"FOX TRIES TO SMEAR BILL CLINTON...CLINTON BLASTS FOX..."
That's quite a charge from left-leaning Huffington Post this morning. Quite a storyline, in fact, to juice up an otherwise slow-newsing Saturday morning. But is it a fact? Let's take a look, starting with this link from the similarly left-leaning Center for American Progress (CAP).
It seems that Bill Clinton sat down for an interview with FNC's Chris Wallace, and when Wallace asked him a question, Clinton blew up. Youtubers were quick to point out, of course, that Clinton is a master of unleashing contrived cold fury when he wants to be unleashedly cold and furious for the cameras--even if, in truth, he is lying through his teeth, as he was during the Monica Lewinsky year of 1998.
Anyway, Wallace asked Clinton a question, revolving around this basic fact: Osama Bin Laden survived the entire eight years of Bill Clinton's presidency. Clinton came back with a long nasty response, in which he accused Wallace of not only bias, but also ambush: "So you did Fox’s bidding on this show. You did you nice little conservative hit job on me." So take that, Rupert Murdoch, Roger Ailes, and all the rest of you v.r.w.c.'s, Clinton was saying.
Now Wallace does work for FNC, of course, but not many think of him as notably ideological either way--in any way. One of Wallace's strengths is that, well, he's a newsman. So does he ask tough questions? Very well, he asks tough questions. That's called newsgathering. And I guess one thing we learned is that Clinton still loses his cool, especially when he wants to.
For his part, Clinton affected the pose that he only wanted to be asked about his Clinton Global Initiative, his do-gooding effort that was showcased in NYC last week. One can't blame Clinton for preferring to talk with Richard Branson about global warming than with a newsman about his presidential record fighting (or not) terrorism, but at the same time, one also can't blame Wallace for doing his job. That's the difference between a newsmaker and a newsgatherer. The newsmaker has his message, usually on one particular topic, but the newsgatherer has a different goal--to ferret out some truth.
But the plot thickens. According to CAP, Clinton "was told the interview would focus on his nonpartisan efforts to raise over $7 billion to combat the world’s biggest problems." Which is to say, CAP, presumably echoing Clinton's spin--CAP is run by John Podesta, a former White House chief of staff to Clinton--which is that Wallace and FNC ambushed him with the choice of topic.
For its part, TCG finds it hard to believe that Wallace would do that. A reporter is only as good as his or her reputation, and Wallace has built a sterling rep over 30 years. Moreover, it's simply hard to accept that Wallace would offer, or Clinton would think, that there could be an interview with the ex-president in which philanthropy would take precedence over terrorism--especially at a time when Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, and Pakistan are all in the news so much, what with the UN General Assembly meeting and all.
Here's what I think: Clinton saw a chance to bash Fox. He saw that if he smoked Wallace, he would be a hero to his troops; the reader comments on the CAP website prove that Clinton succeeded. CAP-ers and liberals want to see FNC being attacked, and so if Clinton does the attacking, there's a huge audience.
FNC didn't ambush Clinton. Clinton ambushed FNC. It's a free country, of course, but everyone should be on notice that even if an ex-president, striving to be remembered as a statesman, is still capable of sucker-punching a target.
