So Glenn Beck said that President Obama has "a deep-seated hatred for white people" -- and it seems to me that Chuck Todd thinks the blame lies with Arianna Huffington:
NBC's Chuck Todd goes off on Glenn Beck on First Read today, but his real targets are Ailes and Huffington: "Former political consultants-turned-TV execs or former radio DJs, or former California socialites, the folks helping to accelerate the public's perception of the media off a cliff [are people who] made their livings trying to do other things."
The full Todd:
*** On The Glen Becks And Howard Beales: The White House doesn't want to give Glen Beck a bigger platform or extra oxygen -- especially regarding his remark yesterday that the president has "a deep-seated hatred for white people or the white culture" -- so they won't comment, even off record. Beck, after all, is a radio DJ who somehow ended up getting a national platform to give his opinion on politics. What's most amazing about this episode is that what Beck said isn't a fireable or even a SUSPENDABLE offense by his bosses. There was a time when outrageous rants like this would actually cost the ranters their jobs. But not anymore; if anything, it's now encouraged. And all of this could turn ACTUAL journalists into the next Howard Beales. It's getting nuts that the folks who are creating the perception of an ideological/polarized media world are people who have never really spent their lives being journalists. Whether it's former political consultants-turned-TV execs or former radio DJs, or former California socialites, the folks helping to accelerate the public's perception of the media off a cliff made their livings trying to do other things. Of course, Beck's crazy language could have one unintended consequence: It could cost him bookings with any Republicans who want to be popular outside Beck's hard-core bizarro-land viewers.
OK, Todd isn't literally blaming Huffington -- but, being an ACTUAL journalist, he's carefully blaming both sides, not because both sides are equally guilty of having a top-rated pundit doing racist rants on TV without suffering consequences, but because, well, that's how ACTUAL journalists routinely respond to controversies like this (or at least how they respond when a correct assessment of blame would put all of the blame on the right; this is reminiscent of the many stories that ran in 1988 with references to negative attacks "by both campaigns," the two campaigns in question being the viciously racist Bush/Atwater/Floyd Brown campaign and the non-vicious, non-racist, utterly toothless Dukakis campaign, which occasionally said something vaguely negative).
Beyond that, this is a ridiculous not-our-kind-Muffy attack on Fox -- which is, after all the brainchild of Rupert Murdoch, a second-generation newspaperman who's been in the business since 1953. Is Todd seriously arguing that Murdoch is a hands-off guy, or that he doesn't quite know where seasoned veterans of the Fifth Estate would draw the line?
And while we're on the subject, what outsiders are responsible for the continued employment by Todd's own bosses at NBC of Pat Buchanan? Why haven't his rants cost him his job, Chuck?
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Oh, and Roger Ailes actually began working in television about forty years ago, though he spent a lot of the intervening years working for politicians. He's been doing the kind of work he does now nonstop since 1992.
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