By Jack Engelhard
The Obama administration has found the enemy and it is Fox News. The New York Times and CNN got it straight from the lips of White House communications director Anita Dunn who revealed that, “We’re going to treat them [Fox News] the way we would treat an opponent.”
Hello Lady? The press is SUPPOSED to be an opponent! That’s why it’s called the Fourth Estate, to keep a sharp eye on the other three Estates, executive, legislative, judicial. Nowhere is it written that the press shall collaborate with the government; quite the opposite if my reading of Thomas Jefferson is correct: “The only security of all is in a free press.”
Ms. Dunn, obviously speaking for Mr. Obama, accuses Fox News of being a branch of the Republican Party. This can only mean that the White House finds no such sinfulness among all the other networks, which suggests that the rest of them are branches of the Democrat Party. I’m not saying this, she is (if not in so many words).
Apparently, Fox News simply refuses to cheer this White House, a White House that has grown accustomed to unconditional admiration. Behold the petulance.
Fox News keeps turning to the wrong page in the hymn book.
Speaking as a recovering journalist and as a viewer who monitors most of the channels, I find Fox News to be the only place where all sides are given a voice. This is also the place where – well, does anyone remember checks and balances, or has this notion become old-fashioned?
Except for the press, or rather, except for Fox News, who else is around to keep tabs on a Party that dominates the White House and the Congress? Someone has to find out what’s going on behind closed doors – and it sure won’t be a network that qvells and thrills every time Mr. Obama speaks (as in Chris Matthews).
Mr. Obama has spoken out against Fox News several times, if obliquely, but I suspect that the peeving was refreshed when Glenn Beck ousted Van Jones.
Was that the bridge too far?
We the people expect the news media to be our guardians against government excess and misdeeds (Democrat or Republican). It’s a dirty job (like umpiring), but somebody has to do it, and frankly, few besides Fox News are on the job. Yes, my fellow journalists will argue that they too are “fair and balanced,” and yet it is quite clear that too often they are Democrats first and journalists second.
This all began with Woodward and Bernstein, who, in bringing down a flawed president, proved that journalism was not simply a means to report the news.
Journalism can change the world.
A generation of idealists – the Peace Corps generation – joined the nation’s newsrooms to “make the world a better place.”
But that is not the duty of journalism. Journalism serves the nation when it seeks facts and pursues truth and (in the phrasing of JFK) lets “the chips fall where they may.”
Ms. Dunn was correct, after all. Journalists should be treated as “opponents.” Too bad she could only find Fox News as being so troublesome.
About the author: Jack Engelhard wrote the international bestselling novel “Indecent Proposal” that was translated into more than 22 languages and turned into a Paramount motion picture starring Robert Redford and Demi Moore. He can be reached at his website www.jackengelhard.com Engelhard’s latest book, the newsroom thriller “The Bathsheba Deadline” is now available in paperback. http://www.amazon.com/Bathsheba-Deadline-Original-Novel/dp/0595470793/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1255629656&sr=8-1
Showing posts with label glenn beck. Show all posts
Showing posts with label glenn beck. Show all posts
Thursday, October 15, 2009
Monday, July 27, 2009
Yo, Glenn Beck, Cool It On New Jersey!
By Jack Engelhard
I caught your show on Fox the other day, the one where you removed New Jersey from the map and I guess I was supposed to laugh but I didn’t. This is where I live and it’s as fine a place as any other in the Unites States of America – and maybe even better. Yes, I scan the headlines, too, so I know about all the arrests. I know there’s corruption.
Hello? From state to state, where isn’t there corruption? I could pick any state – the rest of the 49 – and name names but I won’t so as not to insult the good people who live there and who have nothing to do with pay-to-play. Where to begin? Pennsylvania, which just got through sentencing that man Fumo? New York? Does the name Eliot Spitzer ring a bell? North Dakota? How about Rob Blagojevich?
Let’s not even talk about Louisiana and Illinois.
Sorry to be mentioning some names but I just couldn’t help myself – though, if pressed, I could mention even more.
While you’re deleting New Jersey from the map, you may as well delete Enrico Caruso, the world’s greatest opera tenor, who recorded most of his music in Camden, yes, Camden, New Jersey, and be sure to erase Albert Einstein, the world’s greatest scientist, who taught at Princeton, NEW JERSEY!
Did I mention that New Jersey was the first state to sign the Bill of Rights? No big deal, you say, as you sit there laughing about our turnpike. Yes, we have the finest road in the world, policed by the nation’s finest State Troopers, but along with that we’ve got the Jersey Shore, 127 miles of coastline. Where else does this happen?
We’ve also got as much farmland as any of the other 49 great states – 10,000 farms, east, west, north and south.
We’ve got the fastest horses in New Jersey (Monmouth Park, the Meadowlands) and the most beautiful women. (I’ll take anyone’s bet on this.)
