Chris Wallace Latest Fox Newser To Compare Obama To Chicago Gangster

Someone at Fox News must really like The Untouchables. On Fox News Sunday, Chris Wallace followed in Glenn Beck’s footsteps of last week, playing a clip from the gangster film to underscore the Obama administration’s “Chicago way of doing business” in retaliating against Fox for its unfavorable coverage.
One of the panelists on the show was former Bush White House Press Secretary Dana Perino, who jumped on the Chicago gangster meme and took the opportunity to make her former boss look good by comparison (transcript via Think Progress):
Wallace: Dana, the latest chapter in the Chicago way was that the administration made an effort this week to use the White House pool — all the five major networks — to try to exclude Fox from interviewing ‘pay czar’ Ken Feinberg.
The White House now says, Well, it was just an honest mistake. Question: When you were in the Bush White House, did you ever try to do that against CBS when they were trashing President Bush? Or do you know of any White House that’s ever tried to use the White House pool to eliminate somebody, to kick somebody out?
Perino: Certainly not with the pool. I mean, there are ways to exclude doing interviews with other networks, such as what happened to Fox News about four weeks ago when President Obama did all the other networks and decided not to do this one.
But you never use the pool. It’s a huge no-no. And I was glad to see that the reporters in the room decided to stand up and have solidarity, because they could be next in this Chicago-style way.
Perino later compared Obama’s Fox News freeze to Hugo Chavez shuttering Venezuelan TV stations: “If you look at some of the coverage of what mainstream media covers when somebody like a Hugo Chavez shuts down television stations, he calls them illegitimate.”
The difference between Beck’s Chicago gangster references and Wallace’s underscored the division between the opinion side of Fox and the news side, shaky as some would accuse it of being. On Friday, a baseball bat-wielding Beck ran a clip of the infamous scene from The Untouchables in which Al Capone caps off a speech on teamwork by repeatedly striking one of his lieutenants with a bat. On Fox News Sunday, Wallace played a much milder clip featuring Sean Connery’s Irish cop, and prefaced it with “what some” — Kim Strassel? — “are calling the Chicago way of doing business.”
Still, the segment provided further evidence — not that we were short on it — that as long as the Obama administration slights or seems to be slighting Fox, the network will take every opportunity to push back as it covers the story of its own ill treatment.
Here’s the clip from Fox News Sunday:
And here’s Beck on Friday:
(h/t Raw Story)
12 comments
Fox News Sunday’s roundtable is so incredibly slanted every single week it’s pathetic. It’s always two conservatives (+ Wallace) with two moderates. Need any evidence of what the White House means with Fox News’s slant on supposed “news” shows? This is your evidence.
Is there any doubt Roger Ailes is LOVING every minute of this? Here’s an idea for a story. Put together some stats comparing Fox News ratings the week before Anita Dunn popped off on Reliable Sources and then show us the ratings since.
The Untouchables comparison is admittedly over the top, but it’s such a great damn line from Connery, I’m not sure I could have resisted either.
I find the difference between these two episodes razor thin indeed, if not demonstrative of Democrats contention Fox is much closer to a determined political adversary than any contrived semblance to a real news purveyor.
What someone will need to explain to me, leaving aside irrelevant viewership ratings, is why should the White House do any differently? Because Fox will say mean things about them? Because Fox will sponsor and financially support opposition protests? Because they will ridicule and minimize ostensible Democrats on their opinion and news shows?
Oh, wait.
When Obama declared that he’d ‘Hit back twice as hard,’ he probably didn’t expect Fox to do so too. Fox can get away with this escalation while the administration risks losing voters in 2010 the more ’severe’ they become.
I love it and was laughing when Chris Wallace said it “the Chicago way” and then laughed. FNC is having a blast fighting back against the WH…and rightly so.
Obama to his own town hallers: “Get in their faces”.
Not to mention the snith site, etc., etc., etc.
Laura Ingraham and George Will had fun with the whole WH war on fox yesterday as well.
One network gives the opposing view and Team Obama has a crying fit.
Chris is right on this one and here is why:
If You Are Known by the Company You Keep, What do Obama’s Associates Say About Him?
October 26, 2009 by Bob Livingston
In the Aesop’s Fable, The Ass and His Purchaser, a man looking to buy a donkey wanted to test the animal before completing the purchase. So he put the donkey in his field with the other donkeys to see what would happen.
The donkey immediately strayed from the majority of the herd and cozied up to the laziest donkey of all.
Seeing that, the man led the donkey back to his owner. When the owner asked how he could judge the donkey’s character so quickly the man explained, “I didn’t even need to see how he worked. I knew he would be just like the one he chose to be his friend.”
A person is known by the company he keeps.
