“Our concern is other media not follow their lead.” That's a quote from David Axelrod, in the Jim Rutenberg story in the New York Times this morning. Axelrod is saying, now, that the White House wanted to attack Fox News, and to isolate Fox News, because it was worried that other media outlets were being influenced by Fox's coverage. That is, if Fox was breaking stories on Van Jones, and ACORN, and so on, then others would think that they, too, needed to cover such stories. Implicit in Axelrod's quote is the idea that the rest of the media would, of course, want to do what it is told.
But I think that the WH is seeing the limits of its own power--the MSM might be liberal, and they might have all voted for Obama, and they support most of his agenda, but they still have a sense of what they will and will not put up with. And the WH might have crossed that line, trying to kibosh Fox.
Rutenberg has this scoopy scene-setting nugget, of Axelrod meeting with Roger Ailes at a now-disclosed location, to lead off with:
Late last month, the senior White House adviser David Axelrod and Roger Ailes, chairman and chief executive of Fox News, met in an empty Palm steakhouse before it opened for the day, neutral ground secured for a secret tête-à-tête.
Mr. Ailes, who had reached out to Mr. Axelrod to address rising tensions between the network and the White House, told him that Fox’s reporters were fair, if tough, and should be considered separate from the Fox commentators who were skewering President Obama nightly, according to people briefed on the meeting. Mr. Axelrod said it was the view of the White House that Fox News had blurred the line between news and anti-Obama advocacy.
What both men took to be the start of a frank but productive dialogue proved, in retrospect, more akin to the round of pre-Pearl Harbor peace talks between the United States and Japan.
Pearl Harbor, eh? I guess that means it really is war!
By contrast, Charles Krauthammer's "Godfather" analogy--the bloody horsehead in the bed--in the WaPo this morning seems tame by comparison.
