Editorial

Really, he gets on this television show to brag about some program he has undertaken to help people, but once he gets on the show, the reporter nails him with a question about what, if anything, he had done during his Presidency to get rid of Osama bin Laden.

So Bubba goes on a tear.

He looks like a maddened bull. First he claims it’s a cheap question. How come the current president, George W. Bush, is not getting this question, Clinton demands. Why is the Fox TV interviewer picking on the last Democratic president?

Clinton leans over, answering angrily; he tells the reporter, Chris Wallace of "Fox News Sunday" that he did try to blow Osama bin Laden out of existence and the attempt failed. Bubba has his finger pointing, he’s heated, he is not reading this stuff from notes or anything, he is actually remembering what his administration did and his part in it. He feels like he’s been sandbagged, once again, by the right-wing media, and this time his anger and resentment is on full view; he isn’t going to take it anymore!

When Clinton was president in 1998 he ordered the only known United States attempt on Bin Laden’s life. Clinton ordered a cruise missile strike on an Al Qaeda training camp in April of that year. Obviously the attempt failed.

Now, with 20/20 hindsight and perhaps some personal and political prejudices in play as well, some intelligence officers claim Clinton had lots more opportunities when he could have wiped out Bin Laden but failed to do so.

‘Shame, shame,’ these latter day pundits say, touting their experience but conveniently overlooking roles they played at the time. It seems equally obvious that many of these intelligence people want it both ways; that is, they want to ignore or downplay the cautious roles they played in advising the Clinton Administration while now enjoying the freedom to criticize anything the Clinton Administration did on any level. It is worth remembering the atmosphere that the right-wing and its wholly controlled Congress created during Clinton’s years in office.

It should be the role of the media to pursue the backgrounds and history of these ‘experts’ to determine their veracity, but in today’s American media world, that is expecting too much.

It is particularly expecting too much from Rupert Murdoch’s Fox TV and its so-called news programs.

But what did President Bush do on the same question?

Well, er, he wasn’t asked that question.

So how many times has he gone specifically after Osama bin Laden, the head of Al Qaeda, the man behind the killing of 3,000 Americans in the World Trade Center, the Pentagon and a field in Pennsylvania on Sept. 11, 2001 during Bush’s administration?

000000000000000

Zero.

In fact, Bush calls Bin Laden someone that he, George W. Bush, doesn’t really think of anymore because, after all, Mr. Bush is now fully engaged with the enemy in Iraq; no time to waste on someone so unimportant.

Yet having Mr. Bush on television and asking him about Bin Laden might prove very worthwhile. But that was not the mission here.

Here, on Fox television, where the bend to the right is palpable, the so-called "news" is just a setting to spread right-wing philosophy. The producers, directors and on-air people are all striving to push ultra-conservative programs and agendas.

But that’s just all right.

Yes, it is.

These Fox Television personalities can do what they want. They proclaim that it is their right under the First Amendment to the Constitution to think as they will and report the "news" as it is possible to gather and understand it; this is the freedom that the Founding Father’s provided journalists, knowing full-well how it could be abused. But those protections were provided only to print media, which is why print newspapers are unlicensed and free from direct government intervention. Not so the airwaves, at least until now.

What is now most interesting – starkly interesting – is that all the other TV network journalists, executives and their radio broadcaster counterparts must still constantly look over their shoulders to see if they have aroused the ire of the government should they continue to try to report the news in an unbiased fashion. The Federal Communications Commission holds their very existence in sway through their government licensing of the airwaves. Licenses can be revoked, or ownership changed when it comes time for license renewal.

If the news isn’t essentially pabulum, involving fire and police chases and personal tragedies, but instead seeks to unravel the political intrigues that affect legislation and overall governance, these broadcast outlets can reasonably expect trouble with their licensing procedure.

Yet by the immediate example of Fox News and its so-called feature program with former Pres. Clinton, it is now apparent that government oversight doesn’t apply, or is completely relaxed, only when it comes to portraying a right-wing viewpoint.

It is not surprising that other major media outlets, such as the ABC network, have learned this lesson.

Now, the "news" begins to become something that is not news, really, it is propaganda.

Again, this is all quite legal.

Stupid, but it is quite legal.

It must have been that Clinton wanted so badly to sell his two-year program – the Clinton Global Initiative – that he figured he could even appear on Fox TV for an interview, so long as the questions were about the Clinton Global Initiative.

Fool.

Maybe he did not see himself as an easy target.

Nonetheless, once they got him into the studio and on a live set, they had him cold. He would be in front of Fox cameras, with a Fox host asking any number of impossible questions and with no one in the Fox enterprise afraid of dropping a big, unannounced, messy question right in the middle of this Clinton Global Initiative.

Bill Clinton was teed up and ready to be kicked off.

And when they threw out the question, Clinton went right after the bait.

He got visibly, emotionally, attacking mad.

Thank goodness.

Yes, thank goodness!

Whether they intended to or not, the Fox people unleashed the wrath of the ex-president and delivered, for the first time in years, a Democrat who knew what his own policies were, where they were going, who could speak of a topic as sticky and ungainly as attempted murder of Bin Laden candidly, even eloquently.

Clinton showed that he can be as smooth as a diplomat at any time he tried or wanted to do so, but who understood immediately that he was trapped in the enemy’s TV cage and was able and willing to fight back ferociously.

In other words, Clinton showed the Fox TV bushwhackers that they had overplayed their hand, and for a moment viewers saw television that was in fact providing real news. He was mad as hell! No fooling here, Clinton was livid; he wasn’t going to take it any more!

Good.

It’s about time that a clear, strong, principled, intelligent person could rail against this style of asking one sided questions, posed in a setting that is so obviously contrived to make conservative "news" seem like reality.

All the Democrats have been tiptoeing around almost every issue for years. In the process, they have given up even their right to speak out against Bush and his Constitution-contortionism government. They have fallen almost silent. Think of that; it is very perilous.

Why, amazingly, the Democratic Party hierarchy seems still bent on trying on candidates to see which will fit. But what Democratic candidates need to do is get as mad as Bill Clinton.

That is what is missing with all the would-be candidates – they need to get damned angry. Sure, all the Democrats will ask for serious plans and numbers and studies and the like. But what the candidates need to convey to the voters is that the current regime of George Bush is a threatening, dangerous, wall-eyed, deaf, unconstitutional government that is coming very close to usurping the American spirit and replacing it with fear.

If that does not make you mad, you have gone over to the other side already.

Clinton showed there might still be some life to the opposition after all.

Fox executives may gloat, but it’s a hollow sound.

Amazingly, Fox News chief Roger Ailes had the gall to proclaim that Clinton’s response to the Bin Laden question was "an assault on all journalists."

No, Ailes’ observation is the assault on all journalists.

Clinton answered truthfully.

In fact, maybe he wasn’t being foolish in going on Fox at all. Perhaps he did his nation, and all Americans, a great service.

October 3, 2006