With Hillary Clinton and Terry McAuliffe’s embarrassing endorsement of FOX’s coverage (apparently making up for FOX’s previous 14 years of horribly unfair, dishonest coverage) and the recent high-profile “get” of Barack Obama on FOX News Sunday, the feeling in the media world is that FNS host Chris Wallace (and FOX) have been legitimized and are on a roll — which is exactly what many on the left (including myself) predicted would happen if prominent Democrats appeared there. And with Wallace’s journalistic pedigree and willingness (on one lonely occasion) to call out his FOX colleagues for Dem-sliming that was even too outrageous for him, Wallace is being portrayed as FOX’s “serious,” respectable father figure — in contrast to hot-headed, homophobic Uncle O’Reilly and racist prettyboy meathead Uncle Hannity.

In a recent interview with the Hollywood Reporter, Wallace talked about his Obama Watch and furthered several myths about FOX which, unfortunately, are increasingly being regarded as “conventional wisdom”:

THR: How effective was "Obama Watch?"

Wallace: There were two factors in his decision to come on. One was the "Obama Watch." It gave us a way to dramatize the fact that he was ducking us. Right after we started it, I called one of the people in the Obama campaign who had been putting me off for months. I said, "What did you think of it?" His response was that it was obnoxious.

But now I say it was obnoxious and effective. More important was his defeat in Pennslylvania and his lopsided defeat among white, working class voters.

First, by saying that Obama was “ducking” FOX implies that Obama has some sort of obligation or responsibility to go on FOX. He doesn’t. Obama isn’t doing interviews with Rush Limbaugh, Michael Weiner Savage, the KKK, or Neo-Nazis because they’ve all vowed to destroy Obama with all the trash they can find or invent — just like FOX. If you don’t believe that that’s FOX’s goal, just watch FOX for an hour — you’ll get the picture after 15 min.

How awesome is Howard Dean? Answer: Very Awesome.

In a lesson for how Democrats should act if they go on FOX, Dean appeared on FOX News Sunday (May 4, 2008) to do the job that Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama were unwilling to do — call out FOX for being “shockingly biased” towards republicans, refuse to be drawn into FOX’s obsession with Rev. Jeremiah Wright, and not allow FOX to lie in their efforts to protect the channel’s official candidate: John McCain.

First, Dean smacked down Chris Wallace’s (and the Right’s) misinformation campaign to rewrite McCain’s comment that he wouldn’t mind if American troops stayed in Iraq for 100 years. Wallace brought up an ad featuring McCain’s quote:

WALLACE: Governor, why are you distorting what McCain actually said?

DEAN: Well, I'm not. –snip- I've said publicly that John McCain said that he wants to keep our troops in Iraq for up to 100 years. He himself said that some of that could be occupation like South Korea or Germany.

But the fact of the matter is, first, that anybody who thinks that we can keep our troops in Iraq for 100 years without them being victimized by roadside bombs, suicide bombers and militias I think is wrong and needs their judgment — to look carefully at their judgment.

And secondly, Americans don't want our troops in Iraq for 100 years, no matter what they're doing over there. We can't afford that. We need the money here at home for our jobs.

Nailed it. Americans do not want US troops in Iraq for 100 years — period. The vast majority of the world (including Iraqis) don’t want the US to stay in Iraq for 100 more minutes, let alone 100 more years. And to compare Korea or Germany, with their largely ethnically/religiously homogenous populations, with Iraq and its history of ethnic/religious divisions is either disingenuous, naïve, or just plain ignorant. Also, McCain has said he doesn’t want to leave Iraq until the US “wins” and there’s no more violence. Judging from the past few years, does that look like that’s going to happen anytime soon?

Hillary Clinton’s interview was a big winner for FOX and Bill O’Reilly. From NY Times:

The first part of the interview set a year-to-date viewership record for “The O’Reilly Factor,” according to Nielsen Media Research, with 3.66 million people tuning in, about one million above average.

Seems like the Clinton campaign can't get enough of helping their new BFF, FOX, despite FOX's 12-year history of dishonest attacks on democrats.

