George Stephanopoulos, please define “obsessed”

This clip is from Sunday, but it's so indicative of the larger Beltway press problem with regards to Fox News, and how media elites turn a blind eye to its Obama era hate rhetoric, that it still requires attention.

Take a look:

Obama, says Stephanopoulos, is “obsessed” with Fox News and to prove it, ABC airs a clip of Obama declining to even mention Fox News by name. Okay, not exactly the best piece of evidence to support the “obsessed” claim, but Stephanopoulos is sure the charge is true.

I have my doubts though. In fact, my hunch is that if somebody at ABC News dug through all of Obama's public comments since becoming president they'd find that Obama has not made any meaningful references to “Fox News.” (i.e Obama may have uttered the words at a count press conferences when calling on a reporter, but nothing more.) So where's the proof he's “obsessed,” a phrase Stephanopoulos did not choose lightly and which was clearly used to suggest that something was creepy about Obama's fixation with Fox News.

Do I even have to point out the obvious, that it's Fox News that's been broadcasting an all-consuming, stalker-like obsession with Obama since January 21? That it's Fox News which has turned bashing and demeaning Obama into its core programming feature for the last five months? That Fox News now positions itself as the Opposition Party to the Obama White House? And that Fox News has portrayed the Democratic president as a Marxist, a socialist and/or a communist who's destroying America on purpose?

For media elites like Stephanopoulos though, who dutifully read off the same pre-approved Beltway script, none of that unhinged behavior by Fox News can be mentioned, let alone called into question. Nobody is supposed to ask out loud why a 'news' organization has unapologetically transformed itself into the Opposition Party. Instead, elites like Stephanopoulos play dumb about the hateful and harmful game Fox News is playing and pretend it's Obama who “obsessed” (he's the weird one!), even though Obama rarely, if ever, mentions Fox News by name.