"A Gentleman's Disagreement"

Bill O'Reilly had General Wesley Clark on the Bully Pulpit last night to talk about National Guard mobilization for Hurricane Rita, but still took some time to hit the Fox News/RNC talking points memo to smear Cindy Sheehan. The General wasn't biting (pay attention to the bold and italicized Clark quote):

CLARK: I can't imagine that she doesn't like the country.

O'REILLY: Well, she said we committed murder.

CLARK: She supported her son serving in the armed forces and I can tell ya' there's a lot of people who wear that American flag pin who wouldn't let their children serve in the armed forces so I honor any parent whose son serves in the armed forces - or daughter.

O'REILLY: Alright, Gentlemen's disagreement but just go back and look at the things that she said, General. I don't know if this is the company you want to keep.

CLARK: Lets talk next week. I'll talk about the policy, not the company.

O'REILLY: We'll get - we'll get deeply into that.

CLARK: Alright.

Transcript courtesy of Newshounds

This came two days after Phil Donahue got the better of O'Reilly when their discussion turned to Sheehan. After some heated discussion between staying the course in Iraq and "cutting and running", Donahue brought the hammer down.

DONAHUE: (reasonable tone of voice) Now listen - listen. You wouldn't send your children to this war, Bill.

O'REILLY (very angry, pointing): My nephew just enlisted in the Army. You don't know what the hell you're talkin' about!!!

DONAHUE: Very good. Very good. Congratulations! You should be proud ..

O'REILLY (starts to lose it, shouting, pointing finger, hand shaking): And he's a patriot, so don't denigrate his service or I'll boot you right off the set!!!

DONAHUE: I'm not ... I'm not ...

O'REILLY (very, very loud): That boy made a decision to serve his country!!! Do not denigrate him or you're outta here!!!

DONAHUE (calmly): I'm not Jeremy Glick, Billy.

O'REILLY: That's right!!

DONAHUE: You can't intimidate me!!

O'REILLY: You're a little bit more intelligent that he is!!

DONAHUE: I'm not somebody you can come and just spew all your ...

O'REILLY: Don't tell me I wouldn't send my kids.

DONAHUE: Loud doesn't mean right!

O'REILLY: My nephew just enlisted. You don't know what you're talkin' about!!

DONAHUE: Your nephew is not your kid. You are like ...

O'REILLY: He's my blood!

DONAHUE: You are part of a loud group of people who wanna prove they're tough ...

O'REILLY (shifts angrily in his chair, under his breath): Aw fer ...

DONAHUE: ... and send other people's kids to war to make the case.

Now go back to the Clark quote: "...there's a lot of people who wear that American flag pin who wouldn't let their children serve in the armed forces..."

Now Donahue: "Your nephew is not your kid."

For the record, O'Reilly wears a flag pin on his lapel.

I'm Oscar Dot-Com

Arrested Development is far-and-away the funniest thing on standard broadcast television, and I'm hoping that moving it to Monday nights will get it the audience it so rightly deserves. So stop reading this and head over to the very real www.imoscar.com and let the laughs consume you.

Well at Least They Had A Rap

The FEMA Rap for Kidz (from the FEMA web site. Seriously.), via Harry Shearer's Le Show. I couldn't stop laughing this morning when listening to this on the way to work.

It's only fitting since the former director handled his job worse than an eight-year-old.

Finally, Some Good News

While the politicos and others play the blame game, which I guess must be similar to the name game. Which I didn't play in Kindergarten because of my name: "chuck, chuck, bo-buck, banana-nana-mo-muck, fe fi fo fu-oooOOOOOOOOOOOOHHHHHHH!"

Anyhoo, here's a list from WWOZ in New Orleans of musicians and bands who are safe in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina and the subsequent flood that FEMA prophesied but didn't act to protect against.

Something that I wanted to post on last week but didn't- mainly because I was sick of feeding into the negativity of the whole fallout from the flood- was this touching tribute by Harry Shearer from the Labor Day edition of his radio program Le Show. Shearer and his wife live part of the year in the Crescent City and the show was a welcome respite from the zingers and arrows flung by both conservatives and liberals last week. I downloaded the podcast to my iPod and shared it with everyone I could (the whole program is available at Shearer's website, Audible, KCRW Santa Barbara, and iTunes). 59 of the most mesmerizing minutes of radio I've heard in a long time.

And So It Begins...

as it always does, with a little seed. With care and nuturing it becomes a hearty plant. Or, in this age of conservative spin control, it becomes the truth. They're also tossing about the casual notion that Governor Kathleen Blanco should bear culpability for not federalizing the Louisiana Guard after the levee broke and New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin for allowing a welfare culture to fester in his city making the poor too lazy to leave. But, as the President said, "No one knew the levee was gonna break." I mean, criticizing Kanye West for criticizing Our Holy Leader on national television can only get you so far before people remember what we were talking about before.

Meanwhile in Texas a woman who was wife of one President and mother of another says something that is so shocking you have to listen to it again in order to make sure you heard it right, lest you be lumped in with the nutcases, feminazis, communists, terrorist sympathizers, supporters of the welfare state, and general cowards. But I'm assuming that since you're reading this you already are lumped in that corner, the young Republicans at the Reagan Review excepted. And I'm holding out hope that you meet some people in college who show you can convert you to good old Marxism

I was inclined to give Barbara Bush the benefit of the doubt when I heard the sound bite, thinking that maybe she misspoke and was comparing the situation of the Katrina refugees to the squalor they found themselves in last week. I even went so far as to comment about it on Scott Smith's Chicagoist post this afternoon. Then I remembered who we were dealing with. She might as well have quoted Marie Antoinette: "Let them eat cake!"

I remembered that for all of Dubya's bluster about following in his father's footsteps, at least George Herbert Walker Bush knew to keep people like Cheney and Rumsfeld on a short leash. If anything he's his mother's son- a true momma's boy. Barbara Bush is a woman who Richard Nixon admired because she "knew how to hate." She nurses a grudge against her son like she does a vodka tonic- long after the ice has melted.

In his book Lies And The Lying Liars Who Tell Them: A Fair And Balanced Look At The Right Al Franken writes of a chance encounter with Mrs. Bush that goes horribly wrong after Franken points out some physical quirks of her son, then made a not-so-subtle reference for her son's defeat:

"A scowl flashed over her face. And, dismissing me with an imperious wave of her hand, she issued a stern 'Well, I'm through with you!'

"It was so over the top, I was convinced she was kidding.

"'Oh, c'mon, I'm a Democrat,' I said, in all good fun

'"'I gathered that. And I'm through with you!' Another wave of the hand."

Later at a bat mitzvah in Washington Franken relayed the story to a growing list of Beltway insiders:

"...(W)hat everyone who knew Barbara Bush thought was funniest- by far- was that I kept thinking that she had been kidding.

"I kept hearing things like: 'Oh, no, she's a horrible bitch.' 'Omigod, she's the worst bitch on earth. 'She can be very charming, but Barbara Bush is the Queen Bitch.'"

So knowing that, are we really surprised that she even said that now?