Last Tuesday Fox News anchor Shepard Smith delivered a remarkable commentary in support of the traditional American values of “innocence until proven guilty” and respect for our nation’s defenders in the military. It was a striking departure from the talking points belched out by pretty much everyone else on Fox that have convicted Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl as a deserter, and even worse, an enemy collaborator, without even bothering to hear his side, much less have a trial. Smith said in part that…
“If you desert or commit treason, you have to be proved to have done so. We can’t just decide because some people come on television and yakkety-yak. […] As the Pentagon said, you bring them home first, and then you investigate.”
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These common sense thoughts should be the basis for every analysis of someone under suspicion of misbehavior, but especially so for someone who volunteered to serve in the Army during a time of war. Whether or not Bergdahl’s commitment to his platoon changed some time after he enlisted and deployed to Afghanistan is something that should be investigated, but the slanderous prejudgment that has become a mantra on Fox News is irresponsible and un-American.
The latest absurdity is that Fox is alleging that Bergdahl converted to Islam during his captivity and has joined his captors as a jihadist. It apparently never entered the abnormally diminutive minds of Fox News that Bergadahl might have been coerced, or he might have been faking it to avoid further mistreatment, or even that he might be suffering from Stockholm syndrome. In Fox’s world he is simply a traitor and no substantive evidence is required to convict him.
Shameless self-promotion…
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Media Matters has put together this video that juxtaposes Smith’s commentary with the persistent blathering of his Fox News colleagues. It’s a revealing presentation that shows just how far Fox has stepped over the ledge of reason.
It is that tendency to wander off the ranch that likely resulted in Smith being demoted from his previous primetime slot to his current midday time period at 3:00 pm. And curiously, today Smith was not on the air at all. Filling in for him was the more reliably right-wing Harris Faulkner. Is Smith being silenced and/or punished for his independence? Time will tell.
