Maddow and Olbermann on the Right Wing Freak-Out Over Their Visit to the White House
By Heather Friday Oct 23, 2009 3:00pm
Rachel Maddow weighed in on the ongoing dust-up between the White House and Fox News and the collective freak-out by Fox and the right wing over herself and Keith Olberman, among others, being invited to a meeting at the White House. She wrapped it up with this statement:
Maddow: You can be upset all you want that the president meets with people who you disagree with. But consider being fair and balanced in your criticism, at least admit that this White House has met with both sides while the Bush White House did not. You should especially admit that if you happened to have been a member of the Bush White House during that administration.
Keith joined Rachel later in the segment and talked about how hypocritical and completely disingenuous all of this pearl clutching has been by the right.
Transcript below the fold.
MADDOW: But we begin tonight with the escalating war of words between the Obama White House and one of the country‘s major news organizations. What had been a battle between White House aides and the FOX News Channel ratcheted up a level as President Obama himself has now stepped into the fray.
During an interview with NBC White House correspondent Savannah Guthrie, President Obama commented for the first time publicly about the ongoing feud between his administration and FOX News.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
BARACK OBAMA, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: What our advisors have simply said is that we are going to take media as it comes. And if media is operating basically as a talk-radio format, then that‘s one thing. And if it‘s operating as a news outlet, then that‘s another. But it‘s not something I‘m losing a lot of sleep over.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
MADDOW: Over the past week, White House aides have been in a verbal war with FOX News Channel, calling FOX, quote, “Opinion journalism masquerading as news”; calling it, “The communications arm of the Republican Party”; calling it, quote, “not really a news station.”
It‘s a war that has gotten quite a lot of publicity lately and it‘s a war that, frankly, has not been all that bad of news for FOX News itself. After the president and his advisers made their case against FOX, that network has run with it and run with it in an attempt to presumably try to glean some commercial success from it.
Sean Hannity, for example, is now branding his show “Not White House Approved.” And one of the ways that FOX has decided to go after the White House on this is by going after Keith Olbermann and me.
On Monday of this week, Keith and I were part of big group of commentators and columnists attended an off-the-record meeting at the White House. Our attendance at that meeting has been breathlessly reported by FOX News as some sort of smoking gun evidence of a double standard by the White House.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
BRET BAIER, FOX NEWS: A White House official confirms to us that the audience for Monday‘s off-the-record briefing with President Obama included MSNBC personalities Keith Olbermann and Rachel Maddow.
BILL O‘REILLY, FOX NEWS: And now we learn the president spent 2 ½ hours on Monday -- 2 ½ hours—meeting with the far-left media people. In addition, the president, David Axelrod, Rahm Emanuel, Robert Gibbs sat down with three columnists from “The New York Times” to MSNBC commentators, as well as variety of other committed left wingers.
MICHELLE MALKIN, CONSERVATIVE COLUMNIST: I think that the news-consuming audience ought to know what was discussed. We ought to know and it‘s ought to be disclosed what was discussed by those attendees when they talk about this White House and its policies.
GRETCHEN CARLSON, FOX NEWS: Apparently, in this reporter gaggle was Rachel Maddow and Keith Olbermann, who are opinion people over at MSNBC. I find that highly entertaining that they apparently were amongst these reporters, and they‘re officially fair and balanced apparently according to the White House.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
MADDOW: Since Mr. Olbermann and I have been brought into this story by FOX News in this national story of White House versus FOX News, FOX News has decided to bring us into it, let‘s set the record straight here on what‘s being alleged and how the presidential—how various presidential administrations handle the media.
I have been in national talk radio since 2004. And during the Bush administration, I tried many times to get myself invitations to the White House when they held White House availabilities for administration staff or even meetings with the president for talk radio hosts. And although these meetings were billed as talk radio meetings, just talk radio meetings, they were always, in practice, during the Bush administration, exclusively for right-wing talk radio hosts. So, I could never get an invitation, much to my chagrin.
Here for example is President Bush in the Oval Office in October of 2006, meeting with right-wing commentators, Laura Ingraham, Sean Hannity, Michael Medved, Mike Gallagher, Neal Boortz—I‘m sure they‘re all very nice and diverse people, but I don‘t actually know any of them, but I do know that there‘s not a liberal among them.
Here‘s a nice little class photo of right-wing talk radio hosts when they met with President Bush in August 2007. There‘s Mark Levin, Neal Boortz, Hugh Hewitt, Scott Hennen, Bill Bennett, Michael Medved, Glenn Beck, Lars Larson, and Janet Parshall.
