THE KIND OF ‘QUESTION’ YOU’LL ONLY HEAR ON FOX NEWS SUNDAY…. Fox News’ Chris Wallace featured guest this morning was Fox News’ Glenn Beck — there’s something wrong with this incestuous picture — and the interview eventually covered the activist/rodeo-clown/snake-oil salesman’s presidential ambitions.
Wallace brought up the subject, noting “blog traffic” about a “Beck-Palin” ticket. Beck dismissed it out of hand, saying “Not a chance…. I have no desire to be president of the United States, zero desire. I don’t think that I would be electable and there are far too many people who are far smarter than me to be president.”
But Wallace didn’t drop the subject:
“When you’ve got hundreds of thousands of people showing up to see you, Glenn, that’s something, that’s worth something… that’s people putting their trust in you.”
Yes, the host of a Sunday morning public-affairs show, someone with decades of experience in American journalism, seemed to be urging a deranged media personality to consider a national campaign.
Putting aside the dubious nature of the “hundreds of thousands” claim, I thought it was Chris Wallace’s job to help explore whether people should “put their trust” in someone like Glenn Beck. Somehow, “Fox News Sunday” didn’t get to that one.
When the lines are blurred, if not eliminated altogether, between activism, journalism, celebrity, and commercialism, standards cease to exist.
