Sticks and Stones

Mickey Kaus, probably the world's worst blogger, has his knickers all in a knot because CNN has canceled Crossfire and given conservative host Tucker Carlson his freedom, if you will. Kaus sees this as a result of Jon Stewart's October 15 appearance on the show, where he lambasted the two hosts and said, "I should come here and tell you that I don't -- it's not so much that it's bad, as it's hurting America. But I wanted to come here today and say stop, stop, stop, stop hurting America."

The new head of CNN, Jonathan Klein, was quoted -- out of context -- as saying, "I guess I come down more firmly in the Jon Stewart camp." Kaus apparently assumes that this admission of where Klein's political sensibilities align means that he's so biased that he let Carlson go out of deference to Stewart. But Stewart didn't come on the show to attack Carlson specifically; he ranted against the basic premise of the shows and other shows like it. It wasn't Carlson's conservative views that were hurting America, it was the head-butting, "infotainment" format that was more about partisan gesturing -- from both sides -- than actually dealing with current events in an intelligent way.

Kaus is indignant. "Klein ... tells the press he sides with the guy who called his employee a "dick"? ... Why would anyone want to go to work for this man?" He just neglects to mention that long before Stewart used the "d" word, said employee accused Stewart of being John Kerry's "butt boy." (He actually used that choice phrase twice.)

So not only did Kaus' poor, victimized bow-tie wearing poster-child for closeted Republicans everywhere also stoop to playground-level namecalling via sexual innuendo, he made an anti-gay slur. Sorry, Mickey, I'm having a real hard time feeling your pain.