The Dreaded Question

The metaphorical diamond ring in the Obamedia compost heap, Jake Tapper dares to make "Beltway Bob"'s day:

Tapper: It’s escaped none of our notice that the White House has decided in the last few weeks to declare one of our sister organizations “not a news organization” and to tell the rest of us not to treat them like a news organization. Can you explain why it’s appropriate for the White House to decide that a news organization is not one –

(Crosstalk)

Gibbs: Jake, we render, we render an opinion based on some of their coverage and the fairness that, the fairness of that coverage.

Tapper: But that’s a pretty sweeping declaration that they are “not a news organization.” How are they any different from, say –

Gibbs: ABC -

Tapper: ABC. MSNBC. Univision. I mean how are they any different?

Well, aside from the fact that they practice OBJECTIVE JOURNALISM rather than obscenely obsequious propagandizing, nothing at all, really.

The more The One's anti-Fox vendetta goes on, the harder it gets to fathom a rational reason behind it.  It's propelling FNC's ratings into the stratosphere, and not so coincidentally the number of independent viewers bearing witness to the Democrats' abject contempt for them.  It makes them look petty and craven, on top of hardcore marks for their own Obamedia-fanned idolatrous hype in that they seem to have honestly believed that there wouldn't BE any opposition to "hopenchange" and now come across as whiny, no-skinned, and authoritarian in the thuggish undercurrent that such opposition should not, and will not, even be tolerated.

And, continuing the Nixon theme, it gives the ObamaHouse the decided appearance of....paranoia:

This seems so obviously correct that I feel embarrassed for not having figured it out sooner.

The rationale of the White House offensive against Fox News has been a topic of much puzzlement lately. Is this just the White House lashing out? Are they trying to rally the base?

But I think Mike Allen and Josh Gerstein nail the real explanation in their story today: The White House is working to prevent stories born on Fox from crossing over into more widely-viewed media. Most Americans still haven’t heard of Van Jones, for instance; and the strategy is now all about containment…

Sounds to me like precisely the formula to goose FNC's ratings to the point where they'll BECOME the "more widely-viewed media".  Besides which, it's not like the Obamedia isn't already carrying tanker trucks worth of water for Red Barry as it is.  Good grief, they made it their lives' mission to get him elected by deep-sixing his entire radical-infested, crypto-Marxist background, they've dutifully and lovingly regurgitated every ObamaHouse press release ("green shoots," the UN "Prostration Proclamation") like Moses coming off Sinai with the stone tablets, and they've blacked out every story that could remotely cause The One the slightest PR heartburn.  The salient follow-up question to Gibbs wouldn't have been, "What more do you want?" but "What can you possibly be afraid of?"  Sheesh, it's not as if anybody else in the ObamaHouse palm-frond corps seconded Tapper's stand.

So yes, it's fear that "the 'legitimate' media will only ignore these stories for so long before the lure of bigger, Foxier ratings finally proves too much," although I have to wonder why that lure would suddenly become irresistable at this late date.  But there's also the matter of the jackbooted attitude animating it:

“We’re doing what we think is important to make sure news is covered as fairly as possible,” a White House official told POLITICO, noting how the recent ACORN scandal story started because Fox covered it “breathlessly for weeks on end.”

“And then you had a couple days of breast-beating from the Washington Post and the New York Times about whether or not they were fast enough on the ACORN story,” the official said. “And it’s like: Wait a second, guys. Let’s make sure that we keep perspective on what are the most important stories, and what’s being driven by a network that has a perspective. Being able to make that point has been important.”…

“They’re not really a news station,” Axelrod told ABC’s This Week. “It’s not just their commentators, but a lot of their news programming if you watch, it’s really not news….The bigger thing is that other news organizations like yours ought not to treat them that way, and we’re not going to treat them that way. We’re going to appear on their shows. We’re going to participate, but understanding that they represent a point of view.”

“It’s not a news organization so much as it has a perspective,” Emanuel said on CNN’s State of the Union. “More importantly, is to not have the CNNs and the others in the world basically be led in following Fox, as if what they’re trying to do is a legitimate news organization.”

Substitute the phrase "pro-Obama propaganda" for the word "news" and you have the vaguely Godfather-esque party line to a T.  The not-exactly-mistakable implication being that if "the CNNs and the others" don't follow Axelrod's and Emanuel's orders, they'll be cut off from presidential access as well.  How that would resurrect False Messiah's "post-partisan unifier" image with the people at large, as opposed to festooning a permanent five-o'clock shadow to his grinning mein, is anybody's guess.  And again, it's not like ABF (anybody but Fox) has fallen out of line up to now.  As the wheels continue to fly off the Hopenchange Express with burgeoning rapidity, it's not as if the public isn't going to know it, no matter how much they try to contain the truth.  It's exactly the dynamic that has been the slow suicide of the "legacy" media for years.  Indeed, hamhanded "advice" like this could make their fears into self-fulfilling prophecies.  Reality will simply become too disconnected from the daily barfing of the shovel-fed party line for even "legitimate" news outlets to contain.

I still say the ObamaHouse would be better off just sending federal marshalls to shut down Fox, seize all its assets, and arrest all its employees.  That's not that far beyond what they're trying to do in this highly pussified fashion.  Why continue to make themselves look so pansy-assed?  Why not reveal themselves as the fascists they are, and give the "legitimate news organizations" the footage of Roger Ailes being frog-marched in handcuffs to the paddy-wagon?  Think of the spin!  "Last outpost of darkness brought to justice by the Bringer Of Light".  The Obamedia headline practically writes itself.

Also lends some context to Axelrod's "cordial conversation" with Ailes just a fortnight ago.  Obviously it was meant to be Fox's "come to Barack" moment.  Guess we know what Roger's answer was.