And, of course, John Hockenberry will certainly want to alert The Takeaway's listeners to the news that "actor and activist" Danny Glover has linked the Haitian earthquake to the failure of the fiasco otherwise known as the Copenhagen World Climate Summit, "you know what I'm sayin'?"

http://blogs.news.com.au/dailytelegraph/timblair/index.php/dailytelegraph/comments/pact_with_gaia/

Press Release from CBN:

http://corner.nationalreview.com/post/?q=M2U3ODY3ZTcxODAxYTlmZmU5NmNkYTY3OTkwNWNiNTk=

We shall see if if Rev. Pat Robertson is given the same sort of nuanced treatment that Harry Reid was given on The Takeaway.

Just yesterday, we had a statement from the First Lady Michelle Obama, saying that she needs no apology from Harry Reid, because she knows what was in his heart. (In his heart, I feel certain that Senator Reid is a Dmocrat, who whold very much like to win in his 2010 re-election bid.) One would think that Mrs. Obama made that personal judgment based on Reid's past works, whatever they might be.

So far, Presidential BFF Valerie Jarrett is saying she's "speechless" about Robertson's comment. "Speechless" might indeed have been the best approach.

But as long as NPR and other elements of the media as represented by, oh, let's just say, WNYC, PRI, the BBC, the NYT and WGBH, (not to mention CNN, CBS, NBC, ABC and too many independently-produced NPR programs to count) are "pushing" this story, I think "pushback" is fair game.

Emma, I'm not terribly interested in being the assigned counsel to defend Pat Robertson.

I am, however, very much interested in shining light on the editorial baises of The Takeaway and NPR. NPR has, it seems, assigned itself the taks of doing 24 hr. counterprogramming to Pat Robertson. I've lost count of the number of public radio programs and hosts that have seized on this story. Not that the Haitian quake is not important; it is. As Par Robertson said, it is a devastatign tragedy. And my understanding is that Robertson's ministry had been involved in charitable work in Haiti before this earthquake. But now, we actually have liberal news organizations making false claims that Pat Robertson said that the quake had been "caused" by the Haitians' historical religious beliefs. Pat Robertson might be the most misquoted, or incompletely quoted, man in America today.

At the same time, I have yet to hear of a single NPR story on the thuggery displayed in front of the Democrats' Senate candidate in Massachusetts, in which conflicting and untrue characterizations of the event have come out of the Democrat's campaign. These are conscious editorial choices on the part of NPR and the The Takeaway.

Pat Robertson was a Presidential candidate in 1988 -- 22 years ago. It seems to me that NPR has little cared that the Rev. Al Sharpton was likewise a presidential candidate at one time.

Um, sorry, but the full quotation does nothing to mitigate the breathtaking stupidity of Robertson's claim. OK, so he tacks on a little sympathy at the last second; is that supposed to mitigate his bats**t insane "they made a deal with the Devil" nonsense? I think it's entirely fair to marvel at the fact that this bigoted crackpot was a presidential candidate.

Finally, to the extent that John Hockenberry and Todd Zwillich had hoped to use Robertson's statement to bludgeon conservatives, it probably won't work; there is this, from National Review Online, placing distance between Robertson and other Christians in public life:

http://corner.nationalreview.com/post/?q=MTliN2Y1YzU4NjUwMDkwZTZjYjFhZDM3NGNkZDk4MmI=

For the record, there is a more complete version of Robertson's commentary; even Salon.com had the sense of fairness to quote Robertson more completely than did John Hockenberry. Here's the fuller quote:

"And you know, Christy, something happened a long time ago in Haiti, and people might not want to talk about it, they were under the heel of the French, uh, you know, Napoleon the third and whatever, and they got together and swore a pact to the devil, they said, we will serve you, if you get us free from the Prince, true story. And so the devil said, 'OK, it's a deal.' And they kicked the French out, the Haitians revolted and got themselves free, and ever since they have been cursed by one thing after the other, desperately poor. . . the Island of Hispaniola is one island cut down the middle. On the one side is Haiti, on the other side is the Dominican Republic. Dominican Republic is, is, prosperous, healthy, full of resorts, etc. Haiti is in desperate poverty, same Islands, uh, they need to have, and we need to pray for them, a great turning to God. And out of this tragedy, I'm optimistic something good may come, but right now we're helping the suffering people, and the suffering is unimaginable."

I now understand what The Takeaway is; it is the audio version of Salon.com or FireDogLake.com. Hence, John Hockenberry's breathless recounting of Pat Robertson's comments re: Haiti, and an attempt to bring those comments directly into the current political fray, noting that Robertson was a "Presidential candidate" (so was Jesse Jackson) and wondering, as Todd Zwillich did, what the conservative movement's response would be to those comments.