This is what the Bush administration did and they had every right to do it. They invited in talk radio hosts and columnist who agreed with them. And all of us who didn‘t agree with them were out of luck.
Well, now, it‘s the Obama era. And, frankly, I did get an invitation to the White House. And the Obama administration also meets with conservatives, too. The last meeting like this that I was invited to was back in January, just before President Obama was inaugurated. It was roughly the same group of people who attended the meeting this week, give or take a few additions and subtractions.
We met at the Obama transition office back in January. You want to know what happened the day after our meeting with the president-elect, he went to a gathering of conservative commentators at George Will‘s house in Chevy Chase, Maryland. “Washington Post” wrote it up at that time, they said, quote, “During a three hour dinner conclave, Obama charmed eight of the right‘s most prominent commentators.” According to an Obama adviser that time, “Obama enjoys debating his ideological opponents more than his allies and plans further meetings with journalists of varying stripes during his term.”
Liberals could not get an invitation to meet with President Bush to save our lives. President Obama is now inviting us in—and he‘s also been talking to people on the right.
You can be upset all you want that the president meets with people who you disagree with. But consider being fair and balanced in your criticism, at least admit that this White House has met with both sides while the Bush White House did not. You should especially admit that if you happened to have been a member of the Bush White House during that administration.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
KARL ROVE, FMR. BUSH SENIOR ADVISOR: It is demeaning the office of the president by taking the president and moving him from a person who want to be talking to everybody and communicating through every available channel, but saying, “If you oppose me, if you question me, if you‘re too tough on me, by gosh, me and my people are not going—are not going to come out, we‘re going penalize you.” And that‘s just is wrong, fundamentally wrong.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
MADDOW: If you‘re too tough on me, me and my people are not going to come on.
According to Mr. Rove, that sort of punishment is fundamentally wrong· That‘s something the Bush White House would never have done, right, former Bush White House Press Secretary Dana Perino?
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
DANA PERINO, FMR. WHITE HOUSE PRESS SECRETARY: Believe me there, were some people who really wanted me from the podium to go after MSNBC. And I just thought it was a bridge too far.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: And not only did you not go after them, you gave them interviews as did the president, gave them all interviews.
PERINO: Well, towards the end, we didn‘t do a lot with MSNBC.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
MADDOW: Oh, yes, right. MSNBC was frozen out at the end of the Bush administration and Bush officials now admit it.
The Bush administration had media wars of their own. You remember, back in 2000, when President Bush said this about a “New York Times” reporter named Adam Clymer.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
GEORGE W. BUSH, FMR. U.S. PRESIDENT: There‘s Adam Clymer. A major league (BLEEP) from “The New York Times.”
DICK CHENEY, FMR. U.S. VICE PRESIDENT: Oh, yes, big time.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
MADDOW: Oh, yes, big time.
After that, would it surprise you to learn that President Bush never did one interview with “The New York Times” during his entire presidency? Not one in eight years?
And it wasn‘t just freezing out news organizations that they didn‘t like, it was paying conservative columnists to write articles that were favorable to their agenda, was calling on fake reporters during White House news conferences that lobbed softball questions. It was publicly attacking NBC News for its reporting on the Iraq war. It was even threatening to arrest and prosecute “New York Times” reporters for reporting on illegal spying.
You know, you can be upset with Keith Olbermann and with me all you want for attending a meeting at the White House with the president, but if we‘re going to fight about this, let‘s at least start with getting the record straight here.
Joining us now is Keith Olbermann. Hi, Keith, how are you?
OLBERMANN: You were—you went in January?
MADDOW: Yes. Are you mad?
OLBERMANN: I didn‘t go in January.
MADDOW: No, but.
OLBERMANN: It got lost in the mail.
MADDOW: I will tell you that when we went this week, there was food.
When we went in January, there was just water.
OLBERMANN: Well, they got their act together.
MADDOW: They got their act because they knew you were coming.
OLBERMANN: Yes, that‘s what it was.
MADDOW: First of all, let me just say, and this is a little bit unprofessional of me to do so. But I apologize for having been looking at the script the entire time I was doing that, our teleprompter is broken. So.
OLBERMANN: Oh, how delightful for you.
MADDOW: It worked OK for you?
OLBERMANN: Yes. You want to run cartoons the rest of the hour?
MADDOW: No. It just means I might be doing a lot of the show like this.
OLBERMANN: OK.
MADDOW: So—anyway.
