Fox Finally Criticizes a Republican Leader – For Crying

Fox News Kremlin-watchers and tea-leaf readers take note. On Friday night, Fox’s second most popular host said something critical of the top elected official in the network’s own party. That’s right, Bill O’Reilly lambasted House Speaker John Boehner — for crying:

O’Reilly was speaking to Fox News colleague Chris Wallace, who will interview Boehner on Sunday. “He’s got to get his emotions under control,” O’Reilly said. He posited that President Obama may have been trying to make Boehner cry during the State of the Union address. He then compared him to two American icons.

“You’ve got your George Pattons, you’ve got your George Washingtons–stoic, tough,” O’Reilly said. “A lot of Americans, you know, well if the guy’s crying every two minutes, does that mean he’s strong, does that impact on his credibility?”

He said Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin was “laughing” at Boehner because, while he was “wrestling polar bears without his shirt, and has never cried in his life, he’s going, ‘look at this sissy.’ Perception is reality.”

On Sunday, Wallace did ask Boehner about his frequent bouts of tearfulness:

WALLACE: Why do you cry so often?

BOEHNER: You know, I feel pretty strongly about what I do. I didn’t come to Washington to be a congressman. I came here to do something.

And I don’t need to be speaker of the House because I need some fancy title. I came here to do something on behalf of the American people.

We have big challenges in America. And I feel very strongly about addressing them. So, I get emotional. Last night, at the Alfalfa Club dinner —

WALLACE: Which is a big fancy dinner.

BOEHNER: If it weren’t for my emotions, I don’t know if they have anything else to talk about last night.

WALLACE: You look like you’re —

(CROSSTALK)

WALLACE: I was going to say you like you’re —

(CROSSTALK)

BOEHNER: They’re handing a box of tissues last night. You should have given me a box of tissues. I’ll be ready for it.

WALLACE: We thought about having them stack all around the studio, but we thought you might not like or appreciate that. But I got — look, I was surprised at how many people focus on this. But some of your supporters, strong conservatives, say it makes you look weak or strange.

BOEHNER: Chris, you know me. I am who I am. I’m one of the most transparent people in this town. And, yes, I wear my emotions on my sleeve. But I do feel strongly about it and I’m not going to apologize for being emotionally attached to the things I feel most strongly about in this town.

Wallace also criticized Boehner for smoking, to which Boehner replied, “Oh, why do we bring this up again? You know, smoking. It’s a bad habit but I have it. And it’s a legal product. I choose to smoke. Leave me alone.”

Of course, this may have started as just another O’Reilly bullying episode. (Don’t worry, Speaker Boehner, it gets better.) On the other hand, the fact that Wallace brought up the speaker’s sissy behavior on Sunday appears to indicate criticizing Boehner’s personal foibles was an editorial decision made at the network level.

It’s possible that Fox’s slap at the establishment GOP’s top dog was consolation for its dissing its tea party base last Tuesday when it opted not to broadcast the official Tea Party Express reaction to Pres. Obama’s State of the Union speech. Only CNN chose to run Rep. Michele Bachmann’s screed, an event notable only for a technical snafu in which Bachmann appeared to be reading her speech to people off camera.

Another possibility: The network’s brass simply do not like John Boehner.

Whatever the reason for it, it is extremely rare for a Fox host to criticize a Republican of any stripe for any reason. In fact, the absence of criticism of Republicans on Fox stands in stark contrast with the regular drubbing given to Pres. Obama and the Democrats by hosts at MSNBC, which the establishment media and conservatives persistently dismiss as merely the liberal propaganda analog to Fox.

During the Bush era, there was barely a peep from Fox hosts as the Republicans who ran Congress busted the budget, expanded big government and borrowed and spent the county into ruin. And only on rare occasions, like the Harriet Miers Supreme Court nomination, did Fox criticize Bush, the most unpopular president in the history of presidential polling. (Admittedly, it would have been awkward for Fox to critique the Bush administration since the network and the Bush White House political office operated in tandem behind the scenes.)

So are we witnessing a change at Fox? The network may be known primarily as the GOP’s in-house propaganda outlet, but on some level it also functions as a business, and on a purely business level, things haven’t been looking so good lately. The network’s viewership has been declining — a drop off that appears to be driven at least in part by a corollary cratering in the number of Americans who view Fox to be credible.

The tanking of Fox’s credibility is likely a result of the fact that since the Obama era began, Fox has just about stopped bothering to hide its ties to the GOP. Its owner, Rupert Murdoch, threw off all apolitical pretensions when he contributed $2 million to the GOP during last year’s midterms. Fox has also put four potential Republican presidential candidates on its payroll — Sarah Palin, Mike Huckabee, Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum. And in 2009, the network promoted the tea party rallies like they were Fox fan club conventions, even sending its primetime hosts to events nationwide as celebrity draws.

It is also notable that MSNBC, supposedly the flip side of Fox’s right-wing propaganda coin, broadcasts a three-hour live show every weekday morning hosted by a doctrinaire conservative Republican, Joe Scarborough. Number of hours hosted by a liberal at Fox? Zero.

It hasn’t helped that polls (here and here) have found that Fox viewers are more misinformed than viewers of legitimate news outlets — or that memos from former Fox editor Bill Sammon that were leaked late last year showed Sammon ordering on-air talent to sync their use of key words and phrases with Republican propaganda.

But with O’Reilly’s criticism of Speaker Boehner on Friday, Fox can now claim it is tough on both sides — that it is, finally, fair and balanced. Fox is tough both on the president and Democrats — whom its hosts regularly denounce as un-American, totalitarian and decadent (projecting much?) — and on the Republicans like Boehner, whom a Fox host has now called a “sissy.”