sherrod within a single news cycle.

Surely they had fixed everything. Fox News, upon seeing how quickly the administration caved in to them, would undoubtedly give him all the credit in the world and begin reporting how they’d been wrong about him all along—that he’s really not a reverse-racist and that he should be applauded for getting rid of Sherrod.

Of course not. Their number one agenda, remember, is to harm Obama politically. So when he did exactly what they wanted him to do, they hammered him for that! How could he fire her so quickly before checking all the facts? I can’t believe he just threw that poor woman under the bus like that. I mean, we’re Fox News so it’s not our job to check the facts but surely the White House has a responsibility to get the whole story before taking action.

And on that, they’re absolutely right. It’s not Fox News’s responsibility to report the truth—they are a propaganda network, not a news organization—but the White House does have a responsibility to make sure that the actions they take are based on hard facts and solid evidence.

But apparently that’s not how they operate. It would seem that they’ve got their eyes on Fox News at all times and stand ever poised to deflate whatever criticism that network might be leveling against them. They say Van Jones is a communist? Get rid of him. They say ACORN is full of criminals? Cut off its funding. Just please don’t hate us, right-wingers. We swear we’ll do whatever you say, Glenn Beck. Just stop saying mean things about us. What is it you want us to do? Just tell us who to fire and they’ll be out of here by 5 p.m.

Last year, in the midst of the health care debacle, I asked whether Obama was a pussy or a sell-out. I keep going back and forth on that question, but this drove me firmly back to the pussy side of the equation. Running the country based on Fox News talking points? How weak and pathetic can you possibly be?

What the hell do you think you’re actually accomplishing with this strategy? You think that if you keep caving in to Fox News, one day conservatives are suddenly going to change their minds about you? That if you keep compromising on all your progressive ideals and delivering watered-down, industry-friendly legislation, that right-wingers are going to start saying, “You know, maybe we were wrong about him. He might not be a radical socialist after all.”

News for you: That. Will. Never. Fucking. Happen.

So deal with it. Give up this absurd act of chasing your own tail all day long, turn off the goddamn Fox News channel, and run the country the way you would run it if there were no such thing as the Glenn Beck program.

Or better yet, listen to both sides. Progressives have criticisms too, and theirs are actually based in reality. Instead of only taking Bill O’Reilly’s advice, try listening to Rachel Maddow for once. Her advice is actually designed to help you.

The Shirley Sherrod thing, in itself, is just a small story. But taken in the larger context of the way Barack Obama has been conducting his administration, it’s one of the most important political events of his presidency. It’s one of those Wizard of Oz moments when the curtain is drawn back and you see who’s really running the show.

The strategy is clear: Don’t waste any time worrying about what liberals and progressives are saying because liberals and progressives don’t matter. They will never vote for republicans, so you gain nothing by doing anything more than the bare minimum to appease them. You win elections by appealing to swing-voters, to the moderate center, to the people who want to see both parties working together in a bipartisan fashion to accomplish things in Washington. When conservatives criticize you, you should immediately respond to that criticism in order to show how much of a centrist you are and how much you’re willing to listen to the other side.

The strategy is also dead wrong. I don’t know who this imaginary moderate centrist voter is, but I’ve never met him. Is there a single American voter who wasn’t sure about Obama until he dropped the public option, watered-down financial reform, called for more offshore oil drilling, fired Van Jones and de-funded ACORN? Seriously, I want to know how many people will go to the polls and vote for democrats this Fall because Obama proved to them that he’s not ‘too liberal’.

It’s complete and utter bullshit, and it’s so frustrating that Obama is so wrapped up inside his Washington bubble that he can’t even see it. He thinks that Bush’s approval ratings were so low because he spent too much time appeasing his base and never compromising with the other side. Wrong—Bush’s approval ratings were so low because everything he did as president was a total disaster. But at least he got shit done.

Why don’t you try that strategy for awhile, Obama? Why don’t you take a “Bring ‘em on” approach to Fox News and let them say whatever the hell they want to say while you deliver on the Change you promised? The Washington punditocracy will no doubt say you’ve gone off the deep-end, that you’re drifting perilously to the left and that this center-right country won’t stand for it. But you know what? You might find that in the Fall, liberals and progressives will actually come out and vote instead of staying home. You might even find that these all-important centrist-moderates you’re so concerned about actually come out and vote for democrats as well because…golly gee…it turns out they didn’t actually care about bipartisan posturing as much as they cared about government actually getting shit done.

Wake up, Obama. You’ve handed control of the country over to Fox News and you wonder why you’re heading for a failed presidency. In 2012 you should just let voters write in Glenn Beck’s name instead of yours so he can run the country directly without a middle-man.