Right Voices

…the supposed Breck girl of the Democratic Party did something very shrewd this month when he pulled out of a debate co-sponsored by the Nevada Democratic Party and Fox News… If you know anything about the left-wing, activist-blogger base …you know that Fox is a wee bit unpopular with that crowd… Edwards’ declaration that he didn’t want to touch Fox …was well received, particularly because the announcement was made on the leading left-wing blog … Edwards claimed he wasn’t pandering to the base of his party… Democratic candidates were left in a bind. The lefty base was [celebrating], the candidates couldn’t just follow along. So when Roger Ailes… made a joke about Obama’s name at the president’s expense, the Nevada Democratic Party saved face for everyone… Edwards is the big winner here. But it’s not clear to me anyone else is… Fox is less a bastion of ideological conservatism and more a populist, tabloidy network. It often does very good hard journalism, but it gets mixed up with a lot of other stuff,… And while few liberals have a problem with the editorializing of MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann or Chris Matthews, they think it’s just plain wrong for conservatives to play that game. Fox…was created because vast numbers of Americans – including many Democratic voters – saw the mainstream media as too liberal and too elitist. Proof that Fox’s creators were right can be found in its enormous ratings success… It just seems so unfair … Regardless, the Edwards Maneuver ratchets this whole cycle up to a new level… Edwards was tactically very smart … But he’s also the guy who decries the “two Americas” and hopes to unite them…by Edwards’ own standards, Fox speaks to one of those two Americas. And boycotting Fox isn’t going to help close that gap.
(Excerpt) Read more at sltrib.com …