Fox News video bio on Edwards noted criticism of haircuts, legal career -- but Huckabee bio featured no criticism
On the January 3 edition of Fox News Live, host Shepard Smith aired two reports as part of his "Before They Were Candidates" series: one on former Sen. John Edwards (D-NC) and one on former Gov. Mike Huckabee (R-AR). Smith -- who narrated both reports -- began the Edwards piece by saying "John Edwards took a lot of heat for his $400 haircut" and airing a brief clip from a YouTube video showing Edwards adjusting his hair while the song "I Feel Pretty" from the musical West Side Story played. Later in the piece, Smith said that "[c]ritics have called him an ambulance chaser." By contrast, the Huckabee piece included no mention of any criticism directed at him.
The video of Edwards grooming has been repeatedly shown on Fox News, as Media Matters noted.
From the 2 p.m. ET hour of the January 3 edition of Fox News Live:
SMITH: John Edwards, you know, likes to talk about the "two Americas." In fact, Juan Williams was telling me last night that of all the political speeches that he's seen of this entire election season, the one that raised the roof the most, that really brought people up was that speech by John Edwards. "Two Americas," one for the rich, one for the poor. He's lived both of them. He's also endured his share of tragedy and a lot of heartache along the way, even on the campaign trail. As a part of our series, let's take a look back before they were candidates.
[begin video clip]
SMITH: John Edwards took a lot of heat for his $400 haircut.
FEMALE VOICE [singing]: I feel pretty. Oh, so pretty.
SMITH: But, as you may have heard him mention, he comes from more humble roots.
EDWARDS: And it was a two-room house in a mill village in South Carolina.
SMITH: Seneca, South Carolina --
VIDEO CLIP: I was born in a small town.
SMITH: -- where Edwards was born on June 10, 1953.
EDWARDS: My father had to borrow $50 to get me and my mother out of the hospital.
SMITH: Edwards lived in five different towns before he was 12 years old. His family would move every time his dad was transferred to a new mill. They finally settled in Robbins, North Carolina, when Edwards was in the seventh grade. He was the first in his family to go to college , graduating from NC State. Then UNC law school where he met his wife, Elizabeth. They married in 1977, the Saturday after they took the bar exam. His wedding ring cost $22. Hers, $11. But they were soon living, as Edwards would put it, in "the other America."
They had two children, Wade and Cate. And Edwards made millions as a trial lawyer. Critics have called him an ambulance chaser, but he doesn't apologize for his success, saying he's always fought for the little guy. In 1995, to get over his fear of heights, Edwards climbed Mount Kilimanjaro with his son, Wade. Less than a year later, Wade was killed in a car crash. He was but 16 years old. Within four years, John and Elizabeth had two more children.
EDWARDS: This is Emma Claire and this is Jack.
SMITH: And in 2004, Edwards made his first run for the White House before becoming John Kerry' s running mate. Then the same day they conceded the election, Elizabeth was diagnosed with breast cancer.
Three years later, Edwards was back on the campaign trail when his wife's cancer came back. This time, it was treatable but incurable. John and Elizabeth Edwards, though, refused to let the disease derail their dreams.
ELIZABETH EDWARDS: It's unbelievably important that we get this election right.
JOHN EDWARDS: Both of us are committed to the cause. We're committed to changing this country that we love so much.
[end video clip]
SMITH: We'll have much more on all the front-runners before they were candidates later in this hour and tonight on the Fox Report, 6 o'clock Central time.
[...]
SMITH: The Huckabee campaign's hoping for some of those undecided voters to give him a chance tonight. There's a lot that you may not know about Mike Huckabee. He's been a guitar player. He's been a preacher and a marathon man. And today as a part of our series, we're checking out how it all began for Mike Huckabee. A look back before they were candidates.
[begin video clip]
SMITH: Call him "the other man from Hope." Michael Dale Huckabee, born here in Hope, Arkansas, 1955 -- nine years after another pretty well-known politician.
