Last updated on August 10th, 2014 at 05:00 pm
Even before President Obama spoke about his decision to remove Gen. Stanley McChrystal, Fox News and Monica Crowley used the decision to attack Obama’s character. Crowley said, “It is going to look like he is reacting out anger, and out of a thin skinned response to this.” Fox News can’t decide whether Obama is not angry enough or angry all of the time.
Here is the video courtesy of Media Matters:
To get more stories like this, subscribe to our newsletter The Daily.
Crowley called Obama’s removal of McCrystal a blown opportunity, “I really think that McChrystal should not have been relieved by this….This is a blown opportunity for President Obama, because he has been criticized for not getting angry over the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. Yet this was an opportunity for President Obama to show us that cool, dispassionate, unemotional side of him, and now he’s coming out, and it’s going to look like, I don’t care how calm he is in a couple of minutes. It is going to look like he is reacting out anger, and out of a thin skinned response to this.”
The Fox News point of view on Obama is America is mad at him for not getting angry enough over the Gulf oil spill and he missed an opportunity to show off his calm side, which he has shown during the oil spill by getting angry about McChrystal. That argument makes absolutely no sense. It was interesting how Monica Crowley was prejudicing the perceptions of the Fox audience before he even spoke. She even went as far as to say that Obama might sound calm, but don’t pay any attention to that because he is really thin skinned and angry.
It was a not so subtle way to push the Fox News narrative about Obama. She preemptively set out to undermine Obama’s tone, so that she could push the right wing narrative of Obama the angry thin skinned black president. However, Fox can’t seem to decide whether Obama is angry all of the time, or never angry enough. Their criticism changes by the day. One minute Obama is a weak president, but the next he is a bully. Fox News is straining so hard to criticize Obama that they often contradict their own earlier criticisms. Is it any wonder that Fox News viewers make no sense? Their only source of information is a garbled mess that can’t keep its story straight from one day to the next.
Jason is the managing editor. He is also a White House Press Pool and a Congressional correspondent for PoliticusUSA. Jason has a Bachelor’s Degree in Political Science. His graduate work focused on public policy, with a specialization in social reform movements.
Awards and Professional Memberships
Member of the Society of Professional Journalists and The American Political Science Association
