One easy way to stay under the radar is to have one’s cable show on one of those stations which makes one say “Oh, really? We get that too? Okay then!”
John Stossel has likely discovered this; once given his own program on the Fox Business Network (DISH 206, Thursdays 9 PM) the creatively entitled Stossel, he’s been smacking around targets which generally earn a great deal of vitriol from the mainstream media. But although he’s positioned himself as staunchly libertarian, he continues to pull off such feats as dedicating an entire hour to Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged without so much as a peep from the usual vanguards.
The Man… The Stache. Via
Perhaps it’s because he’s done quite enough to piss off the right as well as the left. For years the hard- nosed consumer reporter for ABC’s 20/20, he made no friends in the business sector. In addition, in a recent program, he identified himself as “a skeptic” and self- identified as an agnostic. That’s not likely to pull him under the wing of the religious right.
But in Stossels’ final years at 20/20, he often contributed segments which directed shots over the bow of big government, public schools, and affirmative action– and this was well before the Tea Party was one Rant Heard ‘Round the World away from making the Gadsten flag a fashionable bestseller amongst conservatives. He’s been sounding a Limbaugh- like bell for decades, and yet earns nowhere near Limbaugh’s press, derision or attention.
The key is that from the beginning, as a libertarian, Stossel refused to align himself with either party. By clinging to the roots of his consumer advocate past, he’s grown into the quite unusual role of breathing fire without gaining the label of a firebrand.
