Fox News is apparently so categorically anti-Obama that its hosts found a way to rip on the president for aiming to cure cancer. In a clip from the Fox program, Fox and Friends, hosts wondered whether one of President Obama’s speech writers for Tuesday night’s State of the Union had ripped the idea off from an episode of the West Wing in which Rob Lowe’s character says, “we will cure cancer by the end of this decade.”…. “If you’re going to rip off somebody, rip off Aaron Sorkin,” host Clayton Morris said, referring to the West Wing’s writer, in a clip posted by Media Matters. The episode aired in the early 2000s, according to the Fox News hosts.
For seven years, I’ve listened to pundits and politicians on the Far Right disparage the President for everything- from his policies to his unrestrained audacity in believing he has the right to exist and breathe the same air Real Americans © inhale. Not only did Republicans vow on Day One of the Obama Presidency to obstruct the President at every turn and deny him ANYTHING even faintly redolent of a victory, they’ve questioned (and often ridiculed) his every thought, word, and deed. If this President extolled the virtues of oxygen, Republicans would immediately commence holding their breath until they pass out. They’ve never had much in the way of alternatives to present, but they’ve consistently been more than willing to poke fun at and disrespect the President for anything and everything. The same people who maligned those who opposed George W. Bush and his policies as traitors and lacking in patriotism and love of country see nothing wrong with ridiculing The Black Guy in the White House © for the high crime and misdemeanor of being.
How thoroughly ridiculous and utterly disrespectful has the Far Right become? How love have they sunk? How about making fun of the President for wanting to cure cancer? I’ll grant anyone their right to their point of view; such is the freedom of speech we all cherish. As my mother frequently drummed into my thick skull when I was but a wee lad, even if you don’t support the President or respect him as a person, one must recognize the importance of and respect the office he or she holds. The President represents the United States of America- ALL OF US. When you belittle the person holding the office, you disrespect all Americans. By that yardstick, Conservatives must have some serious problems with self-loathing.
‘Course, Fox News Channel, being the (not so very) “Fair and Balanced” purveyor of news and opinion it claims to be, long ago recognized that there’s a large segment of the American Sheeple willing to believe the absolute worst about The Black Guy in the White ©. FNC talking heads could discourse at some considerable length about the President and First Lady having orgiastic bacchanals in the Lincoln Bedroom…and many, if not most, viewers would accept that as Gospel. It’s pitiful and pathetic…but it’s the truth, and FNC has built its brand on ridiculing and casting all manner of ridiculous unsupported accusations at The Black Guy in the White ©.
How far gone, how devoid of humanity, how irredeemably partisan do you have to be to ridicule a President for wanting to cure cancer? A quick look at Clayton Morris and the rest of the FNC Conservabots will provide a quick answer. When you begin trying to determine why the quality of our public discourse has degraded so abysmally, you should start with Fox News Channel, the model most of the rest of the Right-wing media has chosen to follow.
Welcome to what Hillary Clinton once called “The politics of personal destruction”…a war being waged in the Right-wing media and led by Fox News Channel. Truth and objective journalism became the first casualty- on January 20, 2009.
America deserves better; it’s just that too many are far too willing to believe what- and hate whom- they’re told to. If the American Sheeple can’t be bothered think for themselves, how can they ever expect anything better?