Huckabee's father, Dorsey, a fireman and a mechanic. His mother, Mae, an office assistant at the local gas company. Huckabee found music here in Hope. He says on Christmas 1966, his gift was an electric guitar straight from the J.C. Penney catalog. He says he played the thing until his fingers bled. Huckabee never really left behind his love for music. Even today, he still plays bass in his band, Capitol Offense. He's opened for Willie Nelson and the Charlie Daniels Band, played at two presidential inauguration balls. Huckabee graduated from Hope High School, the first man in his family to get a diploma. And he went to Ouachita Baptist University in Arkadelphia, where he married Janet, his high school sweetheart, and majored in biblical studies. He would go on to become the youngest-ever president of the Arkansas Baptist State Convention.
HUCKABEE: The joys of knowing Jesus Christ. The joy of knowing what it means to follow him.
SMITH: And you know if Mike Huckabee were to be elected to the White House, he wouldn't be the first preacher to make it there. James Garfield blazed that trail. Big-time politics began for Huckabee in 1993, elected Arkansas' lieutenant governor and a year later, governor for a four-year term, only the third Republican governor there since Reconstruction. He served until 2007, and Time magazine honored him as one of the five best governors in all the land, but along the way, Huckabee faced serious health issues. In March of 2003, a doctor diagnosed him with Type 2 diabetes and warned if he didn't change his life, he'd be dead within a decade. Huckabee took that warning seriously. He dropped more than a hundred pounds and within two years had completed four marathons. Today, Mike Huckabee tries to teach other Americans his lessons. He wrote a book called Quit Digging your Grave with a Knife and Fork. It aims to show folks how to live healthier lives. Just a little extra help, courtesy of a man from Hope.
[end video clip]
SMITH: A man from Hope is live with us right now. Sir, great to see you. How's it going?
HUCKABEE: It's going great, Shep. That was a nice piece. I appreciate you doing that.
SMITH: Well, we appreciate your campaign giving us some nice pictures.
What do you expect from Fox (har har) "news?"
"Fair and balanced?"
Face it, they are as "fair and balanced" as I am the emperor of the entire world.
Thank you for your kind words, my liege....
CURIOSITY ... what kind of WINE does SOLON drink, which is able to post online? A full-throated, strong bodied wine, I'd expect.
Welcome, SOLON's WINE, to MMFA!
Ooooohhh, FACE!
Archae, couldn't agree more.
By now it should not be 'news' that Fox is ANYTHING BUT a news source or news programing. They are an outlet for conservative/Republican propaganda information and they make no bones about it. Unfortunately everyone else seems determined to paint Fox as a news source. This to shall pass, hopefully sooner rather than later.
"This to shall pass, hopefully sooner rather than later."
Yeah...... like a kidney stone 3X larger than normal
"Critics have called him an ambulance chaser, but he doesn't apologize for his success..."--Shep.
Ya gotta just love the way they remind their viewers of what other people have called him, then mention in an off-handed way [he doesn't apologize] that Edwards is okay with being an ambulance chaser. I wonder when Fox "News" will stop bothering with the shred of fact, and jump right into misquotes and outright lies like Limbaugh, O'Reilly, and Hannity presently employ.
I can't believe Huckabee won in Iowa. Scary to think those folks that supported that two bit phony will be allowed to vote...what a bunch of dumbasses.
Congrats to Obama :-)
So, Jeter, you're saying you don't like Huck that much?(I'm trying to read between the lines).
But I think Ol' Sheps motives are understandable- any criticism directed at the GOPper was probably unfounded smears from the librul media, and not worth repeating.Unlike Edwards offenses of having hair and a law degree.
I watched both Huckabee and Obamas victory speeches.I realize those are mostly campaign talk and a good amount of platitudes, but in my biased opinion,and based on their respective speeches, Huck would be underqualified to answer phones for Obama HQ.
Hmm..so you like the Dem better than the Republican.
Whodathunkit? ;-)
Bruce, I put duct tape across the bottom of my TV screen a few years ago, obscuring the (R)s and (D)s so that I could base my opinions entirely on unbiased observation. How dare you !
