QUOTE OF THE DAY…. ABC News’ “This Week” invited Fox News contributor Laura Ingraham onto the show yesterday, probably with the expectation that she’d say silly, right-wing things. To that extent, she didn’t disappoint.
Ingraham argued that “a lot of people are saying” that the Obama administration is more “impassioned about” Fox News than “other threats to the United States, whether economic threats or real threats, Islamic jihadists.”
Ingraham didn’t say who these “people” are who are “saying” this, but apparently, there are “a lot” of them. (When right-wing media personalities appear on mainstream outlets, they do this quite a bit — they don’t want to say crazy things on their own behalf, so they attribute nonsensical ideas to vague and undefined groups of “a lot of people,” who do not appear to exist in reality.)
Even Stephanopoulos seemed incredulous about the observation, saying, “You don’t believe that they’ve been softer on Islamic jihadists than they have on Fox News. Come on.” Ingraham, dropping the pretense of passing along the thoughts of “a lot of people,” insisted she hasn’t seen White House officials “talk about other real threats in the same coordinated and sophisticated way as they’re going after” Fox News.
John Podesta responded that Ingraham might be right “when the drones start flying over Fox News.”
The entire “debate,” such that it is, has become annoyingly silly. A few White House officials have said that Fox News is partisan outlet that shouldn’t be considered a legitimate source of independent journalism. The assessment happens to demonstrably true. On the other hand, the administration has killed Saleh Ali Saleh Nabhan and Baitullah Mehsud, while taking suspected terrorists Najibullah Zazi, Talib Islam, and Hosam Maher Husein Smadi into custody before they could launched potential attacks.
To compare the White House’s interest in Fox News vs. national security threats is insane. There’s no equivalence between a few instances of mild-but-accurate criticism of a propaganda outlet and massive counter-terrorism operations around the world.
Of course, as is often the case, the problem is not just that Laura Ingraham believes strange things and makes ridiculous observations; the problem is that ABC News thought she deserved a national outlet to share these strange beliefs with ABC’s television audience.
