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Hannity, Hewitt call for torturing Dick Durbin

Prominent conservative commentators Hugh Hewitt and Sean Hannity today called for the torturing of U.S. Senator Dick Durbin (D.- Illinois), in response to Durbin’s much-remarked denunciation of torture early last week.

Speaking on the Senate floor last Tuesday, Durbin read from a statement written by an FBI agent, describing the conditions under which Americans have been holding detainees in the war on terror.  The statement included graphic accounts of prisoners chained hand and foot on the floor, urinating and defecating on themselves while chained in a fetal position for 18 to 24 hours or more.  Durbin then said:

If I read this to you and did not tell you that it was an FBI agent describing what Americans had done to prisoners in their control, you would most certainly believe this must have been done by Nazis, Soviets in their gulags, or some mad regime—Pol Pot or others—that had no concern for human beings. Sadly, that is not the case. This was the action of Americans in the treatment of their prisoners.

In response, Fox News analyst Hannity sharply criticized Durbin, saying, “this guy’s trying to tell us that torture is un-American!  So why does Dick Durbin hate America?  Listen, our founding fathers fought and died so that we could torture our enemies around the world, including people we think might be our enemies or might become our enemies.  Maybe a few months in Gitmo will give Dick Durbin a deeper appreciation of America’s freedoms, and I for one would be happy to ship him there.”

Conservative blogger Hugh Hewitt concurred, writing that “the vast, vast majority of Americans” have decided that “Durbin is a pathetic and repulsive political hack who should exit immediately after a lengthy and detailed apology.”

Hewitt was especially incensed by Durbin’s citation of a letter written to him by former Florida congressman and Vietnam POW Pete Peterson, which read,

From my 6 1/2 years of captivity in Vietnam, I know what life in a foreign prison is like. To a large degree, I credit the Geneva Conventions for my survival. . . . This is one reason the United States has led the world in upholding treaties governing the status and care of enemy prisoners: because these standards also protect us. . . . We need absolute clarity that America will continue to set the gold standard in the treatment of prisoners in wartime.

“Peterson’s probably one of those Democrat Kerry-vets,” said Hewitt, “the kind who was never actually in Vietnam, and then lied himself into getting a couple of purple band-aids.  He and Durbin need to be chained hand and foot for a couple of days.  Let’s show these weasels and slimeballs that America doesn’t have a place for people who say that America shouldn’t practice torture.  Besides, why are we making all this fuss about a couple of prisoners defecating on themselves?  I defecate on myself all the time.  It’s not a big deal.”

In a related development, Harvard law professor Alan Dershowitz pointed out that many of the detainees in U.S.-controlled prisons had helped to plan the attacks of 9/11, and that many more have vital information that might prevent terrorist attacks in the future.  “These are people who can save lives if only we apply the right pressure,” Dershowitz said on Hardball with Chris Matthews.  “I have no doubt that the intelligence we’re getting from them has helped us defuse innumerable dirty bombs throughout the United States, often with only one second left on the little LCD ‘countdown clock’ that terrorists always attach to their homemade explosives.  There’s no question in my mind that if we weren’t torturing, maiming, and killing these people, we’d never get access to the vital information we need to keep America free.”

Thanks to Jeralyn Merritt, Billmon, and Roy Edroso, fine Americans all.  And hey, folks, that first Hewitt quote is for real.  You can look it up.

Posted by on 06/20 at 08:32 AM

  1. Meet the new outrage at the outrage, same as the last outrage at the outrage. They’ll be talking about bias at Reuter’s and an inappropriate historical analogy made by somebody at Bumfuck Junior College no matter what happens, because it consistently rates as the best denial/apologeia mechanism that exists. And it could very well get one lucky internet site the equivalent of the Cable Ace award-- Time Magazine’s coveted “Blog of the Year.”

    Posted by norbizness  on  06/20  at  11:25 AM

  2. Norbizness, I am utterly outraged at your outrageous equation of the new outrage at the outrage with the old outrage at the outrage.  What we need now is outrage at the outrage at the outrage, or, more simply, Rage Against the Noise Machine.

    Oh, and speaking of the Blog of the Year:  the Downing Street Memo is a fake, don’t you know.

    Posted by  on  06/20  at  11:57 AM

  3. I appreciate the effort.  Don’t get me wrong.  I’m just not sure it’s possible to do this as parody.

    I once had an English professor explain how an effective satire emulates some text or other original, while altering as little of the original structurally as possible.  A good satirist changes but a single word—maybe even a single character—of her target and presto!  Whole worlds of absurdity, previously lurking beneath the surface of the original, are loosed upon the undergraduate-o-sphere.

    These guys exist in a completely different universe, where the laws of satire and what used to be known as ‘shame’ are at variance with those set out by Newton centuries ago.  To satirize these creeps would be to puncture a hole in the very fabric of space/time.  Seriously, I’d put on some special protective gear and anchor myself to some sort of big rock before I tried to go there.