I hope you relaize I wasn't trying to pretend that I had these guys in a dead heat until recently,I've known whose positions were more aligned with mine for a while (duh), I was only saying that I've seen the gap widen between these two men as far as my opinion of their character.
Not to mention, I included "...but in my biased opinion.", in case anybody thought I was trying to pass as an impartial journalist like Sean Hannity or Cindy Sheehan. ;0)
Fair Enough! For the record I prefer Obama over Huckabee as well!
But I'm still expecting a Clinton victory in the long run based on national polling.
It gets tougher for Obama now that he is the perceived frontrunner.
Jeter, people must not have read the MMFA article and realized how scandalous this man really is. How dare he act like a politician, and with such shrewdness!
Reading an mmfa article about Huckabee would be like listening to a fox report on Edwards. Do ya think it might be a bit slanted against him, filled with lies and inuendos??
uhm...no. Do you have an example of an MMfA article that's filled with lies about Huckabee? I'd really like to see it.
So Fox IS a biased, partisan news outfit. Thanks for the confirmation.
Anyway, some of the harshest criticism of Huck is coming from the economic royalists on the right. They don't like his lack of servility to the robber barons. This is just a hoot to watch. The very candidate that those self-same image makers on the right purport to hold in the highest esteem; The Christian Conservative mold, is not conservative enough for the Party elites.
What a Party of intractable hypocrites and peevish phonies!
On the other hand, this is a heartening development for the democratic process. It may be a sign that rank and file Republicans want to take their Party out of the hands of the Party boss man.
Either way, it's electoral doom for the GOP!
Phil, you apparently don't understand the concept of comparison. lies and innuendo (fox) isn't the same thing as reporting what was said and providing the exact transcript to back it up (MMFA). Nice try though.
AN INTERESTING GENERAL ELECTION factoid:
Have you heard, the TOTAL Iowa Caucus goers who showed up to vote demonstrated an overwhelming desire for CHANGE? And an overwhelming REJECTION of Republicans?
That there were 240,000 Democratic votes, as opposed to the 115,000 that showed up to support Republicans?
That winner Huckabee's 38% was won by a mere 40,000 votes, while Iowa's 3rd placing Democrat, Hillary Clinton, pulled in 72,000 votes?
If a general election, Democrat Barack Obama would have won in a 70%+ LANDSLIDE over the Republican "favorite", Mike Huckabee?
These are the REAL numbers the GOP is facing. Our "MEDIA" will do their best to make it look like a nose-to-nose horserace, with Huckabee looking like his 34% is nipping at Obama's 38% heels, but that is a tragically distorted and partisan portrayal.
The TRUTH is, the GOP suffered a huge and devastating blowout in Iowa, one that shows they haven't a PRAYER of winning in 2008. Any reporting of a "contest" is just manufactured hoopla to prop up the GOP, and make them look like "contenders".
It's over, guys!
I figured I'd observed an annoying example of misinformation/misreporting last night, when I consistently saw raw vote totals being reported for Mr. Huckabee (39,000+) et al Republican candidates, but no such thing for the Democratic candidates, instead being told for them what numbers of Delegates to the State's Convention they had earned (for Mr. Obama, it seems about 940)...
39,000 versus 940
All I wanted to know was how many Democratic Iowans turned out, that's what I wanted from CNN Fox and MSNBC, and they wouldn't tell me... even this morning, the fact of how many good folks in Iowa participated in this caucus as Democrats, and how many as Republicans, this fact seems strangely under-reported, and not very noteworthy I guess.
And I log in here at MMFA to note my observation/suspicion, and BANG! Tex beat me to the punch!
Yep, that's this morning's Truth, if you want to know it... that's today's real headline, if you care:
Republican front-runner Mike Huckabee finished A DISTANT FOURTH PLACE in the Hearts and Minds of Iowans yersterday...
That's a fact (or "factoid" as Tex called it):
The Republican choice Mike Huckabee finished A DISTANT FOURTH PLACE in Iowa yersterday...
...and guess who's bending over backwards in their attempts not to report that fact:
a) CNN
b) Foxnews
c) MSNBC
or d) All of the above
I'm not sure when or what channel you were watching but MSNBC consistently spoke about the huge Democratic turnout last night compared to the Republicans. It was a major theme.
