Red, White, and Idiotic

A lot of times while I'm waiting for my bus (that comes every hour), I'll go hang out in the bookstore and browse whatever book catches my eye at the time.

Today, that book was 'Red, White, and Liberal' by Alan Colmes -- leftist co-host of Fox News' Hannity and Colmes. He's substantially more tolerable than other liberals, mostly because he doesn't yell, and he'll admit when a conservative has a point. Plus it's pretty funny when Hannity slaps him around...figuratively, of course.

It seemed to be a decent enough book, but I'd never buy it. Mostly because it costs $25, and I don't have $25. But even if I did, I'd spend it on a book that wouldn't give me an aneurysm.

I skimmed the chapters, and made notes on the more interesting (entertaining) points.

His major point was that dissent wasn't unpatriotic. I'll agree with that. But dissent for the sake of dissent is pointless, and dissent that wishes for your country to fail is, by definition, unpatriotic.

First was the chapter on 'The Myth of the Liberal Media'. Not only does Alan claim that the American media isn't liberal, he goes the other way and says that the media is conservative. Come on. He uses the fact that Rupert Murdoch, known conservative, owns Fox News and the New York Post. Ok. So the media isn't totally liberal. No rational person would argue that. But what about flaming liberal Ted Turner? He owns CNN. And I don't think anyone would argue the liberal slant of the New York Times, or pretty much any other major newspaper aside from the New York Post and the Wallstreet Journal. What about Time and Newsweek? They're pretty liberal. Peter Jennings cried after Al Gore conceded the election in 2000. Dan Rather went on air shortly before the election with a negative story about President Bush that wasn't properly vetted and eventually turned out being wrong. Not to mention the fact that a recent poll of journalists showed that something like 80 or 90% of them are self-described liberals. So, maybe the media isn't totally liberal. But conservative? Come on.

Then was the laughable chapter titled 'OJ is Innocent'. Colmes says that since OJ was found innocent in a court of law that we should just accept that and move on. He also says that the wrongful death civil suit after his murder trial was unconstitutional. Gee Alan, the way you talk it sounds like the court system is infallible and that criminals NEVER walk on account of loop-holes, technicalities, or the social agenda of the jurors. I don't think any intellectually honest person who witnessed the circus that was the OJ Simpson trial can honestly say that the racial/socio-economic make up of the jury didn't at least have something to do with the verdict. (Just to refresh your memory, there were 9 blacks, 10 women, 2 college graduates and 1 high school drop out.)

By Alan's logic, the men who murdered Emmitt Till are innocent, too. For those of you who don't know the story, Emmitt Till was a 14 year old boy in Mississippi that was accused of whistling at a white woman. He was pulled from his grandfather's cabin in the middle of the night, beaten, shot, sodomized and thrown into a river. Two white men were charged with the crime and were later acquitted by an all white jury. But since it was a court of law, I suppose we should follow Alan's logic and forget about it. We should especially forget about how they later confessed to the crime. Besides, according to Colmes, trying them again would be unconstitutional.

Then came the chapter "Bill Clinton, Our Greatest President". Now, there's enough argument over this to fill an entire book, so I'll be brief. What exactly did Bill Clinton DO? (No intern jokes, please.) I honestly can't think of any lasting impression that Bill Clinton's presidency had on America. He inherited a strong economy, the Cold War was over, and we weren't battling terrorism. Hell, I could've run the country with those conditions. And I was in high school at the time (well, during the second term anyway). Just because you can keep a house clean doesn't give you credit for building it.

He also devotes an entire chapter to the mean things conservatives say. Now, I'm not going to sit here and tell you that some conservatives don't say mean things. They do. But it's not a tenet of the ideology. There are just as many examples of mean liberals, but of course that hurts his argument so he leaves that out.

Probably my favorite chapter was 'Jesus was a liberal'. It was actually a satire of the way the 'religious right' claims that Jesus is on their side. Using religious figures to justify a political ideology always makes me nervous. While I don't believe that Jesus would be a fan of abortion or gay marriage, I also don't believe he'd be a fan of screwing up the environment or CEO's that get rich while giving their employees the shaft. I think we focus entirely too much on whether or not God is on our side and not enough on whether or not we're on God's side.

To his credit, Alan Colmes does admit conservatives are right on certain issues, namely Reparations and Illegal Immigration. It's refreshing to hear a liberal admit that Reparations is a stupid idea and that our borders shouldn't just be open to anyone who wants to walk across them.

Sadly, that's where his logic ends. Much like the rest of the liberal ideology, his arguments just didn't stand up to scrutiny. But at least he's not a prick about it. He might be wrong, but he's not all James Carville or Michael Moore about it. That's at least respectable.