Schieffer Reads Letter to the Editor Mocking Bridgegate for Even Being 'Newsworthy'

January 12th, 2014 6:08 PM

As NewsBusters has been reporting, the Hillary Clinton-loving media have been having a field day this week hyping the so-called scandal involving Gov. Chris Christie (R-N.J.) and the George Washington Bridge.

Although CBS's Face the Nation did cover the matter Sunday, host Bob Schieffer seemed rather amused by the whole thing and even offered a commentary wherein he read a Letter to the Editor of the Washington Post mocking the affair for even being "newsworthy" (video follows with transcript and commentary):

BOB SCHIEFFER: SCHIEFFER: When you've been around as long as I have, you have seen a scandal or two. My favorite was the time in 1974 that Wilbur Mills, then the powerful chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, was stopped for driving with his lights off at 2:00 a.m. As police approached his car, a woman passenger, later identified as Fannie Fox, a stripteaser known as "the Argentine Firecracker," jumped out of the car and into the Washington Tidal Basin. Mills jumped in after her and lost his glasses.

Remarkably, he was re-elected. But when he held a news conference after the election at a Boston burlesque house where the Firecracker was performing, it proved too much and he resigned.

Well, for all its charm, I'm moving that story aside and topping my "You can't make it up" list with the New Jersey fiasco. In no way am I playing down the inconveniences forced on innocent taxpayers there. But I did like a letter to the editor of the Washington Post from a man named Per Kurowski who wrote, "In case anyone needs reminding, many of us come from countries where it would be pure bliss to have a political malfeasance on the level of creating traffic jams deemed newsworthy. Just think of the payback one nephew recently provided his uncle."

Well, come to think of it, the North Koreans probably don't even have traffic bulletins.

For the record, Schieffer did cover this "scandal" Sunday. However, it oftentimes made him laugh, and he appeared to think this far less serious than most of his colleagues in the media who have reported this local issue in New Jersey as if the most important matter facing the nation.

Maybe he didn't get the memo from the Clintons.