Shep Smith, you deserve a real job

Last week, I had the misfortune of bending down to retrieve something from the floor and, as I straightened, giving myself a nasty case of sciatica. Ergo, I've had some time on my hands because, well, I'm not doing much right now. Which I guess is timely, because it's been one bitch of a news week. George Tiller's murder continues to consume us and a white supremacist decided to open fire at the Holocaust Museum in DC. All of this means that the widely-scorned DHS report in April doesn't seem so ridiculous anymore. To wit:



I don't understand why he still works for Fox. He's far too coherent. Smith does, periodically, have moments where he fits right in, but this impressed me. I presume that the average Fox viewer prefers to ignore the troubling flashes of right-wing insanity, and so to risk offending viewers by echoing the widely accepted notion that the DHS report was, dare I say, prescient - well, it takes nuts.

Fear not, though. Glenn Beck is content to continue pretending that he isn't part of the problem.



If I had the opportunity to say a few words to him one-on-one, I'd probably tell him that I think he's uninformed to the point of vacuity and that his media presence contributes little (nothing) of value to political speech. I'd like to ignore him, but too many people think he's right, so I don't. This is not a man who lets things like facts slow him down. His show is mediocre at best, downright incendiary at its worst.

I won't even go into Limbaugh.

The dishonesty that keeps rolling out of this whole situation really nettles me. These are a few really fine examples of why we should think before we speak, especially those of us who enjoy large audiences. This is not a partisan directive, though I encourage you to do a Google search for murder cases involving pro-choice activists and doctors who refuse to perform abortions. Regardless of who steers the ship, words mean things. For O'Reilly, Limbaugh, Beck and all of their loathsome friends to suggest that Obama is a madman on par with Hitler is detestable even when no one dies as a result of this dressed-up hate speech. Everything he does is twisted to sound like something out of an Orwell novel. It's ridiculous. Nancy Pelosi can't get a break either. I doubt that most of the loudmouths critiquing her know all that much about her legislative record or her relationship with her constituents, but they won't hesitate to crack jokes about Pelosi getting murdered.

This is not funny.