The article also highlights Clinton campaign chairman Terry McAuliffe’s baffling endorsement of FOX and how it ended up in a FOX ad. In the ad, McAuliffe congratulates FOX for being the first to announce that Clinton had won the Pennsylvania primary. Since when does calling an election “first” make an alleged news channel more reputable. Did McAuliffe and Clinton’s campaign forget that FOX declaring George W. Bush the winner “first” in 2000 (with the help of Bush’s cousin at FOX’s election desk making the call and the other networks obediently following) is what started the nightmare international clusterfuck that has been the Bush presidency? 

O’Really?

Strange, since 1) The US DID invade Iraq and 2) O’Reilly and Bush have said that the US invaded Iraq:

“I’ll submit that most folks still have no idea why the Bush administration invaded Iraq.” Bill O’Reilly (1/28/08]

“It wasn't all that long ago that we had to deal with a recession, and a stock market correction, and corporate scandals, and attacks on our country, and two wars, and two major invasions as a part of the war on terror…” George W. Bush (6/19/06)

Republicans and their propagandists have unbelievable talents for selective memory and revisionist history. In the next few years, I’m sure they’ll be denying that the Iraq war happened at all. If only that were true.

ThinkProgress has more.

No Republican would go to speak at a MoveOn event. John McCain won’t be going to YearlyKos or the Take Back America conference, and you won’t be hearing him on Air America or see him talking to Keith Olbermann. So why are Democrats told and why do they continue to believe they should go on FOX?

Chris Bowers wrote a great piece for OpenLeft that explains why it’s important for Democrats not to legitimize FOX by appearing there, and why Barack Obama’s appearance on FOX News Sunday was a huge step backwards in the Left’s efforts to identify FOX as what it is — a Republican propaganda mouthpiece. I voiced some similar opinions in a post here.

And then Hillary Clinton appeared on the O’Reilly Factor. Apparently the chance to join FOX and the Republicans to talk about Rev. Wright for the 8 millionth time was enough to make her forget the way that FOX has talked about her, her husband, her daughter, her friends, and Democrats for the last 12 years.

I’ve been seeing and reading a lot about these two appearances in the past few days, and “conventional wisdom” seems to be saying that going on FOX is a very good thing for Democrats to do. When I was on MSNBC last Friday, I was the only one on the panel who felt that Obama was making a big mistake going on FOX. But, as is usually the case, CW is completely wrong.

Democrats, especially prominent ones like Clinton and Obama, should not go on FOX. Never. 

(Body of War - documentary - 87 min - produced and directed by Ellen Spiro and Phil Donahue - starring Tomas Young, Cathy Smith, Brie Young - 2008)

Inspired by George W. Bush's promise to catch the "evildoers" as he stood atop the rubble of Ground Zero, Tomas Young of Kansas City, Missouri decided to quit his job at K-Mart and called up an army recruiter on September 13, 2001. Tomas assumed he'd be sent to Afghanistan to hunt down Al Qaeda and Osama bin Laden, but in March 2004, he found himself in Iraq. Just days after arriving, he was riding in an open-top, unarmored personnel carrier when a bullet severed his spinal cord, paralyzing him from the chest down. Tomas had never fired a shot. He was 24 years old.

Tomas's paralyzed body is the subject of Body of War, a new documentary from co-producers/co-directors Ellen Spiro and Phil Donahue. But Tomas's wounded, malfunctioning body is both a symbol and evidence of so much more: the lies that led the US into the Iraq war; the failure of Congress to exercise its duties and judgment to prevent this historic blunder; a broken and neglected system for taking care of wounded veterans; and the destructive toll inflicted on the tiny percentage of Americans who are doing virtually all of the sacrificing in this conflict. It is a sad reminder of what happens when a nation, or a young man, rushes to war. But it's also about how, with the benefit of hindsight, a person or a nation crippled by a criminal war can emerge from tragedy to demand accountability and change.

FOX business begins the assault on Senator Barack Obama, clearly believing he will be the candidate who will face Sen. John McCain. This is the first in an ongoing series of videos that will illustrate that FOX Business Channel has drawn a bead on the Senator from Illinois.

