Good on Jon Stewart for showing the ‘political infotainment’ arm of the Big Media, once again, how to do their jobs. Last night on The Daily Show, Stewart’s guest was Newt “Like The Reptile” Gingrich and they were discussing trying terrorist suspects under American criminal law. Newt claimed that the ‘Christmas Underwear Bomber,’ Umar Abdulmutallab, shouldn’t be tried in a U.S. court and had no rights since he wasn’t an American citizen. (Not true, incidentally — even foreign nationals have rights when charged with a crime in our country, but a topic for another time.)
At any rate, Stewart sensibly countered that the ‘Shoe Bomber’ Richard Reid was tried and convicted by the Bush Administration in an American courtroom and then Newtie, as usual, blatantly lied to make his point he said Reid was a U.S. citizen and Abdulmutallab was not. Stewart let it pass as I yelled in futility at the TV, “Bullshit, Reid was a British subject!”
Following the commercial break, however, after the interview had ended, Stewart came back on to say his staff had checked and Reid was not an American citizen but a British national. This was a simple, unbiased fact, and it made Gingrich look like the horse’s ass he is and laid bare his lame argument to the light of day. If every ‘real’ news show adopted this practice of fact-checking guests and informing the audience where they lied during the show, not only would it better serve the news consumer and the country, but it would have the side benefit of keeping politicians honest if pols knew that at the end of the show (ideally accompanied by a crawl across the bottom of the screen), their falsehoods would be exposed they might become more circumspect in their habitual dishonesty. BTW, I also think would be good for ratings.
Of course, this will never happen on Fox News, if only because 45-minutes of each hour would be taken up correcting the lies of the first fifteen minutes, and most of the other networks would shy away since it would cost them ‘access’ to prominent politicians, not to mention discomfit their corporate bosses, but just think no more Republicans spreading fraud on national TV and fewer quisling Democrats trying to justify their cowardice! No doubt this measure would pass by a massive majority if subjected to a national referendum.
Since that’s not going to happen, all you can do is write or call your favorite media outlet and refer them to Jon Stewart’s interview with Newt Gingrich on Tuesday, Feb. 9, 2010, but don’t expect miracles the BM will likely change the same day Newtie the Lizard bangs the drum for universal single-payer health care.
http://crooksandliars.com/david-neiwert/newt-gingrich-lies-jon-stewart-claim
2010 RS Janes. LTSaloon.org.
UPDATE: Newt the Snake is now claiming he was talking about Jose Padilla instead of Richard Reid, but this makes even less sense in the context of his exchange with Jon Stewart.
First off, as HuffPo pointed out, Gingrich actually made Obama’s case by defending the Bush Administration for trying Padilla in a civilian court, after ordered to do so by a Supreme Court ruling.
Aside from that, Padilla was held incommunicado for years in a Navy brig and denied his Constitutional rights to a lawyer, a speedy trial, and due process in a court of law. During his detention Padilla revealed nothing of importance to national security and he wasn’t ultimately convicted of trying to build a bomb, which was the reason he was arrested at O’Hare Airport in Chicago where he was allegedly caught with a crude hand-drawn design for a dirty bomb and $10,000 cash. Not surprising, since experts later concluded the bomb Padilla sketched out would not have worked anyway.
Gingrich is nothing more than the viperous gasbag he’s always been, a cheesy, sweaty little liar who promised term limits in the 1994 Contract On America and never tried to fulfill that promise; who told his wife he was divorcing her to marry his girlfriend while she lay in the hospital recovering from cancer; who tried to blame the Susan Smith tragedy on ‘liberal permissiveness’ but never apologized after the info that she was sexually abused as a teenager by her staunch Republican-Christian Coalition stepfather came to light. Gingrich is just another lying, sociopathic GOP conman lining his pockets at the expense of the gullible who buy his nonsense and his books.