Well, Pres. Obama is telling the truth. That’s the situation – Limbaugh and Beck have a huge audience and call him a socialist and misinform about his policies and on and on, every day over the airwaves.

As for saying Obama either listens to their programs regularly, or has no idea about their content, I can’t imagine either one of those are true. You don’t need to listen regularly to know about their content – sites such as, uh.. Mediaite and similar can tell you so, with audio and video to back it up. And that IS the content of their broadcasts – bashing Obama and Democrats incessantly, because it brings good ratings, because that’s what their audiences want to hear. This isn’t complicated.

Yes, Bush called Dan Rather out for the blatant lies he spewed, oh wait a minute he didn’t. It must of been when Keefy called him a facist, no that didn’t happen either. LSDNBC makes a living bashing Republicans, could it be that’s what their 2-3 viewers want to hear?
That pesky 1st Amendment gets in the way all the time…….you may not agree but…….

The President was asked about talk radio. Everyone knows Limbaugh and Beck are synonymous with this Medium. So he did not specifically call out anyone that was not already placed on the table by the interviewer.
I see no problem here…

Just say – whatever you think will work – the “press” won’t check the factual content!

da-wdc says:
April 2, 2010 at 9:10 am

[As for saying Obama either listens to their programs regularly, or has no idea about their content, I can’t imagine either one of those are true. You don’t need to listen regularly to know about their content – sites such as, uh.. Mediaite and similar can tell you so, with audio and video to back it up.]

Anyone that actually watches Glenn Beck knows differently. A lot of the ‘information’ out there is slanted
or taken out of context. I won’t speak for Limbaugh’s show because I don’t listen to him. He isn’t to my
taste.

He was asked about being called a socialist and Nazi, he did call them out.specifically. Just doesn’t seem Presidential to name names. IMHO
Whether you agree or not the anti-Bush protests, Keefy, Maddow, certainly have their right to say what they want, where was the media then questioning the “vitriol”?

I think they’ve learned the lessons of the relentless nonsensical attacks on the Clinton Administration, and the role the MSM played in mainstreaming well funded partisan baseless attacks from the right; where the debunking took place long after the public had moved on and incorporated false smears into their data banks that formed their thinking.

As with the earlier widely criticized White House stiff-arming of Republican Fox News, calling them out as a front for a political party, the new media realities demand push-back against factually bereft partisan attacks from all sources before opponent’s fantasies become facts in the public’s mind.

Time will tell if the Presidential push-back legitimizes the right wing talkers or exposes their obvious fraud, premature prognostications notwithstanding.

Well, when 10,000 people in the media are cheerleading for you, and only a handful of commentators ever dare criticize your policies, then it makes sense to call out your critics by name. It takes Obama about five seconds to do it.

The real question is how Obama can pass such unpopular bills and create such destruction in the broader economy, and still get fawning, kid gloves treatment from CBS, CNN, NBC, ABC, the New York Times, the Washington Post, MSNBC, Newsweek, NPR, etc. etc.

@Fidoohki but I do watch Glenn Beck. Not every day. Sometimes. He attacks Obama and Democrats and liberal organizations incessantly and is writing some bizarro alternative history that blames progressives for everything that’s gone wrong in the past century-plus. And he’s not a historian and not painting an accurate picture of contemporary politics either. But that’s what he does for the majority of the time, with those chalkboards and diagrams. I’ve seen it myself. Obama isn’t wrong here.

Like most liberals, Obama only believes in free speech when he agrees with you.

This is so ridiculous. Instead of getting our knickers in a twist over words, how about we look at what they actually mean? Obama IS a socialist. Everyone in Europe knows it, and acknowledge that’s WHY they like him! If we keep playing games with words instead of looking at what they mean, we’ll never have a fair and open debate about whether or not it’s what we want. Call it like it is.

Obama IS a socialist? Huh. Thanks for making it so clear.

Obama is more thin-skinned. Clinton took a good deal of heat. Bush took an enormous amount of heat. MSNBC practically ran a nightly crusade against Bush. Neither one found it necessary to call out anyone by name.

