Fox News Honors MLK Day by . . . Bashing Ron Paul

Part of Fox News’s coverage of today’s MLK national holiday has included—what else?—bashing Ron Paul.

Having done some stories on Paul and his zealous grassroots followers, I’m aware they think Fox News is out to smear them. I was only half convinced of this after several Paul “followers” forwarded YouTube clips of Paul’s interaction with Fox reporters. Sure, many of them are caustic to him, but Fox news doesn’t hire anchors for their friendliness.

But this Fox article affirms the network and its minions have it out for Paul in particular. Why else would they anchor their MLK Day coverage around tired, already-effused accusations that Paul disparaged Dr. King in old newsletters called the “Ron Paul Political Report”?

The accusation goes that Paul slandered blacks in general and Dr. King in particular in his series of newsletters around 1990. One excerpt—found in links to the newsletter popping up all over the Internet—has "Paul" saying “King, the FBI files show, was not only a world-class adulterer, he also seduced underage girls and boys.”

Paul has been confronted with the accusation many times since his bid for the presidential post. Each time, he claims the harsh words to be the work of a ghostwriter: He was too busy, he says, to pen all of his newsletters. Convenient and/or irresponsible? Perhaps.

But that doesn’t change the fact that this is still old news, and certainly not warranting of the splashy, faux-timely “headline” steering Fox’s “coverage” of Dr. King’s holiday.

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Posted by salman22 on February 26, 2008, 2:47 pm

This is a TEST Comment
Salman Khan
Salman Khan
http://www.google.com/

Posted by Joe Hyde on January 21, 2008, 4:40 pm

We are having a Republican family feud right now in the Hyde household over which Republican to support. I am leaning towards McCain because combat pilots have to stick together. Everyone else is leaning Huckabee, except my mom who likes Romney. I have no idea why, but I give her points for her wisdom. She is, after all, my mom.

With that being said, I was concerned about the Ron Paul newsletters. I looked into it. A good acquaintance, and blogger, who is also an attorney in Austin named Jerri Ward has a very reasoned explaination for them:

I have seen vile slander and speculation on blogs about some of the Ron Paul newsletters put out in the late 1980’s and early 1990’s. There have been calls for Ron Paul to “apologize” and “take responsibility” for them.
Of course, he has done all this throughout the years. He has made clear that the buck stops with him at least since the first time I heard about it in 1996 when Karl Rove, at the behest of then Gov. Bush, armed liberal Democrat Lefty Morris with the information for the latter’s run against Dr. Paul.
I have read Dr. Paul’s writings created all the way back to the 1970’s and the subject newsletters—and I say “subject” because the suggestion that there are 3 decades of letters filled with the subject matter considered offensive is a gross distortion of the truth—and it is evident to me that he did not write them. They are antithetical to his gentlemanly style and to the beliefs that he has professed since the beginning. (source)

The newsletters aren't much of an issue. What is an issue is how the world can a Ron Paul administration hold together his coalition of left wing anti-war fruitcakes and Atlas Shrugged-toting Ayn Rand nutcases? They come from completely different ends of the political spectrum.

Fox News Honors MLK Day by . . . Bashing Ron Paul

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