Thursday on his Your World show, host Neil Cavuto went after the Obama administration's near obsession with the coverage it gets on Fox News.
While Team Obama can count on the Big Three triumvirate of ABC, CBS and NBC to toe the line, promoting its points while generally avoiding damning information, Fox has generally remained fair and balanced, an approach which has clearly gotten under their ultra-thin skins.
The occasion for Cavuto's rant, which veered into some impressive sarcastic humor, was Eric Holder's claim that Fox wouldn't have anything to talk about if it wasn't noting the failure of the administration to call Islamic terrorism what it is, i.e., Islamic terrorism:
Transcript (bolds are mine):
NEIL CAVUTO: All right, folks. I have a confession to make.
I did it again. Eric Holder caught me.
ERIC HOLDER (taped): We spend more time, more time, talking about "What do you call it?" instead of "What do you do about it?" I mean really, y'know, y'know, if Fox didn't talk about this, they'd have nothing else to talk about.
CAVUTO: Yeah. If not for us at Fox News making such a big deal out of saying "Islamic extremism," no one would be making a big deal out of the White House not saying "Islamic extremism." Not this Democratic congresswoman or this former top Obama intelligence official. They say words matter too, but it's Fox News making the big stink, so, well that's all that matters now.
And it got me thinking. You know it happens sometimes. I know, I've heard this before, this whole White House mentioning this Fox News thing before.
(shows a series of derisive or negative references to Fox News by Barack Obama and Josh Earnest)
CAVUTO: Well, I am so busted. Pick a crisis, any crisis, you name it. Fox News is behind it. Worse yet, Fox News created it. And I'm here to admit the White House ain't telling you the half of it. How clever we are, how devious we are. If only I had known that you had known.
If only I had known that Fox News said you could keep your doctor when you couldn't keep your doctor, and it wasn't the President saying that.
Or that it was Fox News's plan to send your health insurance premiums skyrocketing and not the President's plan.
Or that Fox news dismissed ISIS as "the jayvee team" and not anyone on the President's team.
Or FOX News was the one spying on our very own James Rosen, and not the Justice Department spying on our very own James Rosen.
That Fox News was the one targeting conservative groups, and not the IRS targeting conservative groups.
Very clever. God knows what other controversies we caused. I'm sure it's just a matter of time before it all comes out.
So let me just fess up now and spill the beans. Everything bad, Every time ... Fox!
All this frigid weather? Yeah, Fox News. Don't ask, we just did it.
This whole measles outbreak thing? Bingo! Fox News!
This tepid economic recovery? Sorry, Fox News.
The housing meltdown that preceded it? You guessed it. Fox News started it.
The Internet bubble? Fox News created it, then we burst it so could keep milking it.
The energy crisis back in the 1970s: Fox News -- which is amazing, because we weren't even around in the 70s!
But that didn't stop us from having a role in the JFK assassination. Yeah, that was a Fox News guy in the grassy knoll.
The Titanic. Yeah, the captain, see the captain? So Rupert Murdoch wth a beard, don't you think? And now you know why the movie was so good. We damn near wrote the script!
Pearl Harbor: Fox News knew the Japanese were coming!
The potato famine. Even Fox News's Irish-American anchors (i.e., Bill O'Reilly and Sean Hannity — Ed.) did nothing, nothing to stop it from coming. They're the culprits!
"Tsunamis: Fox News! Earthquakes: Fox News! Tornadoes: Fox News!
That meteor hit in Russia that blasted buildings a couple of years back? Well, (that was) Fox's little Putin payback.
Oh yeah-yeah-yeah, this goes way back, to the Dinosaurs: Fox News killed them off.
And the Big Bang? Fox News started life itself up, only to toy with all living creatures since, and make a mockery of political leaders today.
You know, it's a wonder, it is a wonder we can even look in the mirror.
It's a wonder the folks who say this nonsense can even do the same.
Cavuto wrapped by indicating that he has received a great deal of reaction about his Fox-Holder commentaries, some of which he has apparently delivered and would continue to deliver on the Fox's Business Network.
Finally, he noted that he even had responses from "a number of pteradactyls" saying, "Damn right it was you!"
What most annoys Team Obama about Fox isn't only that it's the only major broadcast network which hasn't become a collection of almost unanimously open advocates for anything Dear Leader and his apparatchiks say and do. It's that its appoach has been successful. The success has been so complete that the people at what passes for the network's competition at CNN, MSNBC and HLN are trying to figure out how to make non-current news programming draw an audience, and in the process are slowly but surely ceding the entire cable-news battlefield.
Cross-posted at BizzyBlog.com.