Hey Stants:
Thanks for calling it like it is. The biggest elephant in the room (America and the world) is that Obama is a good old boy that just wants to do the right thing for all those poor disadvantaged people that republicans and the free market seem to “create” just by the virtue of existing.
Fact is, he IS a marxist/socialist/communist/fascist seeking to turn this great country into a totalitarian state controlled prison.
Anyone who doesn’t acknowledge this is true is simply lying to themselves.

A president with a health care plan similar to Mitt Romney’s, who proposes more offshore drilling, who angers the left with his war policies, who has done nothing to curb gun rights, is somehow a Marxist/Communist/Fascist all at once? He must be quite a multi-tasker. I don’t think too many people in history qualify as Marxist, Communist, Fascist and Socialist. A real trailblazer.

I don’t like to see him call people out though. It seems beneath the office. It was a mistake when the Bush WH did it and it’s a mistake for Obama too. There are ways to address hostility without singling people out. People will decide for themselves what they make of Beck and Limbaugh’s rhetoric and ideas without the president trying to make up their minds for them.

Cappi: That’s why the Democrats are going to be gone after 2012. Thank God for that. At least the country has a chance to get back to normal with Obama out of the government. Anyone who wants to live in a socialist country or communist country should go live elsewhere. If you don’t like it here, leave! We’ll help you pack

“If you don’t like it here, leave!”

Wait, who is that addressed to? The people who don’t like Obama?

There’s nothing inherently wrong with the President “entering the fray,” but it needs to be done the right way.

Bush never entered the fray. As a result, an inaccurate alternative narrative was able to take hold. For example, think back to that Code Pink attempted “citizen’s arrest” (a.k.a., “kidnapping”) of Karl Rove the other day. The idiot shouted at Rove that he had “outted a CIA agent.” Every thinking person knows that’s not true. Richard Armitage did it (even he has publicly admitted that he did it!) and he wasn’t prosecuted for it because it wasn’t illegal. Yet, some on the Left will repeat that falsehood as fact without rebuke.

On the other extreme, Obama enters the fray, lobs a few harsh words at his opponents, and then tries to sneak back above the fray. The worst example of this was the health care summit where he personally spoke longer than all of the Republicans combined. Yet, despite that abuse of the principle of simple parity, he looked exceedingly testy whenever he was challenged. (If looks could kill, Obama would have murdered Paul Ryan that day.) Even David Gergen, Mr. CNN Conventional Thinking, admitted that the Republicans soundly beat Obama that day, even thought the President started out with so many advantages.

The way to do it correctly is, believe it or not, the Bill Clinton model. I think one of the best moments of the Clinton presidency was when Al Gore debated NAFTA with Ross Perot on Larry King. That was an extremely high risk move, but it worked because they were on an equal footing and Gore beat Perot, soundly, on the merits. That effectively killed Perot (although he did run in 1996 and denied Clinton a popular vote majority) and it won the NAFTA debate. That is an acute example of what I mean, but I do believe that Clinton, through his surrogates, employed that strategy well and repeatedly.

So, I think the rule is if you enter the fray, do it fairly and win.

The Bush WH did enter the fray. They called out certain media outlets on numerous occasions.

“What reason does the leader of the free world feel it is appropriate to personally call out radio and TV hosts, even if they are, perhaps, some of the most powerful media figures in the country?”

Really, Steve? These two are perhaps most reponsible for the misinformation that has poisoned the health care debate. These two are probably the reason this whole fight was tough. The rightists on this site pretty much worship these two. These two spend the overwhelming majority of their shows attacking Obama, calling him racist, socialist, Marxist, Communist, Fascist, Stalinist, whatever-ist. And I’d be willing to bet that a right-winger (or two, or four, or ten) will respond to my posting here saying that Obama IS all of those things and perhaps more. We got Glenn and Rush to thank for that. There are others who do that in the media, but those two are the most prolific and loud. What’s not troublesome about Glenn Beck calling Obama a racist with a “deep-seated hatred for white people and the white culture”? What’s not troublesome about Glenn Beck pouring fake gas on a guy and pretending to light him on fire saying that this is what Obama is doing to the American people? What’s not troublesome about Rush comparing Democrats to Nazis and Obama to Hitler? I listen to these guy’s shows. I know what they say and it disgusts me and it most certainly is troublesome.

