Don Imus, his show now back on television courtesy of Fox cable, has been showing that he knows how to return a favor to Fox for putting him on the air, by becoming a conservative sycophant.
To show how far he’s sunk in pleasing his current meal ticket, he’s joined the Barrack “Hussein” Obama, crowd, using Obama’s middle name from time to time, the ploy conservatives use hoping that with the dumber segment of their audience they can try and convince them that not only was Obama born in Kenya but he is also secretly Sadaam Hussein’s illigitimate son.
He had Mark Levin, a conservative radio host on his show as a guest and as Levin spouted one lie after another about the economy, the bailout and the stimulus, Imus never once challenged Levin’s patent dishonesty or his ignorance..
Either Imus himself was so uninformed or misinformed that he didn’t have the facts to challenge Levin and expose him as either ignorant or lying, or Imus has simply decided to take a dive for conservatives since Fox has put him back on the air and his wife has been making appearances on Hannity’s show.
Imus kicked off the discussion on the economy by first saying to Levin that “Obama said” that the stimulus saved jobs. Levin of course attacked it as Obama being desperate and telling lies ( Levin projecting again) to cover up the fact that the stimulus has been a disaster.
The problem for both Imus and Levin is that Obama didn’t say the stimulus saved jobs. The non-partisan Congressional Budget Office said the stimulus saved jobs and Obama repeated it as you might expect him to. Conservatives and Republicans love to quote CBO numbers when they support their position but suddenly the CBO turns into a bunch of blathering idiots when their numbers support Democratic initiatives.
Imus also said to Levin that Obama claimed that the bailout kept the country from sliding into a depression. This set off Levin who ranted that we weren’t ever close to going into a depression and that this was all nonsense — just more liberal lies to cover up Obama’s socialist agenda. Imus, seeming to know which side his bread is buttered on, didn’t ask Levin how he knew that and what facts Levin had to prove it since everyone in a position to know at the time did say the economy and especially the banking system was on the verge of coming apart. Imus never asked Levin how he knew more about where the economy was at the time than Alan Paulson, Ben Bernake, members of congress and George W. Bush who was president when TARP was passed and signed it.
Imus didn’t ask and just let Levin rant because it was clear tht itdidn’t matter to Imus that Levin didn’t know what he was talking about. Imus was back on the air, he is on Fox and so its time to push the conservative party line.
No one will argue that the bailout which began under Bush probably could have been handled better. And administered better. But according to everyone involved, Bernake had said at the time, that if the bailout wasn’t passed within a few days, the country’s economic system would collapse..
But Imus was either totally ignorant of those facts himself, ( there was a Frontline documentary that spelled it all out). or he was simply willing to let a conservative use his show as a platform for more political nonsense.
The conservative rah rah went on with the discussion of John Edwards cheating on his wife and comparisons with Bill Clinton cheating. At one point Edwards was said to be particularly sleazy because he cheated on his wife while she had cancer. But no mention of the grand old hypocrite Newt Gingrich who did exactly the same thing, cheating on his wife with one of his staffers at the same time he was publicly criticizing Clinton over Lewinsky. Or Henry Hyde who not only cheated on his wife but cheated on the woman he was cheating with.
No one can deny, least of all Democrats, that Obama has been, well, exactly what Obama was during the primaries and throughout his political career — an empty talker, not a doer, and someone willing to lie, deceive, and sell out anything and anyone on a dime for his own political self-preservation and then follow it with flowers and candy for those willing to look the other way and take him back. He isn’t a leader. He could rightly be called a disaster. Not the 3000- people killed-911-Iraq-Afghanistan- deficit exploding-wreck the economy- Katrina-sell out of American values type disaster Bush was, but not what the blind who rigged the system to hand him the Democratic nomination thought he was either.
But the kind of conservative nonsense that came out of Levin’s mouth and went unchallenged by Imus that has been Obama’s best friend because as long as you have borderline brown shirt conservatives attacking Obama, the reaction is going to be to defend him against those kinds of lies despite all his shortcomings.
As for Imus,there was a time when he didn’t let anyone get away with the kind of lies we heard from Levin.. I remember when he was doing his show on MSNBC and he nailed Andrea Mitchell to the wall over her having lied in one of her reports on the Valerie Plame incident saying it was well known that Plame had been working for the CIA and was not covert when she knew nothing of the kind.
There were times,as everyone remembers, when Imus would also put his foot in mouth. But now it seems, since joining Fox, he’s willing to have other people put their feet in his mouth also.