Tim Graham wrote in an April 18 NewsBusters post:
“The Five” on Fox News Channel didn’t cover more than a few seconds of President Obama’s petulant Rose Garden attack on conservatives making Wednesday “a shameful day for Washington.” The other networks, which define “news” as anything their Heroic President chooses to utter, including his March Madness picks, were shocked and appalled.
Graham failed to identify what, exactly, was petulant about what Obama said. But then, it appears Graham’s petulance detector is way out of calibration, because he sees Fox’s petulant refusal to air Obama’s remarks as a principled decision, despite the fact that Fox cut away even before Obama finished his first sentence and, thus, could not know the full content of Obama’s remarks.
Still, Graham claimed that Fox’s Greg Gutfeld, during whose Fox show the channel quickly cut out of Obama’s statement, “seemed to protest the brevity of their White House snippet.” In reality, Obama-hater Gutfeld seemed to be realizing how bad this looks, even for such an anti-Obama channel like Fox, and this was merely an effort to paper over how partisan and petty the channel looked.
Graham goes on to proudly declare that Fox News “broke out its smackdown machine” in response to its refusal to air Obama’s response, despite the fact that Fox’s statements sure sound much more petulant than anything Obama said.
So: Obama responding to the failure of a Senate vote is “petulant,” while Fox’s petulance is principled. Got it, Tim.