“But by this particular sitting President using Beck and Limbaugh’s names, it indicates one of two things – he either, at least occasionally, tunes into their TV or radio shows (a surprising, but interesting prospect) or he has no idea, ultimately, what he’s talking about regarding the content of these programs”

Really, Steve? Wouldn’t you think that as prolific and loud as Beck and Limbaugh are that word would get around. Obama does read the newspaper, and Glenn and Rush do appear in columns every now and then. Presidents have media people who scan the news and other media. These are two guys who have derailed the debate and spread so much misinformation that, yeah, the President is gonna wanna know where this stuff is coming from. Obama’s only crime is not fighting back and letting them shape the debate.

Why is this a big deal? Do you think Obama is going to try to strip them of their licenses and try to imprison them? They can say the most outrageous things about him, but he can’t even mention their names and call their actions troublesome? That’s tame compared to what I’d call it.

One thing that annoyed me about Bush is that he let people walk all over him. He never called out people when they called him fascist. I’m not a big fan of Bush, but he was no fascist.

Oh man…I’m sorry I missed this one when it came out.

To be transparent right up front, I’m not a fan of Obama. Still, from a pragmatic perspective, Obama is cashing in plenty of political chips when he directly addresses the idiot pundits who spend every waking second waiting for any Democratic leader to utter the perfect soundbyte.

Why worry about it if I don’t like Obama? Because it diminishes both his position and the level of political discourse in this country. The President (and honestly, Democrats in general) would get farther remaining more stoic and addressing *legitimate* ideological opposition from the center and the party core instead of wallowing in the muck with the FoxNEWS/ AM Radio crew.

What he doesn’t understand is that people who take Limbaugh and Beck as Gospel are as lost to any kind of negotiation as those who take Olbermann and Schultz as Gospel. Addressing the idiot fringe at any political extreme nets absolutely no gain.

Excellent article, Steve. (And congrats on the Newsbusters and Media Matters buzz. :P)

my brain is washed with news, taken completely out of context. did beck or limbaugh really call obama a nazi?

At the 4:33 mark in the Colbert embed, he clips an ABC interview in which David Frum says that the Republican Party works for Fox News. Technically, Limbaugh isn’t Fox and Fox is only part of Beck’s platform, but the implication from both Frum and the President is that conservative media has become the “opposition party” to the current administration.

I’m sure Obama is briefed on both leaders and he may be given segments to illustrate some of the briefings, but he ran as sort of a normal guy and to me, anything that shows the President lives in the same world as the rest of us is a good thing. Be it, him picking out his brackets, commenting on Kanye or talking about the extremes of these two personalities, who are leaders of an opposing political movement.

I listen to Mr. Limbaugh and watch Mr. Beck with some regularity. While Mssrs. Beck and Limbaugh often draw parallels Mr. 0bama’s policies and appointees with socialists and communists from history, neither have said Mr. 0bama is a communist or a socialist. If they had done so, I believe Mr. 0bama would have had the FCC bring charges against them or have sued them for libel.

The comments about the vitriol that former presidents Bush and Clinton were subjected to and that neither lowered themselves to enter in the frey is pretty much the way I remember it, too. It therefore seems that Mr. 0bama is extraordinarily thin skinned.

ChickaBOOMer: Obama’s Discordant One Note Samba
http://chickaboomer.blogspot.com/2010/04/obamas-discordant-one-note-samba.html

Hey “Writer,” you are either a blatant LIAR or you have a selective and/or bad memory.

The Bush admin DID feel the need to call out anchors by name.

