This video with CNN anchor Susan Roesgen is pretty unreal. She attends the Chicago tea party, picks some wacko out of the crowd and tries to argue with him about whether Obama’s a fascist (and even then the guy with the ridiculous Obama-as-Hitler sign comes off more willing to engage in discussion than her), then she talks to a guy who seems perfectly reasonable and rudely cuts him off multiple times. She then attacks Fox News, ranting that the crowd is anti-CNN and says that the tea party is not “family viewing.” Of all the leftist protests I’ve covered over the years — and I’ve covered many of them — I have never seen a reporter enter the fray and act personally offended by the many, many examples of outrageous behavior at a protest. There’s little to be gained by it, and it’s simply not professional. What Roesgen is doing here pure hackery. Even as grandstanding, she fails. She goes about things with all the subtlety of a brick through a window, and in the end it appears she’s just an angry jerk.
Of course in 2006, Roesgen felt a bit differently regarding President Bush, according to this Newsbusters report:
A protester wearing a George W. Bush mask, complete with a colored in Hitler-esque mustache and red horns attached to the forehead was deemed a Bush “look-alike” by reporter Susan Roesgen … It was then that the demonstrator wearing the Bush mask was highlighted on camera, while Roesgen narrated, “But while a look-alike showed up with a wad of cash, Mr. Bush did not.” The “wad of cash” in the demonstrator’s hand was actually several phony dollar bills mocking the Bush administration.
Roesgen didn’t bother angrily confronting that protester who compared the President to Hitler when Bush was in office. No, she used them as a prop to illustrate her story. Double standard much?
Of course, this is the same Susan Roesgen whose report on Obama speaking at Notre Dame observed that Obama “leans pro-choice” and later said to Wolf Blitzer, “Can you believe that, Wolf, they’re actually praying that God will change the heart and mind of President Obama to make him pro-life?”
Even The Daily Show singled Roesgen out for special ridicule for her desperate attempts to make herself part of the story when she was covering the floods in Fargo. Note to CNN: Take Roesgen out behind the woodshed and mercifully ablate her career before she embarasses you any further.