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If you happened to be watching Fox News this morning at 8:15 AM–because that’s how Bwog likes to wake up–you might have seen a group of students with big signs behind the cameras. And if you looked closely enough, you would have seen a couple of Columbia faces: Dems member Nathan Morgante, CC ’09, and Josh Bolotsky, CC ’07 and this year’s president of the College Democrats of New York. These kids, along with several others
from Fordham and St. John’s college, got up early to protest Chris Wallace’s treatment of Bill Clinton on the most recent edition of Fox News Sunday, which sent blogs buzzing and progressives taking victory laps on behalf of their dear leader.
Careful to appear unthreatening, the Dems shuffled up to their post, stood quietly for a few minutes, and shuffled away. No cries of “Where’s the third plane?”or “Faux News!” Just a good clean way to start the day.
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@oppps... dated = dared. My apologies.
I should hope Wallace and Clinton are not dating. That would be news, though.
@Missing the Point... So what were they protesting again? That a reporter dated asked a politician a question about what he did during his time in office?
I don’t see how a reporter asking a (arguably) hostile question is grounds for a protest. What, should the press just ask rosy questions of our elected leaders?
Certainly the press doesn’t do that with Bush, and for good reason. So why give Clinton a carte blanche again?
@Anonymous Hey, Josh Bolotsky here. You raise a perfectly good question on the purpose of the rally, and I want to clarify what our motivations were in appearing at the studio. While the (hilarious, in my opinion) “Bill Will Not Be Bullied” ended up getting the most visibility in the above photos, it was a sign designed by a single student out of a dozen or so posters, and one can get a better picture of our overall intentions by examining the others we included:
– More than anything, we were there to thank Bill Clinton for setting the record straight without backing down. While one would hope that there’d be no need to rally in support of a former President simply for telling the facts, Fox News has spent the past week portraying the President as, by turns, unhinged or dishonest http://mediamatters.org/items/200609260002. Hence the vast majority of the signs along the innocuous lines of “Thank you Bill,” “Bring Back Bill,” “College Dems *heart* Bill Clinton”, etc. While I think there was certainly an element of protest, it was just as much, if not more, a rally of support.
– We certainly weren’t there to ask that less tough questions be asked, but just the opposite: that more tough questions get asked of both sides. As President Clinton mentioned, the context of this interview is crucial, coming as it does immediately after ABC News aired, commercial-free (!), a “docudrama” claiming to portray the definitive account of pre-9/11 intelligence failures while inventing multiple events out of whole cloth, blatantly violating the 9/11 Commission’s report, for the sole purpose of attacking Democrats. Given how deeply the media has flubbed this story repeatedly, people of all political persuasions have been asking why Chris Wallace and Fox News seem content to grill President Clinton using the ammunition of the far right http://thinkprogress.org/2006/09/25/fact-sheet-clinton/, while never fulfilling the same responsibility with the members of the Bush administration (http://thinkprogress.org/2006/09/23/fox-clarke-demoted/) (http://thinkprogress.org/2006/09/23/wallace-cole/). ABC, Fox News and any other media outlet should be asking tough questions of members of both administrations, whether Republican, Democratic or independent. That’s why we had signs such as “Why not ask Republicans some tough questions?”
I hope this answers the basic question, and I’m sorry if I’m missing something – hey, it’s late, and I’m tired. :)
@Anonymous Josh Bolotsky is possibly the most underrated Columbian around. He does so much. Way cool.
@agreed Josh is awesome.
@Hey Check it out at crooks and liars (http://www.crooksandliars.com/2006/09/26/clinton-supporters-at-the-set-of-fox-friends) – or youtube, if that’s your pref (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LEGSqLPty_w&eurl=).
@Hey Check it out at crooks and liars (http://www.crooksandliars.com/2006/09/26/clinton-supporters-at-the-set-of-fox-friends) – or youtube, if that’s your pref (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LEGSqLPty_w&eurl=).
@DHI The reactions to this thing on the youtube seemed to indicate that bias influences perception. A lot of Republicans seemed to think that Bill really looked bad, whereas I thought it look like he did a great job destroying the argument. He did sort of go overboard but it’s because blaming Clinton is something that had been done a lot lately and he needed to decisively put a stop to it.
But why do they need to protest Wallace’s treatment of him? Isn’t that what Bill already did?