Colmes' Doghouse Sentence Commuted For Good Behavior
Reported by Ellen - October 29, 2004 -
I think I'm stretching this "sentence" metaphor a bit too far but I'd be remiss not to report that last night Colmes proved once again that he has it in him to do the job we want him to.
During the first hour, his guest was Seymour Hersh, journalist extraordinaire from The New Yorker, who has written a book called "Chain of Command: The Road from 9/11 to Abu Ghraib." Unfortunately, I missed the first half of the interview but the second half was hard-hitting, informative, fascinating and horrifying, all at once. Hersh discussed how the Bush Administration turned its back on the Geneva Conventions and secretly condoned, if not overtly encouraged, torture and disappearances without being held accountable by the American public. For this News Hound, almost as important as what Hersh said was the fact that he was Colmes' sole guest and appeared without "balance," something liberal guests have not always been able to count on as often as conservatives guests.
The next hour was a segment on VOTER FRAUD/SUPPRESSION!!!! I'd like to think that all our howling finally got Colmes' attention on this issue but however it happened, I'm just glad it was finally addressed. And who better to address it but Greg Palast? Unfortunately, Palast was on with some African-American Republican lackey who got way too much time. In fact, it seemed to me he got more time than Palast and said half as much (I was too busy doing other things while I was listening to get obsessive/compulsive and get out my stopwatch, as I did the last time this kind of situation arose). Nevertheless, Colmes did an exemplary job of getting from Palast concrete examples of Republican suppression and also underscoring the fact that the Republican never refuted any of Palast's facts but merely pointed a finger at instances of Democratic "fraud" in return - as if that excused everything.
The last hour was open phones in which the topic of celebrity endorsements just happened to come up again. In this instance, Colmes brought it up in the form of a Red Sox player's endorsement of Bush. It just so happens that the conservative producer of Colmes' radio show is a Red Sox fan (am I getting way too steeped in all this FOX minutia or what?) so Colmes brought up the topic in the context of "Would people complain if he had supported Kerry?" (Of course they would, if it those people were on FOX). Not suprisingly to me, that led to a phone call a little bit later on celebrity endorsements in general. Also not surprisingly, the caller said that most such endorsements come from the left. At least Colmes argued effectively that there are right-leaning celebrities who get involved with endorsements - such as Ahnold - and that it seems doubtful people are going to vote according to Bruce Springsteen's endorsements.
Newsies, I say let's cut Alan some slack for his recent transgressions. But we also have to be alert and keep our ears pricked for the sound of that sly FOX slithering into the liberal henhouse.
