the Cucking Stool: They can dish it out, but they can’t take it

Fox “News” that is. That band of pikers, scrubs, and mokes apparently thought they could slander and pander for the entire Obama Administration and not suffer any blowback. Remember, the First Amendment says we’ll have a free press, not a free shot press.

The rest of this post will rely some on Driftglass, who wrote recently the following about Chris Wallace and the Fox sack cloth and ashes routine over some payback from the Obama Administration:

Then came 15 minutes of ominous organ music and inconsolable weeping as Karl Fucking Rove whined about how unfair the White House was being to po' po' Fox News, and how Nixonian it was for a White House to target members of the press:
Of course...

A. Fox is not the press. Fox is a wingnut whorehouse. And,
B. My what short memories the droolers have. From 2003, Slate:

At his televised news conference last week, President George W. Bush deliberately snubbed several reporters he ordinarily calls upon, including journos from the Washington Post, Newsweek, and USA Today. But the most conspicuous recipient of the 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. freeze-out was longtime UPI reporter Helen Thomas, who has barbed and grilled every president since John F. Kennedy and almost always gets to ask a question. Bush pointedly ignored her.

Bush then dealt Thomas a second slight. By custom, Thomas concludes White House press conferences at the president's signal by saying, "Thank you, Mr. President." Bush denied her that supporting role, ending the conference with his own sign off, "Thank you for your questions," and flushing a decades-old White House custom.

Bush's slaps at Thomas are consistent with the psy-ops his information wranglers conduct day-in and day-out on the White House press corps. Bush's news conferences have become increasingly scripted, with the president calling on reporters from a preset list and refusing the follow-up questions that might trick him into saying something substantive. Press Secretary Ari Fleischer has lobotomized the White House press corps in official briefings by jawing more and more and saying less and less. (The smarter reporters play hooky these days rather than endure Fleischer obfuscations.) Last October, Fleischer maliciously tampered with the corps' self-esteem by reassigning seats in the briefing room. The new chart demoted scribes from Time, Newsweek, and U.S. News & World Report from the Park Place of the second row to the Siberia of the sixth. (Pressies live for their little perks, and the White House reporters revealed their Ted Baxterian pettiness for all to see when they bellyached about the reshuffle.)
...

Rove and Chris Wallace were joined in their quarter hour of mutual self-pitying masturbation about Barack Hussein Obama not bending a knee to the House of Murdoch by Former Democratic National Committee Chairman and political wind-sock, the ever-flexible Terry McAuliffe.
Rove: Obama called Fox News an enemy. He’s just like Nixon!
McAuliffe: Glenn Beck called this President a racist.
Chris Wallace tugs McAuliffe’s leash.
McAuliffe: Fox does opinion stuff. President Obama gets that.
Nice that McAuliffe is now an official confidante of the President.
Wallace: But last year, during the primary, you kissed Fox News’ ass. Lets roll the video.
Video of McAuliffe sucking hard on Roger Ailes’ wizened swizzle thanking Fox News for cozying up to Hillary Clinton.

McAuliffe: But you have to remember, Chris, that I am a huge whore. I’ll knob anybody who pays me.
Wallace: ABC went after Clinton during the Monica Lewinsky happy-fun time, so just because we call Barack Obama an uppity Commie Negro usurper, don’t you think its unfair that he won’t come on our little teevee tree fort?
McAuliffe: It was a different time back then. Mastodons walked the Earth. Nightline didn’t suck.
Wallace: With all due respect, you’re not an administration official.
McAuliffe: Obama’ll come on Fox. He’ll be on your show.
McAuliffe: Karl?
Rove: I’d rather not interrupt Terry as he wallows in his own shit begging to fill the Fox News Susan Estrich Boozy Fake Liberal Chair.
Wallace: What about House? House is on Fox? And Homer Simpson? Are you calling House and Homer Simpson un-American?
McAuliffe: Please can I have my wine now?

Driftglass also said this about the Fox New effect in an earlier post:

There is virtually no problem in American politics that does not trace its origins to the fact that the frontal lobes of the Land of the Free have spent the last 13 years being bludgeoned by Rupert Murdoch's Fox New.

Driftglass quotes Jacob Weisberg in Newsweek:

Any news organization that took its responsibilities seriously would take pains to cover presidential criticism fairly. It would regard doing so as itself a test of integrity. At Fox, by contrast, complaints of unfairness prompt only hoots of derision and demands for "evidence" that, when presented, is brushed off and ignored.

There is no need to get bogged down in this phony debate, which itself constitutes an abuse of the fair-mindedness of the rest of the media. One glance at Fox's Web site or five minutes' random viewing of the channel at any hour of the day demonstrates its all-pervasive slant. The lefty documentary Outfoxed spent a lot of time mustering evidence that Fox managers order reporters to take the Republican side. But after 13 years under Roger Ailes, Fox employees skew news right as instinctively as fish swim.

Boys and girls, if you need any further evidence that Fox is strictly bush league [Spot hesitates for a moment, trying to decide whether to work the pun, then moves on], consider that the network’s premiere baseball announcing team is Joe Buck (Joe Buck is to Jack Buck as Chris Wallace is to Mike Wallace) and Tim McCarver.