Dennis Miller vs Ron Paul

The far Right has seemingly sunk to new depths of entertainment news when it hires a failed comedian who lost his relevancy years ago as an informed and level headed pundit, if there even is such a thing. I don't want to go on rant here, but Dennis Miller seems to have something of an accuracy deficit that makes Bill O'Reilly look like the Encyclopedia Brittanica. FOXNews has Mr. Miller as a regular geist to give his two minute Rant styled talking points to an audience who's focus has devolved into that of a squirrel surrounded by cats with ADHD.

Remember his Rants being 10 minutes long? I do. And they used to have opinions and relevance and poignant commentary about society and the human condition. Now he's turned into the slightly wittier and more articulate Sean Hannity. He's even more hawkish than Hannity, if that's even possible. But Miller is never one to be outdone by a mental midget like Hannity. I'm sorry. Mental little person.

I don't know if anyone listens to his new drive time radio show on KFI 640 am that starts at who cares and ends at just shoot me in the head. His recent guest was Republican Presidential Candidate Ron Paul.

I was flipping through stations when I thought I heard someone speaking intelligently about the Middle East and US Foreign Policy when I suddenly realized it was Paul on the Dennis Miller Radio Show.

He did quite a nice hit job on him afterwards, once again using the same tired corporate hand out rhetoric in the form of "he's blaming America." Actually, Miller believes that if we pull out of Iraq right now their will be a blood bath. In fact, Miller believes we should stay as a matter of human rights. Paradoxically, he also believes, and mentions in the same sentence, that we should have invaded Iraq even though they had nothing to do with 9/11 and had no WMD, but simply because we needed to punch someone around as an example to the rest of the world, and to make sure everyone realizes that we are strong like bull. Or bully. Beating up the bean sprout munching kid with glasses is classic bully behavior. Actually fighting someone with balls and the brawn to back it up? Never happens.

So how would Ron Paul feel if we pulled out and, as Miller puts it, proving he's more literate than the President he's rooting for, Iraq becomes "Slaughterhouse 5, 6, 7, and 8?" Paul, quite correctly, said that he would blame the architects of the war, those who got us in there in the first place. After Paul went off the air, Miller courageously confronted Paul by saying that he was blaming "Americans."

Naturally, Miller also used the time honored polemical technique of denying his listeners an objective frame of reference. He mentions, after Paul's exit, that Paul naively believes that our invasion of Iraq is what started terrorism to clime and that Middle Easterners have been crazy for 50 years or more. Naturally, Paul isn't this naive, but Miller seems to think that we are. The fact is, Paul has pointed out, accurately, that US involvement in regime change and the propping up of radical Islamists has been going on for quite some time now, dating back to 1953, when the democratically elected leader of Iran, Mohammed Mosadegh, was overthrown by the CIA. And, of course, it just goes downhill from there.

Its unfortunate that Miller has to play the flunky to a foreign policy that, there's no euphemistic way to put this, is dragging this country into a black hole the size of Dennis Miller's food-hole. But it also proves that news and entertainment have merged to such a degree that you have to hire a comedian to shove opinions down your throat. Oh, and, please, make it funny, because if you can't laugh about war, what can you laugh about?