Chris Wallace to Fox hosts: Two hours of Obama-bashing is enough David Edwards and Mike Sheehan

Published: Friday March 21, 2008



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Print This Email This Veteran journalist Chris Wallace admonished Fox & Friends over their characterization of a comment in which Obama referred to his grandmother as a "typical white person." "I love you guys, but I want to take you to task if I may respectfully for a moment," Wallace began. "I have been watching the show..., and it seems to me that two hours of Obama-bashing on this 'typical white person' remark is somewhat excessive, and frankly, I think you're somewhat distorting what Obama had to say." As the F&F hosts began grinning and shifting around in their seats, Wallace continued, "What he said was, 'The point I was making was not that my [grandmother] harbors any racial animosity--she doesn't--but she is a typical white person...,'" which is where you generally have clipped it." As co-host Steve Doocy denied the charge, Wallace continued, "But what he went on to say is, '...who, if she sees somebody on the street that she doesn't know, there's a reaction that's been bred into our experiences that don't go away and that sometimes comes out in the wrong way, and that's just the nature of race in our society.'" Added Wallace, "I'm not saying that's the most felicitous remark that anybody ever made, but I think it's a little more complicated than we've been portraying." Doocy interjected again, saying, "It just seems curious, because Barack Obama said this..., but had Hillary Clinton said something on the other side, had she said, 'Well, that's a typical Irish person, Polish person, Italian person, Swedish person,' whatever, it'd hit the fan!" Responded Wallace, "I've been watching on and off for a couple of hours and every clip I've seen ends at 'that's a typical white person,' when in fact he's going on to discuss the nature of race in our country, and again, I'm not saying if he had it do over again that he'd necessarily say it that way, but I don't think that he was making a hyper-racial remark." "I guess I just feel like on a day when he's been endorsed by Bill Richardson, and we have this story about the passports," he added, "I feel like two hours of Obama-bashing may be enough." The F&F hosts responded to Wallace with vehement defenses, but Wallace said that after Obama had given major speeches this week on race, Iraq, and the economy, his campaign might suggest that "in terms of deflecting attention away from the issues people really want to hear about, maybe it's the media doing it, not Barack Obama." Wallace, son of 60 Minutes veteran Mike Wallace and reportedly a registered Democrat, is himself a Fox News host, which underscores his remarkable defense of the embattled Democratic presidential frontrunner. Sam Graham-Felsen, a media staffer for the Obama campaign, wrote the following in a blog post at Obama's official campaign site: We appreciate Chris Wallace for doing his job as a tough but fair journalist on a network that has been deeply irresponsible over the last week in its unrelenting and sensationalistic coverage of Senator Obama. Senator Obama gave the speech he did on Tuesday because he believes that Americans are ready for a thoughtful, mature discussion about race, and are hungry to move past media-generated controversies that distract from the struggles they face in their everyday lives. If Fox News wants to play clips of the same offensive sound bites every day from now until November, that's their right, but that type of coverage does a disservice to their viewers and to a nation that is facing serious challenges that merit thoughtful and honest reporting. Earlier, before Wallace appeared on the show, F&F co-host Brian Kilmeade had temporarily walked off the set after Doocy made a crack at him after heated discussion of the Obama remark.