    Posted by  on  06/20  at  12:12 PM

  4. I agree. As I noted after the last piece, with these guys, who can tell what’s satire, and what’s actual fact. And even if Hannity or Hewitt never actually come out with stuff like this, I’m pretty sure they’d think torturing Durbin or Michael, or indeed any of those who disagree with them, would be a pretty neat idea!

    Still, a funny post.

    Posted by  on  06/20  at  12:28 PM

  5. I actually appreciate the satire, and think this is the right way to do it. It’s not going to convert Hewitt, but that’s not the point (who would want to?).

    But I agree with Demetrios and Lefty that parts of this are just beyond the realm of things that are possible to laugh about. Hewitt actually makes me slightly ill:

    The troops at Gitmo are serving the country under difficult circumstances, protecting the country every day, and they have been slandered.  What they are doing there, even the harshest tactics they have been authorized to use, have nothing to do with Hitler, Stalin and Pol Pot.

    I mean, right, those tactics have nothing to do with those people, except that they resemble them. Which, to be fair, is exactly what Durbin said. Durbin is out of line, per Hewitt, because he can’t acknowledge that even though we apparently need to use the same tactics, we are nothing like those evil dictatorial regimes. In suggesting that the U.S. ought to be subject to the same kinds of historical and legal judgments as Hitler and Pol Pot, in holding the U.S. to the same standards, Durbin becomes a flag-hater. Ill-making stuff.

    Posted by Lee  on  06/20  at  01:38 PM

  6. You’d think forcing the administration and wing nut press to defend their torture positions would be enough. We have taken an ugly turn here that feels like a short step to disappearing enemies by tying them to iron rails and helicoptering them out over open ocean. Remember when we were talking about “wedge issues”? (I think Michael was going design “the wedgie” award.) These are value claims that can fit on a bumpersticker and can be repeated endlessly with the express aim of showing the moral vacuousness of the opposition? Can we start with “Torture is immoral”? Is this not a conduit for uniting Democrats, Progressives, and and anyone who believes in God or gods? Sorry if I sound a little shrill here, but I’m reading The Torture Papers now. If I could lift it, I’d throw it through the Justice Department’s front window.

    Posted by  on  06/20  at  01:52 PM

  7. Dick Durbin? What happened to deanna?

    And their half kid, Dur Bin Laden?

    Posted by  on  06/20  at  05:50 PM

  8. Chris, welcome to the Order of the Shrill.  And Lee, thanks for the kind word, but I think Demetrios and Lefty have a point.  All I can say is that I don’t even think of this kind of post as satire:  I think that this is basically what Hannity and Hewitt are really saying, when you hold their remarks up to the light.  And I decided to approach their remarks in this relatively indirect way because when I first read the work of the get-Durbin crowd last week, I was actually shaking with rage.  That messes up my typing accuracy (on which I pride myself, you know), so instead of responding in a timely and appropriately shrill fashion, I waited a couple of days and wrote this thing instead.

    But yes, I cede the major point at issue.  It’s really not possible to make Hannity or Hewitt look any more stupid or vile than they already are.

    Posted by Michael  on  06/20  at  06:00 PM

  9. If they’re recommending torturing Durbin, it must be because they believe he has useful information.  Are they trying to derail the Obama-Bérubé 2020 express by digging up dirt on the junior Senator from Illinois?  You think I’m crazy?  Crazy like a Fox.

    Posted by corndog  on  06/20  at  06:23 PM

  10. I admire Durbin’s taking this stand, even if he did waffle a bit there.

    But I think we’re stil playing the opposition’s game here. there are a couple other options I’d like to suggest.

    1) The Aikido method. Rather than using Nazi Germany or the USSR as a comparison, Durbin could have said “This is the kind of missive one might expect from… the regime of Ariel Sharon!” conservatives would say “of COURSE we’re nowhere near as bad as Israel!”, causing friction with conservative supporters of Israel, who would make detailed arguments about how the US surpasses Israel as a torturer. Hilarity would ensue, especially after Tucker Carlson is handed a printout of this comment by a researcher and refers repeatedly to Durbin’s “Jew Jitsu Strategy.”

    2) Playing to our side’s strengths. They call us pointy-headed intelleckchals? we’ll give them pointy headed intelleckchals. Rather than using popular, two-syllable names of evildoers, our side could be speaking in language that the flying monkey right won’t understand. Example:

    “Current Bush administration policy in Gitmo and Abu Ghraib is not without its meretricious affect. I am convinced that the president has emphatically adjured the use of torture, and that his administration is in fact a prime example of extraordinary rendition. Strappado, Mr. President! Strappado!”

    Posted by Chris Clarke  on  06/20  at  07:06 PM

  11. Hewitt’s hiccup is just the beginning.  I predict that more and more, actually-uttered conservative dumb-bombs will find their way into the attempts of Michael and others to pen satirical news releases.  Soon, parodies of wire stories will consist of wall-to-wall bonafide Hannityisms and Horowitzadingdongs.  And that journamalism stuff that holds the quotes together?  You won’t even notice how little you miss it.