Fables are popular because they tell the story of the way things in life really work. In business, when someone takes over a department or company, that person promotes those he or she likes to positions of authority. The new manager seeks out those who have a philosophy, work ethic and disposition similar to his.
One would expect a president to do the same thing. After all, a president is elected—supposedly—based on the vision, ideas and proposals he championed during the campaign. It would then make sense that he would put in place those who supported his vision and would therefore be enthusiastic in working to achieve it.
So who are President Barack Obama’s friends, and who has he put in charge of the effort to enact his policies? And what do the friends he has chosen and the people he has put in position of authority in his administration say about him?
Following, in alphabetical order, is a list of some of Obama’s friends, advisors and people charged with enacting his policies:
William Ayers—Now a professor of education at the University of Illinois at Chicago, Ayers spent 10 years as a fugitive in the 1970s when he was part of the domestic terrorist organization known as the Weather Underground. In the early 1970s the Weather Underground was responsible for bombing the U.S. State Department in Washington, D.C., and setting a bomb that didn’t go off at a military induction center in Oakland, Calif. The group also murdered two policemen and a Brink’s truck driver in a botched armored car robbery, according to the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s (FBI) website. Ayers surrendered to face charges in the 1980s, but the charges were dropped because of improper surveillance. Coincidentally, on Sept. 11, 2001, Ayers was being interviewed about a book he had written and he told the interviewer he didn’t think the Weather Underground had done enough. Ayers and Obama first crossed paths in Chicago in the 1990s and served together on the board of the not-for-profit Chicago Annenberg Challenge, a boondoggle to spend tens of millions of dollars for their pet “education” projects. Obama downplayed his friendship with Ayers as casual, but evidence indicates their relationship was much more. Many now believe that Ayers penned Obama’s “autobiography” Dreams from My Father.
Carol Browner—Obama’s Director of the White House Office of Energy and Climate Change Policy, Browner is an avowed socialist. She served as one of 14 leaders of Socialist International’s Commission for a Sustainable World Society, which calls for global governance and says rich countries must shrink their economies to address climate change, according to an article in The Washington Times. The group supports socialism and has been harshly critical of U.S. policies. She is also a supporter of smart growth policies, as we have described previously. Browner also served on the board of Al Gore’s Alliance for Climate Protection, though her name was scrubbed from the site after Obama tapped her for the director’s position. Not surprisingly, Obama’s transition team told The Times Browner’s membership in a socialist organization was not a problem.
Frank Marshall Davis—You won’t find Davis’ name on an organizational chart of White House staff, but he was instrumental in forming the political philosophy of Barack Hussein Obama. Called “Uncle Frank” in Dreams from My Father, Davis was a member of the Communist Party USA (CPUSA), according to a 1951 report of the Commission on Subversive Activities to the Legislature of the Territory of Hawaii. Obama has admitted to spending time with Uncle Frank—who he cryptically describes as being a person of some modest notoriety at one time—and listening to his poetry and getting career path advice. Davis may also have been a pedophile. Writing under the pseudonym Bob Greene, Davis wrote a debased pornographic novel entitled, Sex Rebel: Black (Memiors of a Gash Gourmet), in which he describes group sex encounters and sex he and his wife had with a 13-year-old girl named Anne. Davis died in 1987.
Anita Dunn—As White House Communications advisor, Dunn has been seen a lot lately as the face of the Obama administration’s strategy to try and discredit Fox News. She is described on Politico.com as a veteran Democratic strategist and top advisor on Obama’s presidential campaign. As the war between the Obama White House (see more under Rham Emmanual) and Fox has escalated, videotape has surfaced showing Dunn gloating over how the campaign “controlled” the media. Another videotape surfaced showing Dunn speaking at a June high school graduation ceremony where she praised Marxist/Communist Chinese Premiere Mao Zedong as one of her favorite philosophers and one of the two people she turns to most. It’s difficult to understand how Mao had time to philosophize as he was busy killing somewhere between 50 million and 70 million of his country’s citizens during his 27-year reign of terror.
Ezekiel Emanuel—The president’s Special Advisor for Health Policy, Ezekiel is brother to White House Chief of Staff Rham Emanuel. Ezekiel is the source of Sarah Palin’s death panel idea. This Emanuel has written that he believes many healthcare treatments should be denied to those under 15 and over 65 to save money, the rationale being that only people between 15 and 65 are beneficial to society.
Rahm Emanuel—Obama’s White House Chief of Staff, Emanuel is a thug Chicago politician who once sent a two-and-a-half foot long, dead and decomposing fish to lobbyist Allen Secrest to express his displeasure. He’s known for his full-time use of gutter language and once told then-British Prime Minister Tony Blair just before an appearance with Bill Clinton during the Monica Lewinsky scandal: “This is important. Don’t f**k it up.” He also coined the phrase, “You never want a serious crisis to go to waste.” He’s also behind the ridiculous policy of starting a fight with television news agency Fox News.
