The John Gibson Complete Idiocy Watch: Week 2

I just wrote about John Gibson, the biggest moron at Fox News, last week. That's right, he's the biggest moron at Fox News. This is a station where both Sean Hannity and Bill O'Reilly have their own shows. Where Brit Hume is the voice of reason and experience. This is the network that has Michelle Malkin on all the time to promote her book on why we ought to lock up all the Japs. So, to say John Gibson far outdoes all of his peers and colleagues in terms of complete object lunacy really says something. It's kind of enviable, stupidity on this level. Oh, to be blissfully ignorant!

So, anyway, I think this may have to become a regular column. The John Gibson Complete Idiocy Watch.

Here's his column today (thanks to Atrios for the link, although I'll just be checking this website on my own in the future...). It's about (what else?) the case of Terri Schiavo. Guess what John thinks? Give up? That the government has no right to intervene in the intimate affairs of a married couple? NOPE!

Just to burnish my reputation as a bomb thrower, I think Jeb Bush should give serious thought to storming the Bastille.

By that I mean he should think about telling his cops to go over to Terri Schiavo's hospice, go inside, put her on a gurney and load her into an ambulance. They could take her to a hospital, revive her, and reattach her feeding tube.

Isn't cute that John thinks he has the reputation of "a bomb thrower." That implies someone knowing saying something outrageous in order to start an argument. I think that's probably the nicest spin you could possibly put on Gibson...that he's aware of the lunacy of what he says, and does it just to stir up trouble and spark debate.

I think the truth is more like: John knows he wants to agree with what Republicans do, but has no critical thinking skills whatsoever. So he winds up proposing tortured, nonsensical arguments, trying to jump on the right-wing bandwagon but lacking the (and I never thought I'd type this...) wit of Rush or Hannity.

And as for his argument itself? Ugh. He wants the Governor of Florida to go into a hospice, kidnap a woman, bring her to a different hospital and thrust a tube back into her throat in order to prolong her comatose, vegetative state indefinitely while more politicians bicker about judges overstepping their authority. Monstrous. Is this what we've come to as a nation? We're ready to turn over decisions about our individual lives and deaths to Congresspeople?

Have you ever watched C-SPAN? Have you ever actually read something written by a Congressman? They're not smart people on the whole. I know we think a political career takes intelligence, education and wisdom but it really only takes money, connections and charisma. I don't want some guy who has a nice complexion and a couple million in the bank deciding whether or not my feeding tube gets removed or left in! Come on! Think!!!!!

For instance, Michael Schiavo and Terri Schiavo are still married, under the law. Anybody else in the world notes with interest that Michael Schiavo has a new love interest and has been engaged in living long enough that he has two children by her.

Here, John tries to make one argument and winds up disproving his entire thesis. Here's his point: Because it has been so long since Terri and Michael were able to carry on a relationship, he shouldn't have any say about whether she lives in her present state or dies peacefully.

But think about that for a second...why has it been so long since Terri and Michael had a spousal relationship? Why aren't they functionally married any more? Oh, yeah, because she's been fucking unconscious for 15 years. Because she's brain dead. She's not coming back. She's not having conversations with anyone (despite the senseless lies of her other family members). She's dead, okay, her remains are just showing signs of life because we've kept them going with equipment.

Better living through technology, no?

So, once again, John proves himself incapable of abstract thought. In trying to argue (not very well) that Michael Schiavo doesn't deserve a say in what happens to his wife, he winds up making the case that there's no reason to keep this woman alive and hooked up to machines.

But for me the big one is the judicial tendency to say, as long as the law and the process has been followed correctly and justly, doesn't matter if she lives or dies.

Strikes me that that's adherence to law to a fault.

So, he's saying that, to theoretically save the life of a brain dead woman, it's okay to break the law. What if everyone acted that way all the time, John? Would this be fair: "Well, a homeless guy near my building is going hungry, and he'll die of starvation soon, so I'm going to rob a convenience store to get him some food and money?" Or: "I need an operation and I don't ave insurance, so I'll die unless I get a couple thousand dollars...I guess I'll mug John Gibson." Or what about this one..."The war in Iraq is wrong and we're senselessly bombing Arab children, so in order to save their lives, I'm going to have to assassinate a lot of public officials."

No, none of these actions are appropriate. Because a law is a pre-established rule that we all agree on before hand. You don't get to violate them if you really really want to, cause golly gosh this braindead woman should be able to remain in her comatose, unconscious, vegetative state as long as possible! I mean, obviously! What an idiot!

So Jeb, call out the troops, storm the Bastille and tell 'em I sent you.

I'll finish up with proof, once again, that John Gibson doesn't know shit about history. He's citing the Storming of the Bastille, the start of the French Revolution, as inspiration for Jeb Bush kidnapping an unconscious, braindead woman.

These two events have nothing to do with one another. If he's just using "storm the Bastille" as a cliche, that's fine, I guess, even though he uses it twice in the same article. But if he's implying that this would somehow become a grand, famous act of civil disobedience, he's pretty far off base. This would be a case of the government coming in and kidnapping a woman because they disagree with the treatment agreed upon by her husband and doctors. It's basically the opposite of the French Revolution, when the peasants got together and decided to kill a lot of government officials and aristocrats.

Dammit, John, you're a professional writer and journalist! Read something every now and then! Friggin' idiot!