There are times when I am truly sickened by what I see from the current breed of television anchors and hosts. Today is one of them.
Martin Bashir on the MSNBC program bearing his name finished Wedneday's show with a segment attacking New Jersey governor Chris Christie concluding, "Go home, Mr. Christie. Your state needs you much more than America does" (video follows with transcript and commentary):
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MARTIN BASHIR, HOST: It's time now to clear the air, and we began our broadcast today by focusing on Chris Christie’s flirtation with the idea of running for president.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
NEW JERSEY GOVERNOR CHRIS CHRISTIE: Let me put it there isn't an ego large enough to say, “Oh, please, please, please stop asking me to be leader of the free world. It's -- it's such a burden if -- if you could please just stop.” I mean, what kind of crazy egomaniac would you have to be to say, “Oh, please stop, stop?”
(END VIDEO CLIP)
BASHIR: It is a somewhat coquettish romance, not for Christie, the full-blooded commitment of a man who finds the very idea irresistible.
(BEGIN FILM CLIP FROM “JERRY MAGUIRE”)
RENEE ZELLWEGER: Shut up. Just shut up. You had me at hello.
(END FILM CLIP)
BASHIR: Chris Christie is much more ambivalent about whether he's fallen for the highest office in the land, and that may be because he's already married to the governorship of New Jersey. And that's why he really ought to stop flirting with donors on the West Coast and he should go home, home where the unemployment rate in his state is now 9.4 percent. That’s above the national average of 9.1 percent. Go home, Mr. Christie, because the rate of poverty in New Jersey has hit its highest level since 1993. 14.2 percent of the children in Mr. Christie’s state are now living below the poverty line. Go home, Mr. Christie, because the rate of murder in the Garden State has taken a massive jump under your watch, up an astonishing 16 percent in the last year alone, widely out of sync -- wildly out of sync, sorry, with the nation's rise of just 4.2 percent.
This was quite a departure from the far more civilized discussion about a possible Christie presidential run that transpired on the same network's "Morning Joe" Wednesday wherein even liberals such as co-hosts Mika Brzezinski and Willie Geist, as well as CNBC's Jim Cramer, said the New Jersey governor would be an outstanding addition to this race.
But not Bashir. He's an Obama shill through and through.
Take for example his carping about the 9.4 percent unemployment rate in New Jersey. Bashir failed to mention that it was 9.7 percent when Christie took office.
That's a far better record than Bashir's hero, as when Barack Obama was inaugurated, the unemployment rate was 7.3 percent. Despite unemployment currently far higher at 9.1 percent, I don't see Bashir telling the President to go home.
And what about poverty in New Jersey now at its highest rate since 1993? So is the national rate.
Bashir didn't share that with his viewers.
If this is a disqualifier as president, shouldn't the number of people in America now at its highest level in the 52 years since these figures were published disqualify the current White House resident?
Bashir had no comment about that either.
Something else her failed to mention was that 22.0 percent of children are currently living in poverty nationally, which is far greater than New Jersey's 14.2 percent.
Seems given all these numbers, Bashir should be telling Obama to go home.
As for Christie having been governor for less than two years, I guess Bashir wasn't aware that Obama basically threw his hat into the ring during a "Meet the Press" appearance on October 22, 2006 - less than 22 months after being sworn in as senator! - and that folks were starting to ask him about his presidential plans the day after he was elected in November 2004.
Apparently none of that bothers Bashir.
I guess the bar for experience and competence is far lower in this MSNBC host's view if the person pursuing the highest office in the land is a Democrat.
If this is the case, maybe it's Bashir that should go home, for his ability to separate his political leanings from his commentary is reprehensible and would be an embarrassment to this so-called "news" network if objectivity and impartiality was a requirement for its hosts.
Fortunately for Bashir, it's not.
