Dick Cavett

In Monday's “Best of the Web Today” compilation, the Wall Street Journal's James Taranto highlighted a New York Times online column posted Friday, from “superannuated erstwhile TV host Dick Cavett,” who “reports that the mosque controversy brought back childhood memories.” Cavett recalled World War II when he “heard an uncle of mine endorse a sentiment attributed to our Admiral 'Bull' Halsey: 'If I met a pregnant Japanese woman, I’d kick her in the belly.'”
        
In the post provocatively titled “Real Americans, Please Stand Up,” as if those who disagree with him are not “real” Americans – at least they aren't to the New York Times editors -- Cavett then equated feticide with peaceful opposition to the mosque near Ground Zero:

These are not proud moments in my heritage. But now, I’m genuinely ashamed of us. How sad this whole mosque business is. It doesn’t take much, it seems, to lift the lid and let our home-grown racism and bigotry overflow. We have collectively taken a pratfall on a moral whoopee cushion.

Later he denigrated mosque critics as he derided “airborne sludge” from Rush Limbaugh:

Talk show host Dick Cavett, whose TV show went off the air in 1982, appeared on MSNBC, Friday, to trash Sarah Palin as a "know nothing" and someone who has "no first language." Mostly, however, he seemed interested only in talking about himself, prompting News Live host Norah O’Donnell to chide, "Dick, this segment is about Sarah Palin, not about you, Dick." [Audio available here.]

John Harwood, New York Times writer and CNBC contributor, co-hosted and kicked off the segment with this condescending question: "Let me ask you what you make of the Sarah Palin phenomenon and, in particular, the argument that some people make, well, she might not be a good President, but she'd be a good talk show host. You think so?"

Cavett clearly wanted to bash Palin, but he really wanted to tout his own brilliance and a column he wrote for the New York Times over a year ago: "The subject is a dear one to me because I wrote a notorious, apparently, column about Sarah Palin called the Wild Wordsmith of Wasilla for my Times Online blog. And, you know, it is interesting. When you are quoted for something you said on the air, it's one thing. But, when they quoted something you wrote, it is pleasing in a different way."

Blogger Jill Stanek was stunned to hear former PBS talk show host Dick Cavett declare on the Don Imus radio show that the murder of animals is a greater offense than the killing of humans. Cavett was busy denouncing quarterback Michael Vick's interview on 60 Minutes, calling him a "textbook psychopath" who was almost completely incapable of rehabilitation. (That doesn't sound very liberal.) That led to this declaration:

CAVETT: To my mind, it's worse to murder animals than to murder human beings. I'm not a religico, but human beings are full of sins and crimes and dirty deeds and conscious cruelty. No dog is.

IMUS: Boy, isn't that the truth! I have dogs here at the ranch I like better than anyone I know.

Listen to the audio here. The comment comes about two minutes in.

Stanek's obvious point was that unborn human beings are also free of "dirty deeds and conscious cruelty," but liberals think they're completely expendable.

Salon's Camille Paglia believes that of all the print and television journalists that have ever interviewed her, CBS's Katie Couric was "definitively the stupidest."

According to Paglia, "There's many a moose in Alaska with greater charm and pizazz" than that possessed by Couric.

So wrote the outspoken columnist Wednesday in response to a reader's question about the media's treatment of Gov. Sarah Palin. In her most recent offering, Paglia answered queries on subjects ranging from religion, music, sexuality, freedom of speech, and, of course, politics.

Of particular note, Paglia once again went after the liberal elite view that Palin is a bumbling fool unqualified for high office (h/t HillbillyKing):