OLBERMANN: After all, we are working with scripts provided by the White House.
MADDOW: Yes, exactly right. Well, OK. Karl Rove is now saying, “If we did anything like that, people would go nuts.”
OLBERMANN: Do you—people are talking about post-traumatic stress disorder in politics—do you ever feel like they‘re walking examples of this, like they have forgotten what they did half the time while in the White House?
This is exactly what they did. They had—not only did they have these meetings, but as you pointed out correctly, they were much more doctrinaire and much more politically—there were eligibles and ineligibles, and nobody ever cross from one to the other. They tried to manipulate the news. They paid Armstrong Williams as you noted.
It‘s just—it is—it is pot and kettle. And it‘s—it is stunning. And also, basically, conservatives got in there first this time with this president before he actually took office.
MADDOW: Yes.
OLBERMANN: It‘s just—it‘s just—it‘s just confounding and stupid and silly, and it just looks like another thing that they want to wring their hands about as loudly as publicly as possible to scare people for no purpose whatsoever.
MADDOW: I think what‘s—I mean, the reason that I‘m leading with this is not only did the president address it himself, which I think makes it quite newsworthy, but I do also think that sort of mainstream take on this fight between the White House and FOX, the mainstream common wisdom sort of calcifying around the FOX argument that this is unprecedented and that it‘s somehow unfair and that FOX has being given the short end of the stick in a way that previous administrations have never done anything like this.
OLBERMANN: Other than the previous administration and in much greater degree. If we‘re going to—if we‘re going to talk about this, as you point out, that—those last eight years were attempts to manipulate where they could not completely control. I mean, they controlled FOX News on it. Clearly, I mean, there‘s no argument about that.
And then they went and proceeded to go after us particularly. This—most of this occurred before your show went on the air. But, I mean, there were—the abuse and the pressure behind the scenes stuff never let up. What the Obama people have done while, you know, really kind of cutting through the fog and not trying to be subtle at all is really kind of just raise an objection saying, “We don‘t think this is news.” They didn‘t say, “Hey, Major Garrett, you‘re not admitted here anymore.”
MADDOW: Right.
OLBERMANN: “Hey, by the way, we‘re not going to let you do live shots from the White House. You‘re not going to be on the plane,” or any of these things. There‘s no attempt to silence them. There‘s an attempt to say, “You know what, this is dangerous because this is often a way by which nonsense stories get trumped up through the purely political conversation kind of paranoid shows, like Glenn Beck and Hannity and O‘Reilly. They put out crazy stories or take obscure trivial ones, blow them up to gigantic proportions and then report the reaction to these stories in what are supposedly straight newscasts.
MADDOW: Yes.
OLBERMANN: And that‘s the—that‘s stage one of it. And stage two of it is, of course, they then take—if you report on ACORN for 457 consecutive shows, every news organization in America is going to go, “Well, we didn‘t think this was any sort of story, maybe we‘re wrong. Let‘s look into. Let‘s do a story about why we didn‘t do a story.” And suddenly, there‘s an ACORN story on the front page of several leading newspapers. And I think it‘s a—it‘s a way to sort of bring in crap through the side door which is a secondary thing besides the obvious stuff that you see everyday on fox.
MADDOW: Interesting to me that they‘re not saying they‘re going to freeze out FOX altogether. They said that they will still make people available to the FOX stations. They‘re not even ruling out making the president available to FOX at some point. But they‘re just going to treat them as if they‘re talk radio.
And I think it‘s going to be interesting to see how that works out. Remember that—given that President Bush was happy to invite right-wing talk radio into the White House quite that way.
OLBERMANN: Non-stop and—you know, and got them cake and cookies and things although the meal was fabulous. That‘s what we can talk and we can say. We‘ve been authorized to talk about that.
MADDOW: The peach cobbler was spectacular.
OLBERMANN: And salmon melted in your mouth.
MADDOW: Very liberal salmon.
(LAUGHTER)
MADDOW: The host of MSNBC‘s “COUNTDOWN” and my pal, thank you for sticking around, Keith. Appreciate it.
OLBERMANN: Of course, need me to hand you scripts if things go wrong the rest of the way.
MADDOW: Maybe.
OLBERMANN: OK.
MADDOW: All right.
OLBERMANN: I‘ll just sit here for a little while.
Login or Register to post comments.
-- "Elections only have consequences when the Republicans win."
that Obama hasn't shown restraint in his pursuit of ad hoc broadcast content regulation with Fox.
