Misguided Melanie
Poor, misguided Melanie.
Maybe Mel thought that she was back in her broadcast booth at KSFO instead of the soundstage at PBS’s News Hour with Jim Lehrer, where typical Republican tactics such as talking over the other guest are acceptable methods of debate. Perhaps Mel thinks that supporting the troops is indistinguishable from supporting a war against an easily-defeated nation for which we had no legal, moral or tactical reason to invade and occupy in the first place.
Just like Morgan’s Move America Forward thinks that supporting the troops means insulting France, Democrats and Chuck Hagel for good measure by exploiting primates in nearly ignored rallies.
(The 70 person turnout was such a success, even George W. Bush pedaled on over to San Francisco to see what the fuss was about. Thank God Melanie didn’t borrow the LA Angels’ Rally Monkey or else her pro-war get-together might’ve actually attracted people in three digit numbers.)
Perhaps Melanie thought that her hubristic Republican-ness in some arcane way gave her at least as high a moral ground to play “I’m Spartacus!” with a former veteran who’d actually fought in Kosovo and Iraq, someone who also represents an organization that’s dedicated to the troops.
And it could be posited that PBS was as equally misguided as Morgan for putting Mel on The News Hour in order to establish some political balance to an issue that the Republican mouse circus is accusing Democrats of politicizing. One can understand the post-Kenneth Tomlinson PBS for wanting a more conservative viewpoint (although Mr. Solzer’s own organization can hardly be said to be pro-Democratic or partisan as it is pro-military). One, however, is at a loss to understand why they’d chosen to represent the Dark Side someone who screeches hatred from her San Francisco radio booth like a harpie with its tit caught in a wringer.
The outcomes were predictable: The bereted, cheese-eating monkeys she’d recently exploited in her hamfisted attempt to “support the troops” showed more panache and restraint than she did and she was kicked off the show for good after PBS received several furious emails protesting Morgan’s conduct.
If nothing else, this is yet another small indication that Robert A. Heinlein’s acronym TNSTAAFL (There’s No Such Thing As a Free Lunch) is coming true when it comes to psychological side shows like Melanie Morgan, Rush Limbaugh, Ann Coulter, Michelle Malkin, Opie and Anthony, Don Imus and other red-toothed maniacs.
When people turn on their radios to listen to political talk shows, they ought to offer up a silent prayer of gratitude to people like Spocko’s Brain for successfully pushing back against the tsunami of bile that’s been streaming across America as effortlessly as flood waters through New Orleans’ 9th ward. Whatever television and radio executives’ reasons for finally holding these people accountable, whether it be their bottom line or a legitimate dedication for doing the right thing, we’ll take it. In the end, it doesn’t matter how solipsistic or profit-driven their reasons are for throwing these people off the air, or barring them and their accounts or taking their columns out of their papers. It's just important that they at long last do it.
Motives do matter, however, when one attempts to take one side or the other in issues such as Iraq. Morgan, if she was truly interested in supporting the troops would be spending less time wrangling primates for ultimately failed rallies, posting bogus photos of a peaceful Iraq that weren’t even taken in Iraq and wishing death and maiming on war protesters and lobbying for better outpatient care for our wounded troops.
She’d be lobbying the White House to unpry a few bucks for the measly 3.5% pay hike that George Bush, another troops supporter, claims is completely unnecessary. She’d be yelling from the rooftop of KSFO about how, after well over four years, all of our troops still haven’t received adequate body armor or steel plating for their vehicles. And she’d be asking why, after exactly 50 months, the more people we send to Iraq, the further we sink into the quicksand.
She wouldn’t be shrieking about victory at all costs (weren’t the victors, in the beginning, supposed to be the Iraqis?) and insisting on playing right into the hands of bin Laden and al-Zawahiri who openly tell us in one video after another what exactly we’re doing wrong and getting the results they’re gleefully expecting because we happen to have leading our nation the stupidest carbon-based life form in the solar system in George W. Bush.
But that’s not what Republican dirtbags, these 27% dead-enders like Morgan want to hear. They don’t want to hear what we’re doing wrong and that the troops and the Iraqi people in general are suffering from these massive mistakes. They only want to focus on the right things that we’re not doing and haven’t done since day one.
But the free lunches are over, Mel. The counter’s been wiped down and disinfected and your kind is no longer welcome.
(Crossposted at Welome to Pottersville.)
