Augusta Chronicle Editorial Staff
Barack Obama now looks like the popular cheerleader at school who tries to convince her friends to shun the new kid at lunchtime.
That's how petty the president looks right now.
The White House tried to exclude Fox News from pool interviews with Obama's "pay czar" Kenneth Feinberg last week after the administration announced huge pay cuts for executives at bailed-out companies.
The administration has been at war with Fox -- boycotting its programs and denigrating it as less than a news organization. But the White House's attempt to actually exclude Fox from a news event was a sad and sorry escalation -- and a clear message that this administration won't tolerate dissent, much like a South American dictatorship.
Observers on both sides of the ideological spectrum applauded when the other news networks banded together and refused to participate in interviews with Feinberg if Fox was excluded -- and the White House beat a hasty retreat and relented.
"Free Speech 1, White House 0," cheered FoxNews.com.
You'd expect Fox to crow. But others in the media breathed a sigh of relief as well. Liberal columnist Helen Thomas and New York Times media writer David Carr have both cautioned the White House to back off. They're not alone.
If the president is allowed to decide what is a news organization and what isn't, and segregate those he deems unfriendly, then we are all less free.
This isn't about news anyway. It's about freedom. This is about an ultra-liberal administration trying to put a stranglehold on the media by propping up those outlets that agree with it and marginalizing those that don't. Consider the exclusively left-leaning roster of media figures Obama met with only last week: MSNBC's Keith Olbermann and Rachel Maddow, Eugene Robinson and E.J. Dionne of The Washington Post , Frank Rich and Maureen Dowd of The New York Times and more.
The war on Fox, and the administration's unambiguous pandering to liberal outlets and show hosts such as former Clinton chief of staff George Stephanopoulos, is indicative of a cynical and calculated strategy to control the tides of public opinion.
That the other major broadcast networks didn't go along this time is encouraging. The tides are fighting back against the moon.
But the fact that a White House would attempt to lasso the moon should cast a chill through us all.