There's a big channel selection out there - turn it.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WsKPPL-j6kE
Haha! I love the gloat at the end! Oh the righties have fallen far from grace.
You got their gloat?
Can you say WATBs!?!? Tooooooooo funny!
it is not a news organization, they only have hourly news updates, they have no news broadcast. They cannot be called a news organization if they have no news broadcast.
Really, bartfarb?!? Did you catch the wooosh of this entire post going over your head?
So where's the NEWS in Glenda Becky waving a baseball bat and ranting like a loon or gushing over pictures of various forms of TORTURE while comparing Obama to Mao?
YOUR president BUSH is the one who ORDERED kidnapping, torture, MURDER, had his minions in DoD doctor the LAW to protect Murderous Contractors from prosecution for every CRIME from supplying troops with contaminated water, burning humvees that got a scratch on them so they could order NEW ONES after claiming the humvees were destroyed in MILITARY EVENTS, electrifying troops with the worst possible "job" of electrical and plumbing work it's even possible to perform, gang raping a 20 yr old girl, then beating her UP and locking her in a shipping container. IF ONE "guard" had not taken sympathy and allowed her the use of his cell phone to call her father in the states, that poor girl would have just disappeared and become MIA. No one EVER would have known what happened to her.
It was your President Bush spying on Americans and LYING OVER 900 times to get into Iraq so he, Cheney and the big OIL executives could assassinate Hussein, NOT FOR CRIMES AGAINST HIS OWN PEOPLE, for the cardinal SIN of refusing to sell his OIL at greatly reduced prices than he could get elsewhere AND because of past relationships with various U.S. Presidential Administrations, to American OIL interests.
Every single NASTY insinuation FOX NOISE makes against Obama comes from the REALITY OF GEORGE W BUSH.
AND let's NOT FORGET it was GEORGE W BUSH's GRANDFATHER WHO WAS A NAZI, A NAZI SYMPATHIZER AND A PERSONAL BANKROLLER AND FRIEND TO ADOLF HITLER!
So who's the REAL NAZI there?
they had time to discuss and question Barrack about Fisa, continuing torture and rendition, continued wiretapping, continued dismantling of the Constitution, protecting Bush-Cheney and company from war crimes prosecution, bailing out the bankers while the sweaty masses suffer with bullshit promises and maybe a question or two about escalating wars and threatening Iran on Israel's behalf.
though they were probably concentrating on the Health Care Bill and Afghanistan muddle.
Barack Obama appointed eleven members of the Trilateral Commission to top level and key positions in his administration within his first ten days in office. Did they ask him about his opinion on the latest Frontline Documentary aired last Tuesday night regarding the poor woman who tried to warn the world about the impending financial debacle and fraud in the derivatives market but who was told to shut up by Greenspan, Geithner and Summers.
Strawmen shouldn't play with fire.
a drone.
You mean some mindless automaton?
Baum's Scarecrow was in search of a brain.
How's your journey going?
Fri, 10/23/2009 - 18:05 — Cobalt Blue
Strawmen shouldn't play with fire.
_______________________________________________________
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qfV_ENR5IZE
What concerns me?...how few people watched this most essential Frontline expose AND how few of those who watched actually understand what it means.
Many of those who whinge about Obama's actions re: health insurance reform tend toward a micro level awareness. Those who get the macro level issues know that the frail and corrupted world economy is in the process of disintegrating (I choose this word simply because it's the best short-term description of the change we're seeing as we cling voraciously to 'capitalism' as our penultimate economic behavior).
Obama and the corporatists are mired in a danse macabre. Sadly, their feeble, sometimes frantic, efforts to bolster the now worldwide capitalistic economic regime are as gasoline on an open fire.
The savvy among us can see that health insurance reform is a sop to placate the masses while the corporatists struggle with the macro level deterioration of the world economy. Furthermore, the savvy among us know that the corporatists' own perspectives of the extant economic disintegration are limited, given their largely ineffective efforts thus far.
To whit:
--unemployment in the US near 20%
--US foreclosures increasing in frequency by the HOUR
--most major US retirement funds at or near bankruptcy
--overpopulation depleting most major resources
--bipartisan red herrings in the US preventing true socio-economic reform
--global climate change wreaking havoc with key ecosystems
--honey bees disappearing en masse, inexplicably, suddenly...
Crap... I could make myself anxious as hell...need I even mention derivatives, futures, CDOs and all the other vile legalized forms of gambling invented by corporatists to give themselves more ways to grow wealth using their existing wealth?!?!