And I can tell you that the other cable channels spoke often of the heavy Democratic turnout as compared to the Republicans - it was hardly ignored in any of the coverage I saw either Bruce......but to spin Huckabee's win as coming in fourth behind Clinton is rich, indeed.
Fact is there is little oomph for any of the Republican candidates, they are a paltry bunch that split the party all over the map.
DEM,
What worries me thou (I'm sure this will change after tonites Kieth Olbermann) is that KO was with Chris Matthews and had to know that it was streaming across that way but he said nothing about it.......
Showing actual vote counts for the Reps and only delegates for the Dems.....
If anyone from the Countdown show see's this post of mine......
PLEASE REPORT THE ACTUAL NUMBER OF VOTERS THAT VOTED FOR THE DEMS IN IOWA LAST NIGHT AND COMPARE THAT TO THE REPUBS NUMBERS ON TONITES SHOW!
Should make for a fun time!
ps..... Sorry, I didn't mean to yell. Is everyones ears ok? I'll get the cottonballs....
And for the record, just so we all know the facts and the numbers and the truth, out of approximately 347,000 Iowans who participated in yesterday's caucus...
About 89,800 (25.9%) registered their support of Sen. Obama's presidential bid
Mr. Edwards had the support of 70,900 (20.4%) Iowans yesterday
Sen. Clinton was supported by a near equal amount of Iowans as Mr. Edwards, with 70,500 (20.3%)
...and trotting in after those three horses (all in the money so to speak), in a distant fourth place, is Mr. Huckabee, supported by 39,800 (11.5%) of Iowans in yesterday's caucus
And running just behind his butt, was the horse named Mr. Romney, in a distant fifth place with the support of 29,400 (08.5%) of Iowans yesterday.
I looked at the results on cnn.com and boston.com.
At first glance it appeared that Sen. Obama received a total of 940 votes while Gov. Huckabee got some 39000 odd votes.
Both posted foot notes.
CNN: Instead of releasing caucus vote totals, the Iowa Democratic Party releases a total estimating the number of delegates to the state convention each candidate will receive.
boston.com: Democratic vote totals are based on an estimate of the number of state convention delegates a candidate would receive.
"factoid" is the wrong word. A "factoid" is a bit of conventional wisdom that is believed to be true but is, in fact, false.
From Wikipedia
A factoid is a spurious (unverified, incorrect, or invented) "fact" intended to create or prolong public exposure or to manipulate public opinion. It appears in the Oxford English Dictionary[1] as "something which becomes accepted as fact, although it may not be true"
Tex, perhaps they were working?
BEN:
GOP turnout down, because potential delegates were "working"? Could be, there's a lot of work which is pressing in this nation.
A virtual army is needed to handle foreclosures on people's homes. There are bankruptsies to be managed. Guys with ladders are kept busy changing the price on those gas-station signs, and the manufactures of the "$3" prefix can't keep up with the demand.
"Downsizing" requires a lot of paperwork, laying folks off, and on the other end finding the cheapest labor markets overseas.
Domestic spying is perhaps the largest growth industry going ... with computerized gathering of ALL communications, crews must be busy around the clock listening, sorting, filing, and dealing with all that data.
Alberto Gonzales doesn't live in Iowa, but there are government attorneys all over the land that work 24/7 just trying to remember ... anything at all!
Business is slowing for military gravediggers, but it's still a steady flow. Physical Therapists have seen the need BOOM for their services, with 30,000 and counting maimed and dismembered participants in Bush's Iraq War, young people whose lives will never be the same.
Bankers are working double shifts making sure the cash-flow into tax-free Cayman Island accounts runs smoothly. Who knows how many accountants fill their days, as in ENRON, with creating bogus corporations for profitable money-shuffles?
So, yeah, a lot of work has been created by the current GOP administration, so it may be that caucus attendance was down on account of those excellent work ethics of conservatives.
