The Fox Factor

Peter Suderman doesn't understand why netroots types get so upset when Democrats go on Fox News:

Perhaps I’m not enough of a partisan, but I wouldn’t be bothered — in fact, I’d be rather thrilled — to see any conservative candidate, especially one I particularly liked, do an interview with Keith Olbermann, or even, say, a sit down with The Nation.

The difference between Fox and The Nation is that The Nation makes no pretense of being anything other than what it is. If a conservative politician sits down for an interview with Katrina vanden Heuvel or Eric Alterman or Chris Hayes or any other worthy Nationeer they'd be engaged in an interesting exercise in reaching out to self-consciously progressive media. Fox News, by contrast, is heavily invested in selling the idea that it's a "fair and balance" straight news source even though it's run by former GOP political operatives and people go from being Fox anchors to running the White House press shop.

Sitting down for Fox interviews is thought to lend legitimacy to this pretense of neutrality that Fox is seeking to foster, a pretense that makes Fox's anti-Democrat biases all the more damaging to Democrats.