Since homo sapien sapien has accelerated change exponentially, most of us cannot see the forest for the trees. We are witnessing rapid catastrophic CHANGE, and we cannot even identify what we're seeing!
"Catastrophic" doesn't have to mean calamitous, or tragic. What we are experiencing might better inform our long-term decisions as a species if we stop imposing value judgments on this rather inevitable consequence of our collective, puerile hedonism.
I will say again: time for us humans to get our collective heads out of our collective asses. We ARE at a critical juncture. I hope we as a collective species can make mature, responsible decisions so that we can weather this now inevitable catastrophic change.
.
Dear (R)epublicans,
Please name when Keith Olbermann called Bush a RACIST!
.
Honestly I can't stand this anymore what the hell. Bush and co went after any reporter any group that did not side with the bush administration. Hell his people went after helen fucking thomas !!!!!
Cnn, fox, and the rest can go fuck themselves when everyone else was towing the Bush administration line MSNBC had a few people willing to act like real reporters.
and it has been for years. Do what Rachel and Grayson do. State the facts which are the truth and don't back off ever!!
The whored out dims have got to be punished for being the bitches they are.
The fake show of republican idiots strung across the TV. I stopped on fox a few minutes ago and in thirty seconds I wanted to rip my eyes and ears off. They are such a bullshit outfit, directed at imbeciles. Damn they do connect with them well. Like a junkie and herion.
republicanism/conservatism is a mental illness!
Do you think it's possible that a given percentage of our species is (by virtue of our self-imposed measures of central tendency) destined to be both narcissistic and greedy? That this group of hedonists might include a relatively significant number of people who are functionally illiterate or cannot comprehend the words they're able to read? That these people might cling voraciously to conservative (nee republican) ideals because these ideals legitimize their fears, resentments, prejudices, narcissism and greed? That we can count among these people our brothers and sisters, fathers and mothers, aunts and uncles, cousins, grandparents, and granchildren?? It may feel good to call republicanism/conservativism a mental disease, but I don't think it helps.
While I like the job Maddow does thoroughly eviscerating these talking points, there's one thing she's been doing with these 'left wing media' talking points that I've disliked. She keeps bringing on Olbermann.
Honestly, you have a good point, and while it's nice to have a guest on, bringing on the guy that just spoke for an hour on his own show, on your network, with the same basic premise as your show? Her point is more than strong enough to stand on it's own, bringing on your counterpart to move along the same points is a bit overkill. And this is the second or third time Olbermann's been on the show in the last two weeks.
When Fox does this it feels like they're just adding to the Echo Chamber on their side, without saying anything substantial. When Maddow I just keep drawing that paralell, even though her material is solid enough to stand on its own.
-MBirchmeier
Olbermann was on the media frontlines he was one of if not the most attacked by Fox Noise and the Bush Whitehouse. His imput on fox noise rection and the MSM jumping to the defence of fox noise is important.
Perhaps...
I saw the point of the article more pointing out the hypocrisy of complaining about the media rather than the more general premise of attacking the media.
-MBirchmeier
Notice how the FACTS when presented are totally ignored by the imitation Noise Nit Wit Net Work then look they have a TRAITOR rove, to present their case.
Anyway Ms Maddow, presented a very strong case why the Morons at fox Noise aren't considered a NEWS Net Work, with ALL the facts out there what do these Racist Nazis do, naturally Slant, Lie and Manipulate the REAL news. The Closet Queen hannity, this bitch all she does is Manipulate Slant and Lie when presented with the opportunity to set the record straight what does she do she slants it again, the Whole NIT WIT Net Work are these Morons on Stupid pills.
These Morons with Dumb, Dumber and Dumbest on in the morning to O'llielly, are these IDIOTS so hung up on Ailes zipper that they really think his dick that they suck is connected to their brain or Lack of one.
In order to validate the whitehouse claim of fox's ability to report fact, obama should host a roundtable discussion with Jon Stewart, Bill Maher, Rachel, Keith, Bill Moyers,,,,,did I miss anyone..... Yep,,,Lewis Black!
Not unless Emanuel could screen the questions beforehand. There is all lot of unanswered questions that Obama will not address. Just one question for example would be,"why are you protecting the Bush- Cheney Company from prosecution?" or why do you continue to dismantle the Constitution and the rights of The Nation's People while supporting bankers and corporate cabals? As well he would have trouble explaining why he appointed eleven members of the Trilateral Commission to top level and key positions in his administration within his first ten days in office. The subject of continued wiretapping is a no no also.
Login or Register to post comments.