Tex, I hope you have a much bigger audience with your day job, you deserve a national column about a million time more than most I read! Keep up the good work, oh, and I occaisionally copy and paste your work in letters to the editor. From now on I'll start crediting you.
Good post Tex. And to my amazment Tim Russert made the same points on MNBC this morning. Who woulda thunk.
I want to know more about Huckabee's belief that Noah herded the dinosaurs onto the ark.
This man, like Giuliani, is indeed very scary.
I want to know more about Huckabee's belief that Noah herded the dinosaurs onto the ark.
Personally, I believe that anyone who thinks the Bible should be taken literally has a few screws loose. The Bible is NOT the word of God - it's fiction, and bad fiction at that.
How exactly do you herd a T-Rex? Cattle dogs? And at what point on the boat trip have all of the other boat occupants been consumed?? This should be an algebra problem for the home schooled...
You'd be surprised: there are actually a fair number of progressives homeschooling their kids. And we resist herding of all kinds :-)
No offense meant to the enlightened - I have a co-worker that home schools his children, but mostly because we do a lot of travel in our business and he takes his family with him - but around 75-80% of the home schooled are evangelical Christians, and they're just indoctrinating their kids. Really unfortunate for the kids
Interesting perspective but the statistics on home schooling are pretty good overall compared with public education.
Also, I belive many pro-homeschool families would say that they home school precisely to avoid indoctrination. Just depends on where you're coming from.
http://www.chec.org/Legislative/News/HomeschoolingStatistics/Index.html
The only problem I have with homeschooling is that the kids don't get the same kind of social education you get from public or private schools. Other than that, it's usually a pretty good idea.
My wife and I watched about an hour of coverage on Fox and an hour or so on CNN last night - what a contrast. CNN gave almost equal coverage to both the Republican and Democratic caususes, whereas about the only thing on Fox that was equal time was the results ticker at the bottom of the screen. You almost would not have know the Democrats were caucusing without the ticker. Just an unbelievable display of bias.
And you're surprised?
No, just dismayed - my father in law is a hardcore conservative with really nowhere to go. He's convinced that liberalism is a poison on society and that my wife and I need to open our minds to new information - he's an ardent Fox news watcher - I actually turned on the parental lockout for Fox on my cable box while they were here during Xmas - hoping to reverse some of the damage...
LOC, did the In-Laws accuse you of resorting to censorship because you couldn't compete in the arena of ideas? ;0)
Thankfully, no -my father in law is actually a really well meaning guy who does a lot for others, but has some really whacked out political ideas. He's a retired Navy officer, my brother in law is an active Navy officer, and used to be of really similar political views with his dad, but is slowly seeing the other side as time goes by. What really, really amazes me?? How can two people who have made their entire careers in the government hate government so much?? And how can ANYONE believe, at this point, that the GOP is for small government after the last 7 years? Oh, well, don't confuse them with the facts - their heads may explode...
LEFT:
Ah, the quandry of relatives who consider FOX NEWS their "continuing education".
Here's a defining question to ask people who consider themselves staunchly conservative or libertarian. Ask them if the law should be changed to allow emergency rooms to refuse service to anyone who cannot prove on the spot the ability to pay the bill.
See, if someone ELSE gets to pay the bill, that's flat-out "SOCIALISM", as defined by our conservative brethren. A true conservative/libertarian would make the call, OF COURSE service should be denied to those not able to prove ability to pay. That is the PRINCIPLED and CONSISTENT stance, although it would re-define America in terms of morality, spirit, and character.
Nearly every "staunch" or "arch" Conservative you ask would say, "Of COURSE the mortally ill or injured should receive treatment, you can't just turn away a woman and her children injured in a car accident, just because she can't prove she can pay for the treatment needed to save their lives."
That is the correct answer, the RIGHT answer ... but it is also an admission that SOME "Socialism" is necessary in society.
From then on, you as a Liberal, and your friend as a "Principled Conservative", can discuss the DEGREE of Socialism that makes for a good society (and you can just smile when they claim that "principled" part).
hehe...that's my mom too. She HATED Clinton. I mean hated him. At Christmas she asked who I was going to vote for. I told her Obama, and she started going off on how she hated Hillary too. I asked her why, and she was like "well, I just did not like Clinton, how he conducted himself in the White House." I kept asking her why she hated Hillary, and she kept talking about Bill.
