"And it is true that Barack Obama is on the move. I don't know if it's true that President Bush called Musharraf and said, 'Why can't we catch this guy?"
Fox Prez, Roger Ailes
"You know, education, if you make the most of it, you study hard, you do your homework and you make an effort to be smart, you can do well. If you don't, you get stuck in Iraq."
Sen. John Kerry
The Democratic Party is using Fox President Roger Ailes' joke at the Radio Television News Directors Association and Foundation dinner as a rationale to slowly cancel its participation in the Fox sponsored presidential debate. They say that Ailes "joke" was meant to demean Barack Obama. That Obama and bin Laden are both terrorists.
It recalls John Kerry's clumsy joke just prior to last November's election. Radio talk show hosts, followed by every politician on the right, were fast to jump on Kerry for ridiculing our troops' lack of intelligence. But we in the "joke" biz understood that Kerry's poorly structured crack was meant clearly to mock President Bush; that he got us stuck in Iraq because he is an unthinking simpleton. So stupid that he couldn't tell the difference between al Quaeda and Saddam Hussein.
Ailes' joke is receiving some of the same media criticism that hit Kerry. But Ailes was not putting down Obama. Reading the context of the joke, it is obvious that Ailes was only pointing out just how unbelievably dumb this president is; that he can't even tell the difference between Obama and bin Laden.
It took guts on the part of Ailes to smear President Bush so emphatically. If the head of Fox has the gonads to say that President Bush is a blithering idiot who has caused thousands to needlessly die, I would hope that it would put to rest the myth that the network is a right wing mouthpiece.
I assure you that this week Bill O'Reilly and the rest of the Fox boys will be pointing out that if Kerry was mocking President Bush's gross incompetence, then they must credit Ailes for doing the same.
Ironical, ain't it?