Fox’s James Rosen was so eager to find a way to make conservative political hay out of police officer Michael Slager’s killing of Walter Scott, it was almost funny.
White House spokesman Josh Earnest was asked by various people about the Walter Scott case at Wednesday’s press briefing. Earnest obviously couldn’t say much as the matter is still under investigation. He did speak about the importance of body cameras.
But Rosen only seemed interested in making Earnest look bad. As Tommy Christopher described him, Rosen was “looking for all the world like he was auditioning to get a prime slot on Slager’s defense team.”
ROSEN: First, on the shooting videotape, you are aware, I presume, that the officer in question has now been charged with murder, correct?
EARNEST: I have seen those reports, yes.
ROSEN: You are aware that when you were asked about this at the top of the briefing, you spoke in fairly lengthy terms about the event, including a description of the video evidence as helpful.
EARNEST: Again, that is what I understand the investigators have said was their reaction when they had the opportunity to review the video.
ROSEN: You understand that nowhere in your remarks earlier on this subject in the briefing did you take pains to say that the individual who is captured on the videotape and who now faces murder charges is entitled to due process or is presumed innocent until proven guilty, the existence of the videotape notwithstanding. You did not include that in your remarks.
EARNEST: Well, I certainly would stipulate that that’s true.
Because it’s up to Fox News to unearth what the “liberal, Obama-loving media” will not dare to tell you: that White House is just too sympathetic to “the blacks,” eh?
Or, as Christopher put it:
What Rosen is doing here is the yellowest kind of pandering, attempting to concoct, for his audience of panicky old white people, a narrative that the BlackBlack Obama administration is being unfair to the white cop who shot that fleeing tail-light felon, who will probably be cleared once a jury of 12 white Fox News viewers get to “watch the whole tape.”
Watch James Rosen pretend he's Perry Mason, below, via Tommy Christopher.
It’s certainly good to know that Fox is so concerned about the officer’s civil rights. Too bad they don’t apply the same standards to the person who got bullets in the back.
After Ben Cohen made the decision to go “full-on” subscriber mode, I had some legitimate questions and concerns—especially on the “non-subscriber” ability to view pages. Ben said that non-subscribers would get to view 3 pages (per week!) without a problem. If someone didn’t want to subscribe, they’d be able to “buy” page views on a daily basis but this was already after they’d done a SPECIAL “members only” series of pages. So I questioned a number of points that he’d made (and rather civilly, as I recall) and then I had to get ready to go to work.
When I got home that night and went to The Banter, I read an article and started to comment (through Disqus) and got a notice that there was a problem with my comment. So I sent an email to The Banter requesting information as to what the problem was. Ben’s response was VERY uncivil—he called me an a-hole (and didn’t abbreviate the term) and that they could ban me because they wanted to. He also said he was blocking my e-mail address so I couldn’t respond to him. I sent an e-mail to another Banter contributor (including the text of Ben’s e-mail) and, admittedly, I got a little heated about Ben’s behavior but the other contributor was nice enough to respond back and he acknowledged I had a right to be upset (I never got upset at this guy) and he’d see what he could do. Well, I never heard back and I’m kind of afraid I may have gotten him fired because I noticed his contributions to The Banter seem to have dried up just a couple of days after I’d e-mailed him
I still occasionally visit The Banter but it turns out their “3-page views a week” actually includes the home page (meaning once you’ve read two articles, you’re basically blocked from accessing anything else—well, you can click on anything you like but all you get is a pay-wall page).
Sorry for going off-topic but when I saw Tommy Christopher’s name and saw the link to The Banter, it just raised issues for me. I actually enjoyed most of Tommy’s contributions to The Banter (especially as he covered the White House and gave such wonderful insights of the press conferences and the usual inane antics and questions of the FoxNoise reporters). I don’t know if the “ban” is still in effect; it happened in September and I haven’t been to the site in a couple of months or so (the last time I went, I had to scan the front page to see what 2 items most appealed to me, and, of course, there were more than half a dozen interesting pieces so I had to pick the two MOST interesting of the various interesting pieces, and I didn’t bother trying to comment; in fact, I didn’t even bother reading the comment sections anyways).
