Hence my unhappy surprise when Edwards, who has an attractively comprehensive social policy and strong oratorical skills, was the first to pull out of the scheduled August debate moderated by Fox News. What is this morbid obsession that liberals have with Fox? It's as if Democrats, pampered and spoiled by so many decades of the mainstream media trumpeting the liberal agenda, are so shaky in their convictions that they cannot risk an encounter with opposing views. Democrats have ABC, NBC, CBS, CNN, the New York Times, Newsweek, Time and 98 percent of American humanities professors to do their bidding. But no, that's not enough -- every spark of dissent has to be extinguished with buckets of bile.What crap. I was happy when Salon brought on Glenn Greenwald, who is one of my favorite bloggers, but for the life of me I can't figure out why they resurrected the out of touch Paglia.
But Fox is certainly disingenuous with its absurd "fair and balanced" motto. Oh, come on, give it up! Why can't Fox honestly admit its conservative agenda, as do major radio hosts like Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity, and simply argue that it represents a culturally necessary antidote to the omnipresent liberal line? Yet for Democratic presidential candidates, who will be assessed by voters for their ability to stand up to China, North Korea or al-Qaida, to run squealing from a Fox moderator as if he or she were a boogeyman with blood-dripping fangs makes the whole pack of them look like simpering wusses. Dennis Kucinich was quite right to express his scorn and offer to debate anyone anywhere and under any sponsorship. Nice job of skewering the sacred cow!
Fox TV in my experience tends anyhow more toward the tabloid, a traditionally populist style, which is why Fox was so reliable a destination in the days following Anna Nicole Smith's shocking death. And when any scandal breaks, I head straight for Greta Van Susteren -- how comforted one is that the agile, articulate Greta, with her keen legal mind and rugged, strong-jawed persistence, will be on the scene to unearth every lie!
Here's a reminder why Dems wouldn't want to appear on a Fox "News" sponsored debate:
