Marble Composition

Meet Brit Hume

He's the bile-spewing shitmouth employed by the Fox News channel, and boy does he get worked up when a decorated war veteran starts proposing limits on American military involvement in Iraq. But for Brit, it has to be a Vietnam war hero. It's hard to imagine the following tirade wasn't planned by the producers of Fox News Sunday; he wanted an editorial ax-grinding moment, and he got it:

HUME: That sound bite from John Murtha suggests that it’s time a few things be said about him. Even the “Washington Post” noted he didn’t seem particularly well informed about what’s going on over there, to say the least. Look, this man has tremendous cache among House Democrats, but he is not — this guy is long past the day when he had anything but the foggiest awareness of what the heck is going on in the world.

And that sound bite is naivete writ large, and the man is an absolute fountain of such talk, and the fact that he has ascended to the position he has in the eyes of the Democrats in the House and perhaps Democrats around the country tells you a lot about how much they know or care about what’s really going on over there.

And while Hume can, and will, fire loaded rhetorical shots at Congressional Democrats over the Iraq War for years to come, he never came close to even reporting what went on Vietnam first-hand, never mind signing a deployment request:

It was a different era, a different administration and a very different Brit Hume.

Thirty-six years ago, as a long-haired reporter for columnist Jack Anderson, Hume was handed information that Spiro Agnew's son had left his wife and moved in with a male hairdresser. Hume tracked down the vice president's son in Baltimore, talked his way in with a made-up tale about reports that Randy Agnew was living in a "hippie crash pad" and confirmed the details. Although Hume expressed strong reservations about the story -- his wife thought it was disgraceful -- he convinced himself that it could be a big deal.

This from the ethically challenged Washington Post media reporter Howard Kurtz, who has more than enough to answer for on his own (another Washington-based shitmouth). Of course, Agnew was forced to resign as Vice President, but he really was the model for Richard Cheney's current reign. And how did Brit later feel about uncovering this petty scandal about the VP's son?

"It's a story I wish I hadn't done," Hume says now. "We had no idea whether what the story implied was true, that the kid was gay and his gayness had anything to do with the rift with his family."

Fine. Whatever. Instead of fretting about some stupid story about the veep's son, how about enlisting to fight in Vietnam? I would love to see how Mr. Hume would've been taken to task by the most popular right-wing bloggers of the current day. I would guess they'd label him a flip-flopper, but absolve him of his past digressions based on his current true-believer status. That said, no one takes apart people like Steve Gilliard, a former military man, and James Wolcott of Vanity Fair. Here's James, and anyone in his cross hairs gets it bad, and as usual, they deserve it:

Hume's lack of self-knowledge would be comic if it weren't so hateful. Like so many white conservative males, he's seething with anger and touchy superiority, yet has apparently convinced himself that it's everybody else who's being emotional. He--he sees things as they are, with rational proportion and worldly perspective; it's women and girly-men liberals and other moral weaklings who lets their sloppy feelings get the best of them. But challenge Brit's patriarchal authority and or contradict him once too often and he goes Aguirre, Wrath of God on you.

More:

It isn't just Jack Murtha that Hume has been pissing on from a high plateau, it's Chuck Hagel as well, whom he has patronized for being overwrought on the issue of Iraq, even referring to Hagel's recent fervency as "sad." As if Hume felt sorry for Hagel that he had let himself go soft this way--such a pity. Five minutes alone with Hume and Hagel could probably stuff that false pity up Brit's nose and feed Fred Barnes' snickering condescension back to him with extra mustard.

There's a discernible pattern here; Hume needs to tear down anyone that actually served in the Vietnam War, whether they're Republican or Democrat. Whether that's self-loathing in action, or his way of tearing down the hated Other in himself, remains to be seen. Maybe we'll never know. Either way, he displays a visceral loathing of anyone that "gave up" in Vietnam.

Why is this important? Why should you care? Here's why: in Washington he's seen as a credible voice; someone that's allowed to moderate debates, and ask questions of potential presidential candidates.

He's nothing more than a shiftless phony. Whether he believes anything he says is really beside the point, he's made himself into something that the craze of the 24-hour news networks need anyway: A stalwart, right-wing gasbag that never saw a Republican policy he didn't like.

I often wonder what it takes to make a truly American asshole like Brit Hume, but when you read about his past, and his meaningless "conversion" to conservatism, he went where the money is.

posted by FuzzFinger @ 2/22/2007 11:30:00 PM