    It’s actually part of the plan.  Conservatives know that satire is the last weapon that the children of lightness wield against them.  Somewhere along the way we’ll have reached a tipping point, and Sean and David and Hugh will have achieved their nefarious aim.  For, with satire KIA, academia will become truly irrelevant.

    Of course, by then the entire world will have been sucked violently through a hole the size of a neutron in Wolf Blitzer’s eyelash (and neither the material world nor Wolf will survive).  But the conservatives won’t care.  At last they’ll have gotten even with the tenured radicals!

    Posted by  on  06/20  at  08:06 PM

  12. I dunno, corndog—I mean, I’m rethinking the whole Obama-Bérubé ticket.  Durbin has so outflanked young Barack on these elementary human-rights issues—torture, extraordinary rendition—that I’ve now adopted a “wait and see until Obama’s second term” attitude (since he obviously won’t face a candidate as weak as Keyes in 2010, he probably feels some pressure to move to the dead center; the question is just how bad that move will be, and so far, the signs are not entirely encouraging).  Chris (Clarke), I’ll take door number one—I think that’s a brilliant suggestion.  Imagine a U.S. Senator describing, on the Senate floor, the deaths of some of our “detainees” who’ve been strung up in what is known, in the trade, as a Palestinian hanging.  Here’s your wedge issue, Chris (Robinson):  the American right would quickly split into two factions, one of which would, as Chris (Clarke) suggests, insist that we’re nothing like that barbaric Israeli regime, and the other of which would insist that any Palestinian hanging the Israelis do, we can do better. . . .

    Posted by Michael  on  06/20  at  09:02 PM

  13. ”...with only one second left on the little LCD ‘countdown clock’...”

    Have they they told us if we should cut the green wire or the red one?

    Posted by  on  06/20  at  09:23 PM

  14. One wonders why Hugh Hewitt would have a coprophile on his show . . .

    Posted by Randy Paul  on  06/20  at  09:59 PM

  15. Although had I followed Mr. Dershowitz’s career more closely I might not have been surprised, his self-insertion into the torture debate immediately after 9/11 and his “ticking time bomb” argument favoring torture “under certain circumstances” did surprise me.

    Subsequently, it occurred to me that Mr. Dershowitz—in the manner of neocons seizing on 9/11 as an opportunity to get Saddam—may well, for different reasons, have leaped at the chance to influence Americans in the direction of accepting torture as a necessary response to terrorism.

    Mr. Dershowitz has long been a supporter of Israel and had expressed his concern over the rise of a pro-Palestinian view in much of Europe if not here.  One of the criticisms of Israel had been, even after its 1999 Supreme Court ruling against the use of torture, that Israel was in violation of human rights in torturing Palestinian prisoners.

    It makes sense that Mr. Dershowitz should find it in Israel’s interest that its most important supporter, the United States, should adopt a similar ethical(?) realistic(?) position.

    Posted by  on  06/20  at  11:35 PM

  16. Durbin could only have avoided criticism by suggesting that nobody but Hillary could have done anything so dire.

    It’s the only pejorative not explicitly abjured by those objecting.

    Posted by  on  06/21  at  04:34 AM

  17. I thought it was spelled “Hitlery.”

    Posted by Michael  on  06/21  at  08:59 AM

  18. Re Dershowitz:  IIRC, he was against torture until the government of Israel admitted that it used torture.  At that point, the moral calculas of the universe changed for him.

    Posted by  on  06/21  at  06:13 PM

  19. then somoen needs to tell that Israel’s Supreme Court said that torture is illegal.

    Posted by Randy Paul  on  06/21  at  08:56 PM

  20. I enjoy parody less and less. I used to try to do it, too, but it doesn’t really work anymore.

    Weekly World News—that works: “Titanic Finally Docks Far Behind Schedule, Waiting Families are Extremely Annoyed”

    Posted by John Emerson  on  06/22  at  12:23 AM

  21. Terry Gross did a “Fresh Air” segment a few years ago with a member of the Orange County, CA bomb squad.  The bomb expert did point out that she had never seen a bomb with a handy little countdown timer attached to it.  She had seen bombs with red and blue wires attached to them, however BUT she still had never run into the situation where all you have to do is clip the red wire grin

    Posted by Tim Horrigan  on  06/22  at  10:58 AM

  22. Well, I guess Hugh Hewitt would know personally about being “a pathetic and repulsive political hack who should exit immediately after a lengthy and detailed apology.”

    Posted by Erik Loomis  on  06/22  at  05:27 PM

  23. Hewitt accusing anyone of hackery is a little like a dirty cast iron pot accusing a shiny aluminium pan of chromatic similitude.

    Posted by  on  06/22  at  08:14 PM

  24. Michael, you do know how to make a girl giggle. (While being suitably outraged and shrill.)

    Posted by Orange  on  06/24  at  07:49 PM

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