Here Come Da Judge
Reported by Nancy - July 3, 2004 -
Judge Andrew Napolitano had the show all to himself today. At least with his background of actually practicing law (although he hasn't been on the bench since 1995), he knows how to ask questions of guests. Sadly, the content of those questions is only at the usual Fox partisan level.
After opening with the usual administration-inspired terror alerts & a brief report from Steve Centanni in Baghdad which focused on yesterday's "perp walk" by Saddam Hussein "in chains", Napolitano interviewed (at 5:03pm EDT) former Ambassador David Scheffer about how someone might defend "a monster" like Hussein. Although Scheffer injected plain common sense at every turn, Napolitano's questions were finely tuned to Fox's standard talking points (e.g., "how do we avoid the mistakes that have been made with Milosevic's trial?" with the unspoken message that international efforts are bound to fail -- to which Scheffer retorted that the Milosevic trial is not a failure).
At 5:11pm EDT, Napolitano returned to the "Holiday Safety" theme, interviewing Greg Esslinger (former FBI agent). Nothing new here.
At 5:20pm EDT, Carl Cameron did a piece about Kerry's VP choice (3 mins, of which 1 min was devoted to banter about the correct pronunciation of Cloquet, MN -- it's Klo-KAY). This was immediately followed, at 5:23pm EDT by an audio/visual clip of Bush's speech this morning on the economy (1 min), followed by Napolitano interviewing Michael Meehan (Kerry campaign) & Scott Stanzel (Bush campaign). After giving them each a chance to reiterate the appropriate party line about the economy, Napolitano veered to talking about the trial of Saddam Hussein, then wound up asking Meehan if the rumor he's heard is true: will Kerry pick Hilary Clinton as his running mate? Meehan merely smiled & said Kerry will decide who. Stanzel jumped in with the claim that Kerry's first choice was John McCain, who declined, so anyone Kerry picks at this point will only be second best -- at which point Napolitano simply ended the interview (at 5:32pm EDT), to leave viewers with the Fox-approved impression that Stanzel was correct.
This was followed, at 5:33pm EDT by a weird little non-report by Dagen McDowell, who basically said: the economy is better even though stocks are down, don't worry, people are confident, don't worry, gas prices are still high but people will be travelling this weekend, don't worry. They had trouble making this rosy outlook jibe with the "Holiday Safety/Terror Alert" theme.
At 5:35pm EDT Napolitano interviewed Jack Valenti (chairman, MPAA) about Marlon Brando. This was not pretty -- Valenti rambled, not answering Napolitano's questions, dredging up irrelevant & unrevealing anecdotes. But Napolitano let him ramble for 5 solid minutes.
At 5:44pm EDT Napolitano interviewed Rev Jesse Jackson about Bill Cosby's speech last night. Fox has been all over this all day today, baiting black leaders to attack Cosby, dragging out the old "culture of victimhood" canard (with no apparent sense of irony that this is the same tactic Fox uses to convince its viewers that they're being "abused" by "liberals"). Jackson, as you might expect, stood his ground, refused to be baited & would not agree that there is no racism in the USA. Napolitano tried hard for 5 minutes, asking if Cosby was attacking Jackson personally & sinking low enough to ask "Why don't these people learn English?" but Jackson stayed cool.