I think she's going for Huckabee, cuz she's pretty religious. Either way, she's not holding out much hope for this election.
Well, let's just hope that all the conservative evangelicals stay home next November - the devout really frighten me - I'm not capable of blind faith in anything, just doesn't work for me at all, and my wife is exactly the same way. But we're in Texas, buckle of the Bible Belt, so we pretty much keep our views on that to ourselves around our neighbors unless we're pressured in some way - at which point I have no qualms about telling them I just don't believe - if they're offended, too bad. We're in Denton County, which is just about the most consistently Republican county in the US. I guess I won't be running for local office any time soon....
LEFT:
Those "evangelicals" took the credit for the flood of votes that put GW Bush in office (actually, that put him close enough that some rigging in Florida and Ohio allowed him to claim victory), how'd they make out?
What did they get for their effort? A self-defined "Born Again Christian" who forwards policy which is directly OPPOSITE of the teachings of Christ. Take care of the WEALTHY, not the poor! Coddle the money-lenders! Be your brother's landlord, not his keeper. Bomb thy neighbor, love is out of the question. Render unto Caesar? Not on your life ... BUILD THE DEBT, that's the ticket!
Ah, but on issues like abortion and education vouchers and gay 'rights' -- where they voted BUSH to get changes in LAW to suit their beliefs -- how'd THAT work out for them?
Absolutely ZERO delivery on their desired agenda.
So, it really doesn't matter what a politician might promise when pandering to the religious right zealots. They have "lost faith" in politicians being willing or able to deliver, and that is so dispiriting ... they'll stay home. Muttering.
DBEDEN:
Don't worry. After President Hillary wraps up her second term, VP Obama will be ready for HIS two terms, the standard "succession" seen most often in American Politics.
Obama will be older, wiser, more experienced, much better known, and with a record of accomplishment.
OBAMA 2016 (to 2024) would be a great thing, in my estimation.
HUCKABEE: It's going great, Shep. That was a nice piece. I appreciate you doing that.
SMITH: Well, we appreciate your campaign giving us some nice pictures.
Get a room!
It's notable that Obama's inspiring victory speech was directly contrary to the comments on this, and nearly every other thread, pervading MM. There ran a unifying theme all throughout his speech, calling for an end to the petty divisiveness and rabid party politics permeating this site and its reading disciples. In contrast to the angry, partisan left, which includes MM's candidate (Clinton), Obama welcomes the opportunity to work with Republicans. And rather than continue with the same old bickering and "us" v. "them" mentality indulged in by partisan hacks (MM), Obama looks beyond the "red' state, "blue" state banalities, and specifically calls on all regular Americans to unite together.
I realize that the fundamental purpose of this site is to be partisan left at all costs, but it's worth noting that the leading candidate from the left side of the aisle specifically rejects this approach. I implore you all to read his speech, and then compare it to the speech of the bitter, angry Hillary. Presently Obama seems like a wonderful presidential candidate. Let's just hope that he doesn't seep to the level of the far left, who'd prefer the country to be split down the middle along partisan lines, and who can't seem to see beyond their party affiliation.
Until sites like MRC (which has been around A LOT longer than MMFA), newsbusters, olbermann watch etc... shutdown their websites or somehow make themselves "fair" and look at both sides, then I suggest you take your babble somewhere else. The purpose of this website is to monitor and debunk/combat conservative misinformation, LIES AND SLANDER. IF you don't like it.... TOUGH! Find another website to whine on.
"Let's just hope that he doesn't seep to the level of the far left, who'd prefer the country to be split down the middle along partisan lines, and who can't seem to see beyond their party affiliation."
Comment:
Another nut job projecting again, sighs, "rolls eyes"
Let's just hope that he doesn't seep to the level of the far right, who'd prefer the country to be split down the middle along partisan lines, and who can't seem to see beyond their party affiliation."
There I fixed it for you..