Imagine A Fox-Less Presidency

Obama's holding a grudge:

These are chilly days on Capitol Hill ... and on the campaign trail for Fox News journalists -- at least when they're anywhere near Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.).

Sources tell The Sleuth that the Obama camp has "frozen out" Fox News reporters and producers in the wake of the network's major screw-up in running with the erroneous Obama-the-jihadist story reported by Insight magazine.

"I'm still in the freezer," one Fox journalist said, noting that the people at Fox "suffering the most did nothing wrong." (It was "Fox and Friends" host Steve Doocy who aired the Insight magazine piece, which reported that operatives connected to Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) found out that Obama, as a child, was educated at a Muslim madrassah in Indonesia.)

Since the madrassah incident, Obama has given interviews to ABC, CNN, CBS and NBC -- pretty much every other network except Fox. Sources close to Obama acknowledged that they're not thrilled to play ball with Fox journalists, but they stopped short of saying they are freezing the network out.

I believe they call this "if you don't have anything nice to say, don't say anything at all."

This will not hurt Obama in a run for the White House in any way. And if it provokes this result, then it's a major coup

So maybe there was no written apology, but at least John Moody, vice president for news at Fox, issued this missive to staff in his daily editorial note on Jan. 23: "For the record: seeing an item on a website does not mean it is right. Nor does it mean it is ready for air on FNC. The urgent queue is our way of communicating information that is air-worthy. Please adhere to this."

It's amazing that a "professional" journalism outfit has to send this as a bulletin, but then again I've been in enough newsrooms to know that "pull it off the Internet" is the default tactic to get through the day. Something had to be done about Fox' behavior, and the Obama silent treatment might be a start.

I'm really starting to warm to Obama over the last few days, and less over this or his Iraq resolution than a piece by Mark Schmitt at TAPPED, which chronicles his career as a community organizer, and how it shaped the way he views the world today. I'd be proud to have a President who thinks about stuff like this:

"The political debate is now so skewed, so limited, so distorted," said Obama. "People are hungry for community; they miss it. They are hungry for change.

"What if a politician were to see his job as that of an organizer," he wondered, "as part teacher and part advocate, one who does not sell voters short but who educates them about the real choices before them? As an elected public official, for instance, I could bring church and community leaders together easier than I could as a community organizer or lawyer. We would come together to form concrete economic development strategies, take advantage of existing laws and structures, and create bridges and bonds within all sectors of the community. We must form grass-root structures that would hold me and other elected officials more accountable for their actions.

The pessimist in me would call this mushy-middle stuff, but actually it is concerned with changing the political structure and opening it up. That's a noble goal.