Where's the CBS Face Palm, Bob Schieffer?

As has been well pointed out by Jazz Shaw at HotAir, Bob Schieffer, veteran CBS newscaster, has now endeavored to up the ante on his recent close questioning of the Obama Administration's fast-talking propagandist, Dan Pfeiffer, to the point of now lecturing President Obama on the need for the administration to examine its communications policy.

Jazz has helpfully posted the full transcript of Schieffer's soapbox spiel, but the money line from Bob seems to be this one:

"The President needs to rethink his entire communications policy top to bottom. It is hurting his credibility and shortchanging the public."

Now, many of us could not agree more. But for Bob Schieffer to be mouthing this seems more than just a little hypocritical.

In other words, he's absolutely right. But he's hardly the right guy to be making the case!

It should occur to anyone who has been paying attention that there is quite a large measure of hypocrisy involved in any of the top figures at CBS lecturing the President on his "communications policy" when it pretty clearly appears to be the case that they were key communications enablers of the President during the fall Presidential Campaign, having quietly helped him to put one over on the American people during the run up to the election.

As a result, the venerable CBS newscaster Bob Schieffer may really need to examine his own damn "communications policy," and most certainly that of the CBS television network, particularly with respect to their highly suspicious handling of one key video clip from an interview of Barack Obama by Steve Kroft, conducted by the CBS 60 Minutes team on September 12, 2012, right after the President's Rose Garden remarks made in response to the Benghazi attacks -- the clip was of Obama openly and deliberately downplaying the possible role of terror in the attack when he was specifically asked by Kroft if it was a "terrorism attack."

Here was the key question and answer during that September 12, 2012 interview:

. . .
STEVE KROFT: Mr. President, this morning you went out of your way to avoid the use of the word terrorism in connection with the Libya Attack, do you believe that this was a terrorism attack?

PRESIDENT OBAMA: Well it’s too early to tell exactly how this came about, what group was involved, but obviously it was an attack on Americans. And we are going to be working with the Libyan government to make sure that we bring these folks to justice, one way or the other.
. . . .

That exchange, at the time utterly unknown to the American public because someone at CBS hid it before it aired, obviously gained high newsworthy significance during the heart of the Presidential campaign last fall, particularly during and in the immediate aftermath of the second presidential debate which was held on October 16th, the one moderated by the failed fact-checker, CNN's hapless Candy Crowley, when she initially agreed with the President's risible claim that he had called the attack a "terrorism attack" right from the get-go.  In fact, he had obviously done no such thing!

That conclusion was also just recently arrived at by the Washington Post, with their "posthumous" awarding of their notorious "four Pinocchios award," a mere 8 months after the comments were made, and only half a year after the election itself was held.

Of major news organizations, only Fox News sounded the alarm about the quiet posting of the tape on the CBS website before the election, here.  CBS had done so without notice, and obviously too late for the newsworthy clip to matter in the election, at least without stories appearing on the news.  Funny how the WaPo missed those Fox stories at the time of the release, huh?

And, great timing by our other mainstream news giants all around, no?

Regardless of it's newsworthy significance from the second debate on, that clip remained curiously buried by one or more unknown "bigs" at the CBS network, with the prime "suspects" including -- in addition to third presidential debate moderator, and long time CBS News anchor, Bob Schieffer -- the following specific individuals, to wit: CBS News President, David Rhodes (brother of Ben Rhodes, Deputy Nat'l Security Adviser to Barack Obama, and NSA Benghazi "talking points" editor); and/or Patricia Shevlin, Executive Producer of the CBS Evening News; and/or, CBS Evening News prime anchor (and active 60 Minutes contributor) Scott Pelly; and or, CBS 60 Minutes interviewer, Steve Kroft; and or, CBS 60 Minutes Executive Editor, Bill Owens.

Any one or more of those individuals may have played an active or passive role in their game of "Shhhh . . . Let's Hide the Tape." But they're not talking.

And yet, Bob Schieffer now deigns to lecture the President, telling him that he has a "communications policy" problem, when one or more of several CBS bigwig compatriots of his -- possibly including Schieffer himself -- quietly participated in a news blackout on that clip last fall that likely affected the outcome of the 2012 Presidential Election?

Well, shake my head!  Seems like this current crop at the "Tiffany Network" has nothing on mere pikers like Dan Rather and Mary Mapes!

My father, who sadly passed away some 35 years ago, had a great old-time expression to describe an obvious hypocrite.

He'd shake his head and say, "Jeez, that guy has more nerve than a one-legged man at an ass kicker's convention."

Schieffer would have earned a "one-kick" nod from Dad over this latest mission of his!