FOX Bites Obama

The power shift away from the GOP and the hotly-contested presidential campaign season bring out the scurrying and scurrilous truth-twisters.

The lie this time is about Barack Obama (D-IL). You surely heard or read the story more than once.... that a young Obama was educated in a radical Muslim school known as a "madrassa".... that he is a closet Wahhabist Muslim.

The conservative Insight Magazine, which is owned by the same company as The Washington Times and controlled by the Rev. Sun Myung Moon, citing "only unnamed sources," reported on its Web site last week that associates of Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-NY) had leaked the information that Obama had attended a radical fundamentalist Islamic school.

FOX news, owned by Rupert Murdoch, on Friday picked up the Insight charge on two of its programs, playing up the Clinton angle.... "Fox and Friends" co-host-Gretchen Carlson even said the madrassa Muslims were "the kind that want to blow us up."

This deadly untruth, reported as fact, hit the bulls eye of the terrorist-fear gut of the country, smeared Clinton, and tried to scuttle Obama's presidential aspirations... the dirty tricksters were dancing.

Fox didn't bother to fact check. CNN and the Washington Post did.

As Howard Kurtz who hosts CNN's weekly media program "Reliable Sources" writes in WaPo, "Thus, in the first media controversy of the 2008 campaign, two of the leading candidates find themselves forced to respond to allegations lacking a single named source.

But, CNN did check, they sent a reporter to Jakarta, Indonesia to uncover the truth and reported.... "Allegations that Sen. Barack Obama was educated in a radical Muslim school known as a "madrassa" are not accurate."

Obama spokesman, Robert Gibbs, sums it up.... "The allegations are completely false.... for FOX to repeat something so false, not once, but many times is appallingly irresponsible."

The fact that the GOP-leaning press brought out the big guns so early against Obama proves just one thing.... they want to torpedo his presidential bid.

But, the only thing that got blown out of the water was the FOX motto.... "Fair and Balanced."

Their motto should be.... "The Smear Starts Here!"