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Scared Silly

I guess Obama and his fellow nazi's are scared to death of what he
might say.

Hey... its only the First Amendment.. right?  Right?




Democratic consultant says he got a warning from White House after
appearing on Fox News
'We better not see you on again,' the strategist says he was told by a
White House official. Obama aides have taken an aggressive stance
against the network and may be seeking to isolate it.
By Peter Nicholas

Los Angeles Times Staff Writer

November 6, 2009 | 8:59 a.m.
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Reporting from Washington - At least one Democratic political
strategist has gotten a blunt warning from the White House to never
appear on Fox News Channel, an outlet that presidential aides have
depicted as not so much a news-gathering operation as a political
opponent bent on damaging the Obama administration.

Political consultants are a staple of cable television talk shows,
analyzing current events based on their own experiences working on
campaigns or in government.

One Democratic strategist said that shortly after an appearance on
Fox, he got a phone call from a White House official telling him not
to be a guest on the show again. The call had an intimidating tone, he
said.

The message was, " 'We better not see you on again,' " said the
strategist, who spoke on condition of anonymity so as not to run afoul
of the White House. An implicit suggestion, he said, was that "clients
might stop using you if you continue."

In urging Democratic consultants to spurn Fox, White House officials
might be trying to isolate the network and make it appear more
partisan.

A boycott by Democratic strategists could also help drive the White
House narrative that Fox is a fundamentally different creature than
the other TV news networks. For their part, White House officials
appear on Fox News -- but sporadically and with "eyes wide open," as
one aide put it.

David Plouffe, the president's campaign manager and author of a new
campaign book, "The Audacity to Win," was scheduled to appear on Fox's
"On the Record" with Greta Van Susteren Thursday night as he promotes
his book. His appearance, preempted by the breaking news of the
shootings at Ft. Hood, Texas, has been rescheduled for Monday.

White House Communications Director Anita Dunn said Thursday night
that she had checked with colleagues who "deal with TV issues" and
they had not told people to avoid Fox. On the contrary, they had urged
people to appear on the network, Dunn wrote in an e-mail.

But Patrick Caddell, a Fox News contributor and a former pollster for
President Carter, said he has spoken to Democratic consultants who
have been told by the White House to avoid appearances on Fox. He
declined to give their names.

Caddell said he had not gotten that message himself from the White
House. "They know better than to tell me anything like that," he said.

Caddell added: "I have heard that they've done that to others in not-
too-subtle ways. I find it appalling. When the White House gets in the
business of suppressing dissent and comment, particularly from its own
party, it hurts itself."

The White House has taken an aggressive stance toward Fox. When
President Obama appeared on five separate talk shows one Sunday in
September, he avoided Fox.

"It would be foolish for us to just treat it like it's CNN, ABC, NBC
and CBS," said a White House aide. "That doesn't make any sense. That
would be like saying we're going to do [interviews] with the
newsmagazines and we're going to do Time, Newsweek and the
[conservative] National Review."

The aide spoke on condition of anonymity in order to talk more openly
about the White House's thinking.

Last month, Dunn told CNN that Fox was, in effect, an "arm" of the
Republican Party. Dunn said in an appearance on the rival cable
network: "Let's not pretend they're a news network the way CNN is."

As the dust-up played out, Fox's senior vice president of news,
Michael Clemente, countered: "Surprisingly, the White House continues
to declare war on a news organization instead of focusing on the
critical issues that Americans are concerned about like jobs,
healthcare and two wars."

Fox's commentators have been sharply critical of the Obama
administration. After the president won the Nobel Peace Prize, Sean
Hannity, who has a prime-time show on Fox, said he got the award for
"trashing America."

The two sides seemed interested in easing tensions. On Oct. 28, White
House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs met privately with Clemente.

But White House aides haven't changed their underlying view of Fox.

Fox's audience is by far the largest of the cable networks, with an
average of more than 2.1 million viewers in prime-time this year. CNN
is second with 932,000 prime-time viewers.

Fox's viewership is not what worries the White House, though. More
troubling to White House aides is that other news organizations may
uncritically follow stories that Fox has showcased.

The White House aide said: "Where some of the falsehoods become
dangerous is when the rest of the media accepts them as fact and
reports on them, either out of a desire to tap into Fox's news
audience -- which you can understand, given where circulation and
viewership rates are -- or as some sort of knee-jerk fear of being
considered liberally biased, which is what conservatives have been
saying of the mainstream media for years."

The White House's pugnacious approach to the network leaves some
Democrats troubled.

Don Fowler, a former Democratic National Committee chairman, said in
an interview: "This approach is out of sync with my conception of what
the Obama administration stands for and what they're trying to do. I
think they'll think better of it and this will be a passing phase."

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