The pundits on Fox continue their week-long attack on President Obama for rightfully calling out their network for their constant assault on those living in poverty and the programs designed to protect them.
May 18, 2015

You've got to hand it to these talking heads over on Faux "news." They're able to lie with a straight face to their audience about what that same audience likely watches day after day, and week after week on their network when it comes to their race baiting and shaming of anyone in the United States who is unfortunate enough to be living in poverty, while simultaneously making excuses for their poor-shaming and attacking the President of the United States for calling them out for it.

That's exactly what the audience was treated to on this Sunday's Media Buzz on Fox, where host Howard Kurtz and his guest Brit Hume continued the network's week-long whine-fest over President Obama's remarks about how Fox constantly berates those living in poverty as lazy, just wanting to live off of the government dole and proud of it.

KURTZ: That brings me to that odd phraseology where President Obama says he wants a different kind of reporting so he can change the minds of John Boehner and Mitch McConnell. What does that say to you?

HUME: Well, first of all, a big part of the job of a president is to find a way to work with people who disagree with him and try to get something done. He's especially bad at this.

He... I think he thinks their opinions are crazy and make no sense and therefore there's no use trying to them. The news media will need to change the atmosphere on the coverage and that will (inaudible). Well some presidents even have the ability to do that. Ronald Reagan was arguably able to do that occasionally, but not very often. It's hard to do as he suggests.

But I think it's... I also think that he has a particular viewpoint on these issues where you never hear him suggest that the people who live in these terrible conditions are in any way responsible for that by the choices they make.

Isn't it amazing how it's President Obama's job to reach out to those who disagree with him, but that same standard has never been applied to Republican members of Congress? And Hume of course ignores that fact that the Kenyan usurper passed a Republican health care plan that all of them should have loved but didn't for some strange reason and the fact that President Obama has reached out, to a fault, to Republicans only to be met with the back of their hand.

Kurtz actually gave him a bit of push back, but it was tepid at best.

KURTZ: I don't think that's entirely fair because the president has talked about fatherless families and black culture...

HUME: Yes he does, but he speaks of it as if, first on the one hand, what he says is, these conditions, these conditions, fatherless families, broken homes and the rest of it are a result of poverty and the conditions and not a cause of it. On the other hand he'll turn around and he did it in this presentation at Georgetown and talked about how the statistics on poverty are wrong because everything include... they don't include an array of benefits.

So on the one hand he's saying poverty's not all that bad and on the other hand he's saying, well, it's the cause of all these broken families. So he's... his own message is full of self-contradictions.

Sorry Brit, but just because many have noted that the statistics about how many people have been kept out of poverty have not been adjusted for the programs existence does not mean that President Obama has ever said that "poverty's not all that bad." What a ridiculous load of claptrap.

KURTZ: So then Jon Stewart and others followed up with clips of certain Fox hosts and guests saying government programs make the poor lazy. The poor aren't that poor because they have computers and cell phones these days and I guess the president sees that as heartless. What do you think of him dragging Fox in when he's doing this sort of bipartisan conference?

Yes he has Howie, and we all know that the better part of that segment will never, ever make its way onto your show or any other show on Faux "news."

So let's move onto the poor-shaming by Hume.

HUME: Well, first of all, the idea that, first of all I think there are more people of the kind that he says we point out than he is willing to admit. The second thing is...

KURTZ: By which you mean people who particularly don't want to work?

HUME: Because people don't particularly don't want to work or are badly affected by welfare dependency and the rest of it, or their dependance on government largess. But I don't think we spend a constant... I don't think we have a constant menu as he put it of that sort of thing.

You know, O'Reilly does segments, some of them tongue and cheek with Jesse Watters where he goes out and finds people who say, you know man, this is great, I'm living on, you know, the American government, I'm eating like a king and so on.

I just don't think we do that so his obsession with our coverage of it seems to be misplaced. But it gets back to this.

The idea that the people in these situations are simply victims, that's an idea that's deeply held with him and he doesn't look at the other side of the argument. He won't... he's not interested in it and he doesn't believe it.

KURTZ: There's another side to the argument and there should be a debate about that.

Sure Howie. Whatever you say. I'm sure we'll get to look forward to more "fair and balanced" debates on the issue like the one you just had here with Brit.

And everyone keep in mind that Hume has just thrown Jesse Watters completely under the bus the next time you see one of them taking one of his welfare queen segments seriously.

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