The Fox News crowd was in full cry at North Ridge the other evening. Along with the usual fare of foxy news babes and red-faced rants about creeping socialism, there was video of the Obamas’ new dog.

It was too much for one man. “Guess who gave him the dog?  Ted Kennedy. What does that tell you?

His friends nodded. Obviously the vast left-wing conspiracy is at work.

Unlike some of my Democratic friends, I enjoy checking out Fox occasionally. Not for long; I can’t imagine anybody ruining their evenings watching those sourpusses. Of course, the liberals on MSNBC bore me, too. I get all the news and views I need from Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert.

Here’s a tip for when Fox and Rush Limbaugh get your blood pressure boiling. Remember that the average age of their viewers and listeners is about 67.

They won’t be around long.

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I read a lot of newspapers. And a lot of newspapers are writing these days about what newspapers could do different to make more money. Like charging people to read content online.

But my friend David Burney said something wise that made me think that won’t work. He said revenue is down at newspapers – and TV stations, for that matter – because ads are down.

That has nothing to do with how readers value the content.

Newspapers and TV stations make money by selling ads. And they’re selling a lot less ads. One story – in a newspaper – said ad revenue at the nation’s newspapers might be down something like 30 percent from last year.

Charging for news content won’t change that.

By the way, a good blog about all things media and more is Talk Politics by Leroy Towns and Anne Johnston at UNC-Chapel Hill. Check it out.

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President Obama had a good week. Adorable pictures of his family and dog. The rescue of the American captain from Somali pirates. Which has to be embarrassing for the person who posted "Our Milquetoast President and the Somali Pirates” in our comments section.

But his best moment – or 45 minutes – was his speech on the economy. Check it out if you didn’t see. Because it distills what makes Obama an uncannily effective politician – to the befuddlement of the cable chatterers.

Obama has an ability – and now, the power – to override today’s attention-deficit information cycle.

He is – at bottom – a teacher. His speech was a lecture to his class. He took the time to spell out exactly what he is doing – and why. You could see the law professor in him.

Like Reagan did with Democrats, Obama can make his opponents look small and shrill.

Some Democrats worry that he is overexposing himself. Not possible today.

The President’s power to command people’s attention is the reason he has 60 percent approval from Independents. Yes, I know that 88 percent of Democrats like him and 80-some percent of Republicans don’t. It’s the people in the middle who count. If he can keep communicating with them, he’ll keep driving his opponents to distraction and self-destruction.

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I turned down an invitation to be on Rachel Maddow’s show last night. Normally, I’m not camera-shy. But I passed.

They wanted me to talk about Richard Burr and his tale about “Honey they’ve shrunk the economy. Get to the ATM and grab the cash.”

I know I was supposed to be the partisan attack dog gnawing on Burr’s leg. But I wasn’t so sure. A lot of people may have felt the same way Burr did last fall.

(Democrats should say they understand Burr doing that when George Bush was running the economy. Apparently Burr has felt better about things since January 20.)

But I passed mainly because I didn’t relish diving into the political mud-wrestling pit that cable news has become.

As those shows go, Maddow’s is good.

But I’m fed up with the whole culture of shouting at and past each other. Fed up with UNC students shouting down that fool who now gets a boatload of free publicity. Fed up with Tea Party protesters comparing Obama to Hitler, calling for a few hangings in Washington (I saw those on Maddow’s show) and even suggesting secession (Texas Governor Rick Perry).

Maybe a lot of people are fed up. Maybe Barack Obama’s calm demeanor and cool rhetoric are just what we want.

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Pirates off the coast of Africa aren’t new to America. They are as old as our government. In fact, they are one reason we have our government.

Read Power, Faith, and Fantasy: America in the Middle East: 1776 to the Present by Michael Oren. It is the story of America’s long history of confusion and misunderstanding about the Middle East. But the most interesting revelation came at the beginning.

Right after throwing out the British, America was having a terrible time with Barbary pirates. We were still under the Articles of Confederation. The central government was so weak we couldn’t get organized enough to do anything about the pirates. Americans realized they had to have a strong enough government to provide for the common defense. The Constitutional Convention followed. The rest is history. And now pirates are back.

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Jim Hunt – one friend calls him “the Eternal Governor” – is still stirring it up. Just like he did when he was pushing his programs through the legislature in the 90s, he put together a bipartisan business group behind tax reform for North Carolina.

Today, the Republican and Fox News-led “Tea Parties” are convening across America. The only message Republicans have today seems to be No Taxes. They hope it still has the magic it did when Ronald Reagan was President.

Democrats are understandably jittery about the issue. They’ve lost elections on taxes before.

Hunt himself later admitted he proposed too much in tax cuts after Gingrich & Co. won big in 1994 – and took the N.C. House.

Hunt pushed through one big tax increase when he was governor: the gas tax in 1981. It took every ounce of political muscle he had. Carter and the Congressional Club jumped into the fight as a way to hurt Hunt before 1984.

We worried about the political impact, and we polled on it heavily. We found that the gas tax never was a political liability. All Hunt had to say was: I did it so we would have good roads. People thought that took guts.

In 1961, Terry Sanford had to pave a lot of roads and name a lot of judges to get a food tax through the legislature to pay for his education program. It had to be a food tax. Sanford found that legislators would vote for it because it would apply to “everybody.” That was code for African-Americans.

The tax hurt Sanford politically. It probably kept him from running against Sam Ervin for Senate. And it hurt his candidate, Richardson Preyer, in 1964.

As late as 1986, Jim Broyhill tried to use “Terry’s Tax” against Sanford in their race for the Senate. Sanford just put the tax in his TV ads. He said it proved he had the courage to do unpopular things that were right. Sanford won.

Mike Easley passed tax increases in 2001. His own supporters warned it would cost him reelection. It didn’t.

The lesson here is for Governor Perdue. There will be no tax reform until the Governor puts all her political weight behind it. It will be a tough political fight, and there is no guarantee she would win. But this is guaranteed: Without her, it won’t happen.

The plan Hunt laid out has some attractions. Perdue could say she’s cutting income taxes and sales taxes.

Perdue has compared her situation to that facing O. Max Gardner in the Depression. Gardner seized the occasion to reform the state’s tax structure.

Taking on the tax fight – against tough opposition and against the grain – is not inviting. It could be political suicide. Or it could write your page in history.

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Go ahead and call the Raleigh Mayor’s race. It’s over. Charles Meeker wins a fifth term.

Yes, something crazy could happen. Barring that, nothing will stand in the way of the reelection of the man Chuck Amato (remember him?) once called – inadvertently but tellingly – “Mayor Meek.”

Four reasons: Raleigh is doing relatively well. Meeker has not made any big mistakes. There is no strong opponent. And Raleigh is one solidly Democratic town.

Conservatives and developers (at least, non-downtown developers) gripe about the Mayor. They say he has spent too much money, especially downtown. An opponent could build a case there.

But who? And with whose help? Developers have been griping for years, but seem incapable of organizing a campaign to change the City Council.

The fundamental factor favoring Meeker is partisan – in a supposedly non-partisan race.

Raleigh is the most Democratic redoubt in the most Democratic region of the state. Recent polls by Public Policy Polling and research by Ferrel Guillory’s DataNet show it.

The days when a Republican like Tom Fetzer or Paul Coble could win have passed. The city has grown more and more Democratic over the last decade.

The only place a viable opponent could come from is the left.

So Meeker stands poised to join Avery Upchurch as Raleigh’s longest-serving leader. But can Meeker change your oil?

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