Here is a letter from the Bush White House’s Ed Gilepsie to the head of NBC that was released in a press releaes to the public:

“I’m sure you don’t want people to conclude that there is really no distinction between the “news” as reported on NBC and the “opinion” as reported on MSNBC, despite the increasing blurring of those lines. I welcome your response to this letter, and hope it is one that reassures your broadcast network’s viewers that blatantly partisan talk show hosts like Christopher Matthews and Keith Olbermann at MSNBC don’t hold editorial sway over the NBC network news division.”

Well I guess that cinches it. Counsel for Bush writes a letter about LSDNBC editing =President calling out citizens on national TV, yep got it. ANd by the way here’s the entire letter.

http://www.mediabistro.com/tvnewser/nbc/wh_vs_nbc_nbc_news_response_85170.asp

shootfromthe mouth, a letter which happened to be made public is hardly the same as the public criticism that Obama has been directing at Fox and others. As hateful as Olbermann is, Bush could have been calling him out all the time, but he didn’t.

I didn’t need Limbaugh or Beck to tell me Obama is a socialist! I figured it out all by myself. Imagine that!

Geez, these blatantly tendentious threads are making Mediaite seem more & more like Huffington Post WANNA-BE’S! If we wanted Democratic cheerleading we could just turn on msnbc, or read the NY Times & Associated Press!!

I heard that, to throw a bone to his atheist supporters, the President will be replacing the “In God We Trust” motto on our currency with something more representative of the Administration: “WELCOME TO VENEZUELA!”

“But by this particular sitting President using Beck and Limbaugh’s names, it indicates one of two things – he either, at least occasionally, tunes into their TV or radio shows (a surprising, but interesting prospect) or he has no idea, ultimately, what he’s talking about regarding the content of these programs. To ardent supporters of Pres. Obama – which one is better?”

The answer is three: it indicates that he’s an incredibly insecure guy. He’s the president of the United States and he’s calling out two radio hosts for criticizing him and asking him questions. It’s like Obama is some high school girl worried that everyone is calling him fat behind his back. It’s pathetic.

And we wonder why this guy is such an awful leader. He just barely passed Obamacare with progressive majorities in both houses and the international community considers us a buncha pussies.

@stoogedudes: “What’s not troublesome about Glenn Beck pouring fake gas on a guy and pretending to light him on fire saying that this is what Obama is doing to the American people?”

That “guy” was sequential hermaphrodite Bill Schulz and the bit was hilarious, you humorless, blowhard pussy.

“America will never be destroyed from the outside. If we falter and lose our freedoms, it will be because we destroyed ourselves” – Abraham Lincoln

Opposition to Obama is mainly based on the twin pillars of ignorance and racist hate. Beck and Limbaugh have been spewing both for a long time and now while like a typical Conservative crybabies when someone calls them out on it.
We all know that if a black Democrat had followed exactly the same policies and screwed up the country as badly as Bush did these same two would be calling for his impeachment. But save your cyber ink folks, these reality denying, fearful, flag waving, hate mongers who applaud them while invoking Divine approval are impervious to reason or logic. The only thing their rants here prove is that evolution not only works but sometimes works in reverse!

Opposition to obama is based on the fact that he is a socialist who is trying to transform this country from a Capitalistic to Socialistic government and we are not going to stand for it.
It is very strange that the only ones using the race card are the liberal democrats, it is not the Republicans and Tea Party advocates. We, the conservatives are defending our points of view with facts and statistics and the liberal left wing socialists, nee the democratic party, are having fits and becoming apoplectic in their berserk attempts to refute those facts and statistics. obama is daily seen for what he is and more and more true Americans are flocking to the conservative beliefs. We did not spend 200+ years building a country so some community organizer could come in with his little band of time-worn, passe, ’60′s holdovers and change it.
Hide and watch, liberals. You have six more months of power before we erase you.

If this “president” is stupid enough to take on Rush Limbaugh AND Glenn Beck, he is going to make a huge fool of himself. These guys will relish taking him apart at the seams. And I say GO FOR IT! It’s time for Barry Obummer to stop whining and campaigning and try to transition into being a PRESIDENT to ALL the people, instead of his selected few far left wing lunatics, Union thugs, ACORN nuts, and other assorted Mao-loving screwballs within his circle of friends. Counting the days until 2012!