Saturday, August 18, 2007
Oh, a Made-For-TV Leftist
One of my favorite lines in one of my favorite episodes of Mystery Science Theater 3000 is in their savaging of the lame 1970 airport movie San Francisco International. There's a scene in which mellow-macho airport cop Clu Gulagher is investigating an altercation at a snack counter or something; the aggrieved party is a blubbering reactionary businessman who has filled Clu Gulagher's well-coiffed head with tales of how he was brutally assaulted for no reason by a dirty, smelly, evil, longhaired hippie guy. Determined in his mellowness to hear both sides of the story, Clu Gulagher invites the hippie guy into his office. In walks a stereotypically bedenimed, befringed, beatifically smiling, handsome young countercultural dreamboat, prompting Mike to quip, with typical MST perfect timing, "Oh, a made-for-TV hippie."
That is exactly what came to mind when I noticed FAIR going after Mark Shields for a typical recent NewsHour performance wherein this "TV leftist" dutifully bashed Democrats for sucking up to "coddled interest groups." While some of the NewsHour's segments are quite good, there are few more annoying spectacles on Earth than those "perspective" segments where they trot out David "Iraq is the Battle of Midway in the War on Terror" Brooks, pair him with some wimpy, mushy made-for-TV "leftist" like Mark Shields or E.J. Dionne, and have cockroach-eyed Jim Lehrer feed them lame questions to which they reply with bucketloads of spin, conventional wisdom, and banalities. Veritable emetics in video form, they are.
Mind you, your average made-for-TV leftist is a step up from your average Fox Democrat, but that's not saying much.