Chai Feldblum—Nominated by the president to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, Feldblum signed a radical 2006 manifesto which endorsed polygamous households and argued traditional marriage should not be privileged “above all others,” according to a report in Catholic News Agency. According to a statement from the White House, Feldblum has worked on advancing lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender rights…” She is co-director of Workplace Flexibility 2010, which she described at a UCLA symposium as a homosexual rights group that aimed to change the American workplace and revolutionize social mores, according to a report on the WorldnetDaily website.
Patrick Gaspard—White House Political Director, Gaspard was formerly a lobbyist for Service Employees International Union (SEIU), the organization that sent its thugs out to disrupt Tea Party protests and stir up trouble at town hall meetings in August. Prior to that, Gaspard worked as national field director for American Coming Together (ACT), a sub-group of the Association for Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN). ACT was fined $775,000 in civil penalties by the federal government for various voter fraud offenses. You can read more about ACORN here.
Eric Holder—The Attorney General of the United States is an anti-gun racist who earlier this year referred to the United States as “a nation of cowards” on race relations. He also has an interesting take on justice. He worked to convince President Clinton to pardon billionaire fugitive Mark Rich (convicted of fraud and racketeering), Weather Underground (where have we heard of that organization before?) terrorists Susan Rosenberg and Linda Evans, and he declined to prosecute New Black Panther brutes who stood over a Pennsylvania polling station with baseball bats intimidating voters. Oh yes, he also wants to bring Guantanamo Bay prisoners to the United States.
John Holdren—Obama’s Director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy is not only an abortion supporter, he is an abortion nut who believes that compulsory abortions could be sustained under the existing U.S. Constitution if a population crisis arose. He also supports mass sterilization of the U.S. population through lacing the country’s water supply with drugs. Holdren authored with two other people a book called Ecoscience promoting their loony ideas about population control and One World Government—or what they called a Planetary Regime—to regulate international trade, the food supply and determine the optimum population for the world.
Valerie Jarrett—The New York Times called Jarrett, Obama Senior Advisor and Assistant to the President for Public Engagement and Intergovernmental Affairs, the ultimate Obama insider. She has also been called the other half of Obama’s brain. She’s another one of those Chicago thug politicians who has gamed the system—including operating as a slum lord—for her own benefit. Her company, Habitat, Inc., managed the Grove Parc housing complex which was located in the district represented by State Senator Obama. As state senator, Obama coauthored a bill to give tax credits for developers which Jarrett used on the complex. As U.S. senator, Obama pressed for increased federal subsidies for like projects. Despite receiving government funds and tax credits, Grove Parc was ordered demolished because of its deplorable condition. She also served the administrations of Chicago mayors Harold Washington and Richard Daly, both scandal-plagued. Washington, by the way, was backed in his bid for mayor by Chicago’s Communist Party and the local branch of the Democratic Socialists of America. Called by the Washington Post a tutor to Obama and his wife Michelle, Jarrett is the step-daughter of Chicago journalist Vernon Jarrett. Vernon Jarrett was an associate of Frank Marshal Davis, Obama’s mentor, when Davis lived in Chicago prior to moving to Hawaii.
Kevin Jennings—This former school teacher and long-time gay rights activist was named Obama’s Safe Schools Czar. He has accused Baptists, the Boy Scouts and sports fans of anti-gay bias, and advocates a special high school for gay teens and gay-straight alliance clubs for every high school in America, according to a report in CNSNews.com. He believes that kindergartners should be taught to respect all sexual orientations while insisting that “ex-gay messages” and “Christian values” are misused to isolate or denigrate lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people and have no place in the nation’s public schools, CNSNews.com reported. Oh yeah, he also supports pedophilia. While Jennings was a teacher, a minor student told Jennings that he was having gay sex with an adult. Jennings covered it up. He also has praised Harry Hay, a defender of the North American Man-Boy Love Association (NAMBLA), which promotes legalization of sexual abuse of young boys by older men.
Van Jones—Once Obama’s White House Environmental Advisor, Jones was fired in the dead of night on a holiday weekend after a video surfaced in which he called Republicans a bodily orifice, and after a controversial document he signed was revealed. That document accused former President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney of either planning or knowing about ahead of time the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. In addition to being a 9/11 Truther, Jones is an avowed Communist. He was appointed to his position by Valerie Jarrett, who has been seen on video praising Jones and saying she and Obama had been watching Jones for a long time.
