President Obama, Bill O'Reilly go head to head over Fox News in interview

Here's the one clip you may wish to watch today - Bill O'Reilly and President Barack Obama in a good-natured dispute over the "fairness" of Fox News. Of course, one is left here to interpret both the meaning of "good-natured" and "fair," but that's your call. 

  This was the portion of Sunday's pre-Super Bowl interview that was taped beforehand, and was not televised. You can perhaps see why - given the president's pointed criticism of Fox. But it's an interesting exchange, and hardly hostile, although it does point up the fact that presidents - all presidents - hate their media coverage. (And...cue to what the Chicago Tribune and Joseph Medill wrote about Abraham Lincoln during the Civil War, and they were Lincoln supporters! The Trib - which helped elect Lincoln - harangued him repeatedly, and when some editors and the boss came to D.C. to protest the draft, Lincoln rhetorically kicked 'em to the curb: "And you, Medill, are acting like a coward.... you cry to be spared at a moment when the cause is suffering. Go home and send us those men." )

  And I've drifted seriously off-topic; sorry. But my point is that presidents and their press have a long and fraught history, as you know. The interview was posted in full this morning on Foxnews.com. For the presidential anti-Fox censure, scroll forward to the five minute mark.

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