Friday, November 18, 2005

The hopeless one man crusade

Call me crazy, but just about every night I watch The Situation with Tucker Carlson on MSNBC @ 8pm pst. I have a valid reason for this! It is a news program that my conservative girlfriend and I can watch together without getting into a big hairy argument which ends with her in tears and me genociding the enemies on some PS II game with steam coming out of my ears. We then watch The Countdown with Keith Olbermann to sort of balance out the ideological atmosphere in our surroundings. BUT... I digress.

Tucker Carlson is taking every opportunity that comes his way lately to slam around the investigation being conducted by Patrick Fitzgerald. And frankly watching Carlson as he reaches his outlandish conclusions regarding Mr. Fitzgerald is amusing. Let us consider some recent examples. All of the following quotes may be found here , by clicking on the transcript for The Situation for November 17.
I want to know what you think of the response to Fitzgerald, that would be Pat Fitzgerald, the special counsel, continuing this at this point pointless investigation, turning, you know, Washington upside down, causing turmoil.
One must wonder if perhaps Mr. Carlson is psychic, and knows before the investigation has ended that the final outcome is pointless. On what does he base this conclusion? What happens if Mr. Fitzgerald finds evidence of a widespread conspiracy to break the law that reaches to the highest levels of the administration, and brings indictments against several more top level officials? Mr. Carlson will apparently be in full denial of the importance of that outcome, because he has already prejudged the investigation at this point to be pointless.

Tucker Carlson was interviewing Rachel Maddow of Air America Radio, and this exchange was just hilarious from my point of view:
MADDOW: Tucker, you have been waging a one-man campaign against Patrick Fitzgerald.

CARLSON: Yes. One man, that's right.

MADDOW: And nobody else is jumping on the bandwagon.

CARLSON: No.

MADDOW: It almost makes me feel a little bit sorry for you, although I completely disagree with you on this.

CARLSON: Because I'm taking a principled stand, because I'm not allowing my irritation with George W. Bush to supersede the principle here, and that is, you shouldn't put reporters in prison for doing their job, A. And B, the public has a right to know what its government is doing. I'm taking a principled stand; it's not a political stand.
So Mr. Carlson is opposed to the investigation on the principle that reporters should be able to be party to breaking the law in the course of their profession, with impunity. The original charge here involves leaking the identity of an undercover CIA operative to the press. If the press is intrinsically part of the original crime, how are the people served by allowing that crime to go unpunished because Mr. Carlson doesn't like the special prosecutor trying to find the facts in the matter. The fact of the matter is that reporters SHOULD feel uncomfortable when approached by politicos with classified information that serves the politico's partisan agenda at the expense of national security.

The continuation of this investigation may have been upsetting for Mr. Carlson, but it is necessary to get to the truth of the matter, (something Mr. Carlson professes to be his guiding principle in carrying forth his one man crusade.) What Tucker really promotes with this reasoning is the coverup... the hiding of the truth in the Plame affair, in the name of journalistic integrity. In effect he proclaims, 'let us remain ignorant, to promote future understanding.'

And there is a reason no one else is jumping on your bandwagon Mr. Carlson. Is there even such a thing as a bandwagon when only one individual is carrying on about an issue? That's more like a band-unicycle or something. Once again I digress. The reason no one else is jumping on board is simply that your reasoning is baseless Mr. Carlson. You surely cannot believe that you are the sole purveyor of truth, the lone individual to see the light about all this? When one is faced with the weight of the rest of considered opinion, from the president on down, which is nearly uniformly impressed by Mr. Fitzgeralds conduct of this investigation, one must wonder how one reached ones conclusion.

Heres a snip of transcript from November 16:
CARLSON: Well, first of all, I mean, the macro point is, and this is my question to you, he didn't indict. Pat Fitzgerald did not indict on the leak itself, right? The underlying crime, the basis of this entire investigation, has been proved, or shown at least to this point to be not a crime.

MADDOW: It hasn't been. We don't know.

CARLSON: It has been shown, by admission. He hasn't - though he gets up and makes these self-righteous, windy, arrogant statements about American national security, OK, pal, indict on it, and he hasn't. What the hell is this investigation about? I‘ve totally lost track.


One must presume that besides sounding all hysterical, Mr. Carlson is also being intentionally moronic. The whole point of continuing the investigation is to get to the bottom of what happened, but he seems to be insistent that Mr. Fitzgerald indict on the original charge last month, or admit defeat and stop investigating Carlson's right wing buddies. One must wonder at this type of circular logic, and conclude that there is a good reason Tucker finds himself on the wingnut side of the ideologocal spectrum. He draws fantastic conclusions based upon faulty reasoning.

I know, I know... Tucker is against the war and not happy with this presidents administration, and we are subject to him reminding us of this on a nightly basis, even as he weasles and obfuscates the issues in their favor. To me Tucker seems like a nice fellow. Someone it would be interesting to sit down with over a chess game and a cup of coffee to debate the issues of the day. I would like to start a one man crusade of my own, but I might sadden my girlfriend should my anti-tucker bandwagon gather momentum. Besides, it is so readily apparent that Tucker is off the deep end when it comes to this issue that actually the pro-Fitzgerald bandwagon is well under way, with Mr. Carlson sniping from the rear on his unicycle...

Comments:
" One must wonder if perhaps Mr. Carlson is psychic, and knows before the investigation has ended that the final outcome is pointless."

Listen Bub! Tucker IS psychic! If he is wrong on this, then he will eat his shoes! Erm....just like last time.

http://www.nydailynews.com/front/story/99597p-90014c.html
 
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