ABC's Treachery

MANIFESTO

Since the 1960s I've been of the opinion that anyone who wears an American flag pin in his lapel is suspect. (It drives me to distraction that CBS apparently mandates that its sportscasters wear them. And, of course, this look is beneath contempt.) I've always figured that if Richard Nixon and the present president—two anti-Americans if ever there were any—wore them, I wanted no part of them. In fact, in the days after September 11, 2001, when everybody and his wife was wearing some kind of red white and blue jewelry, I resisted the trend; it seemed just too jingoistic for my taste.

Thus, I was horrified when the issue of the American flag lapel pin came up in Wednesday night's Democratic debate. Why a Pennsylvania voter would care about such a superficial and obnoxious issue was beyond me. Now it turns out that the question wasn't so innocent and earnest after all. Both McClatchy and Josh Marshall have discovered that ABC purposely planted the question from someone whose feelings toward Barack Obama are anything but dispassionate.

Needless to say, George Stephanopoulos—someone who once upon a time had some integrity—is falling all over himself, trying to defend his network's dismal performance of Wednesday evening and denying "that he’d been spoon-fed [questions] by Fox News host Sean Hannity."

What?! Holy smokes. If Sean Hannity's name is even coming up in this episode, things are coming to a pretty pass. Obviously, we haven't heard the last of this hideous telecast.