Did I mention Walt Whitman? If not, then I also forgot to mention a thousand other men and women who nourished the nation from New Jersey. In no particular order, here’s Jon Stewart, Yogi Berra, Norman Mailer, Denzel Washington, Eva Marie Saint, Jack Nicholson, Sarah Vaughan, Meryl Streep, Philip Roth – lest we forget Bruce Springsteen and FRANK SINATRA, for crying our loud.
Speaking of Hoboken (where Sinatra was born), yes I know that just the other day the mayor of that town was taken away in handcuffs for alleged corruption as part of that big FBI sweep. But Hoboken also made news in 1846. That is where and when the first organized baseball game was played.
There would be no United States if not for New Jersey. Check your history where you’ll find the Battle of Trenton, George Washington’s greatest triumph against all odds. New Jersey is still known as “the pathway of the Revolution.” More than 100 battles were fought on New Jersey soil.
So knock it off, Glenn. We are proud of our state. We are not amused when removed from the map.
The “Soprano” James Gandolfini (Ringwood, New Jersey) can’t be happy with what you did.
We, here in New Jersey, keep taking our lumps and yet, gee, I wonder why our trains, buses and turnpikes are so packed with people heading in our direction? Over the weekend I couldn’t even find a spot in the sand for all the crowds – from around the nation and world – using up our beach.
Did I mention Sinatra?
About the author: Jack Engelhard wrote the international bestselling novel “Indecent Proposal” that was translated into more than 22 languages and turned into a Paramount motion picture starring Robert Redford and Demi Moore. Engelhard’s latest published books are “The Bathsheba Deadline” and “The Girls of Cincinnati.” He can be reached at his website www.jackengelhard.com
I caught your show on Fox the other day, the one where you removed New Jersey from the map and I guess I was supposed to laugh but I didn’t. This is where I live and it’s as fine a place as any other in the Unites States of America – and maybe even better. Yes, I scan the headlines, too, so I know about all the arrests. I know there’s corruption.
Hello? From state to state, where isn’t there corruption? I could pick any state – the rest of the 49 – and name names but I won’t so as not to insult the good people who live there and who have nothing to do with pay-to-play. Where to begin? Pennsylvania, which just got through sentencing that man Fumo? New York? Does the name Eliot Spitzer ring a bell? North Dakota? How about Rob Blagojevich?
Let’s not even talk about Louisiana and Illinois.
Sorry to be mentioning some names but I just couldn’t help myself – though, if pressed, I could mention even more.
While you’re deleting New Jersey from the map, you may as well delete Enrico Caruso, the world’s greatest opera tenor, who recorded most of his music in Camden, yes, Camden, New Jersey, and be sure to erase Albert Einstein, the world’s greatest scientist, who taught at Princeton, NEW JERSEY!
Did I mention that New Jersey was the first state to sign the Bill of Rights? No big deal, you say, as you sit there laughing about our turnpike. Yes, we have the finest road in the world, policed by the nation’s finest State Troopers, but along with that we’ve got the Jersey Shore, 127 miles of coastline. Where else does this happen?
We’ve also got as much farmland as any of the other 49 great states – 10,000 farms, east, west, north and south.
We’ve got the fastest horses in New Jersey (Monmouth Park, the Meadowlands) and the most beautiful women. (I’ll take anyone’s bet on this.)
Did I mention Walt Whitman? If not, then I also forgot to mention a thousand other men and women who nourished the nation from New Jersey. In no particular order, here’s Jon Stewart, Yogi Berra, Norman Mailer, Denzel Washington, Eva Marie Saint, Jack Nicholson, Sarah Vaughan, Meryl Streep, Philip Roth – lest we forget Bruce Springsteen and FRANK SINATRA, for crying our loud.
Speaking of Hoboken (where Sinatra was born), yes I know that just the other day the mayor of that town was taken away in handcuffs for alleged corruption as part of that big FBI sweep. But Hoboken also made news in 1846. That is where and when the first organized baseball game was played.
There would be no United States if not for New Jersey. Check your history where you’ll find the Battle of Trenton, George Washington’s greatest triumph against all odds. New Jersey is still known as “the pathway of the Revolution.” More than 100 battles were fought on New Jersey soil.
So knock it off, Glenn. We are proud of our state. We are not amused when removed from the map.
The “Soprano” James Gandolfini (Ringwood, New Jersey) can’t be happy with what you did.
We, here in New Jersey, keep taking our lumps and yet, gee, I wonder why our trains, buses and turnpikes are so packed with people heading in our direction? Over the weekend I couldn’t even find a spot in the sand for all the crowds – from around the nation and world – using up our beach.
Did I mention Sinatra?
About the author: Jack Engelhard wrote the international bestselling novel “Indecent Proposal” that was translated into more than 22 languages and turned into a Paramount motion picture starring Robert Redford and Demi Moore. Engelhard’s latest published books are “The Bathsheba Deadline” and “The Girls of Cincinnati.” He can be reached at his website www.jackengelhard.com
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