Mark Lloyd—FCC Diversity Czar, is also known as the man who wants to stifle free speech in America like Hugo Chavez does in Venezuela. He has been videotaped saying the Chavez revolution in Venezuela was almost lost because of the privately-owned media. Chavez, of course, is the Marxist dictator of Venezuela, personal friend to Communist dictator Fidel Castro of Cuba and Islamic terrorist dictator Mahmoud Ahmadenijad of Iran. In 2006, while at the liberal Center for American Progress, Lloyd wrote a book entitled, Prologue to a Farce: Communications and Democracy in America. In it he presents the idea that all private broadcasters should be charged licensing fees at a rate equal to their operating expenses and that money should go to the Public Broadcasting System (PBS). In a 2007 report entitled The Structural Imbalance of Political Talk Radio, Lloyd complains about the fact that people want to listen to Christian and conservative talk radio rather than liberal radio, and lists ways the Federal government can fix the “problem.” His solution would include caps on the number of local stations a corporation can own, ensure greater local accountability on radio licensing and require owners who fail to fulfill their obligations to pay a fee to support PBS.
Cecelia Munoz—Now White House Director of Intergovernmental Affairs, Munoz was previously Senior Vice President of The National Council of La Raza, the largest Hispanic lobbying organization in the country, which has called national anti-immigration groups “hate groups.” La Raza, which literally translates The Race, funds extremist groups and supports illegal immigration as a way of obtaining political power. The group advocates taking the Southwest U.S. for the purpose of creating a new Hispanic state.
Cass Sunstein—Recently confirmed by the U.S. Senate as Administrator of the White House Office of Administration and Regulatory Affairs, Sunstein is a Harvard Law School professor and dingbat who has—in writings and speeches—called for a ban on all hunting and claims that animals should be represented by lawyers in animal abuse cases. He is a socialist who has advocated for gun control and heavy regulation of the Internet. He also wrote in his 2008 book, Nudge: Improving Decisions about Health, Wealth and Happiness, that he believes people’s organs can be harvested without their consent. Sunstein would like to see personal email communications regulated by the government and believes the Internet is anti-democratic because of the way users can filter out information of their own choosing.
Rev. Jeremiah Wright—Obama sat in Wright’s church for 20 years yet claims to have never heard any of the hate-filled racism that crossed his lips. Wright’s anti-Semitic, anti-American sermons came to light during the campaign. Among his claims: the U.S. government was responsible for infecting blacks with the virus that causes AIDS, America was responsible for the 9/11 attacks—“the chickens have come home to roost”—and Jews are responsible for ethnic cleansing in Gaza and are pressuring Obama associates to keep Wright and Obama separated.
These are just a few of the folks who have occupied or currently occupy Obama’s inner circle. He was passed off by the mainstream media as being a centrist and moderate, but many of friends are anything but that, and some are quite radical. And when you parse some of his words or find video or audio from several years ago you know that Obama himself has some radical views.
But the media ignored Obama’s ties to radicals and communists. That, and Obama’s soaring rhetoric led many otherwise thoughtful and good people down the primrose path, and they voted for him without realizing what they were getting.
But as the truth gets out about his associates, the cover is coming off. He’s becoming known by the company he keeps, as well as his own deeds.
It seems Mr. Obama has a closeness for Communism also:
http://sweetness-light.com/archive/obama-sends-a-love-note-to-cuba
Yes, of course…every single time the Obama Administration has diplomatic talks with a socialist country it MUST mean that Obama is a socialist. North Korea? China? Recently installed Japanese government? Sweden? Zapatero’s Spain? Labour’s Britain? More proof that Obama is a socialist.
Give me a break. Acquire some intellectual honesty.
Nice seriousness on the guilt by association in that long “comment”, thesis? How about “are you now or have you ever been a Democrat”?
I often wonder what Chris Wallace’s father thinks of his son’s antics pretending to be a serious news reporter and interviewer on Fox “News”. If I had the career that his father has had for such a long time as a highly respected news personality and serious investagative journalist, I would be embarrassed to no end. I have a hard time imagining that the elder Wallace is proud of his son’s “contribution” to the news profession. And I sometimes wonder if they even talk to each other.
Attempting to attribute any credibility to FOX is like mud-wrestling in the sewer w a gang of halfwits. Wallace has never been anything more than a Primitive – riding on his father’s good name. Yet we see Neanderthals here drooling right along. Hatred begets hatred. Ignorance begets ignorance. So shall it ever be.
Jim R says:
October 26, 2009 at 5:08 pm
Didn’t Obama say, “Judge me by those who I have around me?” Wasn’t that him?
hadashito says:
October 26, 2009 at 5:31 pm
And I sometimes wonder if they even talk to each other.
It’s always sad to hear from another left-winger who finds it hard to believe that people who disagree politically can still talk, respect, or be friendly with one another. Your lock-step mentality is truly disappointing, but underlines the intolerance present in many of today’s liberals.
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