A few nights ago, Greta Van Susteren announced that the Senate had passed a bill ending furloughs for air traffic controllers. But in case anyone thought they should let up on hateration for President Obama, she quickly moved on to say that the office implementing Obamacare. “apparently has immunity” from them. She added, “That’s right, no furloughs for Obamacare workers.” So rather than explore why the Obama administration thinks that implementing a national medical insurance plan might be more urgent than avoiding flight delays, she brought on a Republican Congressman who threw unsupported accusations that the Obama administration is deliberately trying to harm Americans. Van Susteren let those accusations go without challenge.
“What do you think about that, Sir?” Van Susteren asked Rep. Gregg Harper (R-MS), obviously inviting him to jump right in and make her implied criticisms more explicit. And sure enough, he accepted the invitation. Complaining that there are hiring freezes at HHS (the agency implementing Obamacare) instead of furloughs, Harper whined:
He’s trying to accomplish whatever he can do that will hurt the most people and it’s just not a fair approach to the way to handle it.
The president is deliberately working to hurt as many Americans as possible? It just goes to show how deliberately hostile and divisive Fox is that Van Susteren didn’t even seem to notice. Just run of the mill commentary on Fox. So she bore down on asking, “Why aren’t they (HHS) getting a cut like everyone else is?” Of course, if she really wanted to know, she might have asked someone at HHS or a reporter who covers HHS rather than a Republican Congressman. Not surprisingly, he doubled down on the accusation: “It’s what we’re dealing with with this administration right now, which is hurting as many people as possible.”
Once again, Van Susteren didn’t even seem to notice. She laughably cast Harper as some kind of objective observer and asked, “And what would they say if they were here?”
Apparently, on Fox, it’s only a problem if you cast aspersions on America when you include conservatives. If you’re talking about President Obama, the left, the poor or Democrats there’s nothing too malicious for the Fox News airwaves.
Granted, Fox News went on the warpath about White House Tours being curbed, never acknowledging that cuts had to come from somewhere. But they always pretended that the cuts just didn’t matter. Now that we see that there really are impacts from the cuts, isn’t it interesting to see the Fox pundits complaining about them? Shouldn’t they be admitting on camera that they misrepresented the situation? Wouldn’t an on-air apology be a better approach?
G.H. – It’s a sad day when a sitting president can do so much harm!
V.S. – Are you talking about Dubya on vacation before 9/11, or the unnecessary Gulf War 2, or the drowning of N.O., or the economic crash of 2008?!!!
G.H. – No. I was thinking about how sad it is that my great party has to deal with a POTUS we just don’t like!!!
V.S. – Oh yes! Hannity, O’Reilly, the Jesus Couch crew and everyone here at Fux say the same thing.
G.H. – Well it’s not working! gawd I hate that man!
V.S. – Great Bumper Sticker!!!!
G.H. – Thanks!