Barack Obama didn’t call out FOX for what they are — a Republican propaganda outlet — when he appeared on FOX News Sunday to talk to Chris Wallace. Unfortunately, this means Obama, the Democrats, and American democracy lost.

Obama did a respectable job answering Wallace’s light/medium-biased questions, but he didn’t go after FOX the way his campaign claimed Obama would in a Friday statement to Talking Points Memo. Instead, he made the error of treating the interview as if it was actually an interview, not an ambush staged by enemies committed to destroying him. Because FOX had two main goals for Obama’s appearance: to further the appearance that FOX is actually a news organization and to gather ammunition against Obama.

FOX clearly accomplished their first goal, since nothing could legitimize FOX more than having a top presidential candidate (and a Democrat, no less) do a sit-down interview with them. What Obama and his campaign failed to realize is how destructive it is to the Democratic party, as well as America and its democracy, to have people think that FOX is anything other than a Republican propaganda outlet. By legitimizing FOX, the stories they run, the lies they tell, and the opinions they espouse are also legitimized. There’s no better example of this than the recent ABC debate, where George Stephanopoulos thought that Sean Hannity would be a good person to ask for questions to ask Obama. Why would Stephanopoulos think that Sean Hannity—a racist, serial liar, and FOX’s strongest, most consistent purveyor of anti-Obama misinformation—is a “fair and balanced” authority on Obama? Because Hannity is on FOX, and Stephanopoulos thinks FOX is a news organization. “Fair and Balanced” is right there in their slogan. And because more high profile democrats don’t identify FOX for what it is, FOX is allowed to retain its appearance of legitimacy, which is all they want. They don’t want to be a news organization — they simply want to create the appearance that they are a news organization to provide cover for their propaganda. And, sadly, Obama was a willing participant in furthering that appearance.

The Fox News Sunday interview is over. And Obama didn't take on Fox at all in any meaningful sense.

On Friday, a senior Obama adviser responded to criticism of his decision to go on Fox with a bunch of tough talk, saying that Obama knew full well that Fox has been at the forefront of spreading "the most specious of rumors" (i.e., lies) about Obama and vowing that he would "take Fox on."

Well, it didn't happen. Obama definitely pushed back hard on some of Chris Wallace's questions, but at no point did he draw attention to Fox's spreading of lies about him or critique the network in a general sense.

Obama had a perfect opening to do this, too. Wallace pressed him repeatedly about Jeremiah Wright and the bogus "flag pin" nonsense -- a perfect set-up for Obama to point out that Fox had obsessed about both these issues to an obscene degree and that Fox had been at the forefront of spreading the Obama-is-a-Muslim lies.

To be clear, Obama wasn't obliged to go after Fox. But a senior adviser said Obama would, as a way of quieting criticism of him. And he didn't.

Yes, you read that right — that's really me, DJK (aka Jonathan Kim) on MSNBC's Verdict with Dan Abrams! It's my first television appearance, and I have to tell you that it was a very strange experience. But more on that later.

The topic of discussion was whether it was a good idea for Barack Obama to give in to Chris Wallace and his Obama clock and appear on FOX News Sunday on April 27. As you can see, I think I was probably the most adamant about the fact that Obama really has little to gain from "addressing the FOX audience" since FOX will dissect every possible aspect of the interview to extract every possible microgram of negativity conceivable. And FOX is perfectly willing to lie to do it. And Abrams pointed out, Obama is legitimizing FOX as a news source, which is exactly what allowed FOX to gain the influence it has — by maintaining the appearance of a news network when they are really a republican propaganda machine.

The best way for Obama to turn his bad decision into a positive is if he goes after FOX and shows democrats and the world that he is, in fact, "in touch" with what democrats and most of the world knows — that FOX is a republican propaganda machine. He'll earn more respect of his base and show that he understands the role that FOX plays in legitimizing republican talking points. He'll show that he knows how the system works.

And if there's any fear that he might lose votes by alienating FOX voters, remember this — in the 2004 election, 88% of FOX viewers voted for George W. Bush while only 7% voted for John Kerry. Even white evangelicals, gun owners, Iraq war supporters, and conservatives didn't produce margins like that.