Sunday Ferris Follies

Even for the impossibly low standards of failed Editorial Page editor and right-wing hack Kevin Ferris of the Philadelphia Inquirer, I think you can consider this “scraping the bottom of the barrel.”

Once again, this, like Chuck Williams’ attack on all things that actually are liberal or merely perceived as such, this is considered acceptable editorial commentary under the reign of Brian Tierney and Philadelphia Media Holdings (as I pointed out last week, the paper decried anyone for opposing “The Path To 9/11” but failed to disclose that they had purchased a full-page ad for the movie that appeared in the paper the next day).

Also, I’d like to communicate something else to the editorial page writers of this paper: ladies and gentlemen, you people are not funny. You’re not cute or incisive or “cutting edge” in your writing in any way, shape, or form. Stick to the facts, and if you can’t write based on that, then don’t write at all!

(Some people would probably consider me to be as funny as root canal, but here’s the difference; I’m not getting paid for this, and the Inquirer editorial writers are.)

To: Robert A. Iger
President and CEO
The Walt Disney Co.
Burbank, Calif.

From: U.S. Sen. Harry Reid (D., Nev.)
Majority leader-to-be
TV producer wannabe
Sometime believer in the First Amendment

Oh cute, Ferris, you pinhead…if you’re such a believer in the First Amendment also, then why don’t you go out and watch “Fahrenheit 9/11” and give us a detailed review so all of your freeper pals can read it along with the rest of us, OK?

Dear Bob,

It is with deep regret that the Democratic leadership in Congress notes that your network, ABC, aired the mini-series The Path to 9/11 on Sept. 10 and 11, recklessly disregarding our threat... er, collegial suggestion... that you do otherwise.

A suggestion also made by 200,000 petition signatories, historians Arthur Schelsinger, Jr. and Sean Wilentz, and former president Clinton, by the way, as noted here.

We really couldn't have been clearer in our Sept. 7 letter. I quote, in part: "We urge you, after full consideration of the facts, to uphold your responsibilities as a respected member of American society and as a beneficiary of the free use of the public airwaves to cancel this factually inaccurate and deeply misguided program."

You even ignored pleas to "tell the truth" by former President Bill Clinton, whose picture I have pasted in my dictionary next to the entries for honesty and accuracy.

Ferris almost makes this too easy sometimes. What can you say about an ideologue that dares to make a comparison between a president lying about sex with an intern and a president lying about an illegal war that has killed or injured thousands upon thousands of people and cost over $300 billion dollars? But then again, I guess that silly things like facts and reality don’t matter when you’re “drinking the Kool Aid.”

Perhaps you felt free to ignore our threat... er, collegial suggestion... because we are currently the minority party in Congress. This was shortsighted of you.

First, let me acquaint you with the power that even a minority can muster when a majority of that minority is in a mustering mood.

Effective immediately, no member of the Democratic caucus, House or Senate, and no spouse or child of a member, will be allowed to utter the phrase I'm going to Disney World. Allowances will be made for those who already have scheduled or expect to schedule junkets... er, fact-finding missions... to that great state.

And in Ferris’s myopic view of pseudo-reality, only Democratic politicians take high-priced junkets of questionable value, something Repugs would never do, right?

Further, Democrats will soon be introducing a nonbinding resolution in support of the International Astronomical Union's downgrading of Pluto, moving him, as I understand it, from top-drawer Disney star to supporting dwarf.

Can anyone imagine a life form in existence in the universe that would be amused by that remark? If so, please enlighten me.

Second, it is now clear to me that you have missed the headlines about the forthcoming Democratic tsunami poised to sweep us into power in the House and Senate. This historic event will unleash an era of multicultural joie de vivre that will pacify insurgents and terrorists the world over, topple with diplomatic kindness the tyrannical regimes of North Korea and Iran, and see Americans embracing their inner New Deal, too long suppressed by tax-averse Republicans.

I thought this was supposed to be a slap at the Democrats for protesting the Disney 9/11 fiction, but I suppose Ferris, in an effort to placate his playmate Jonathan Last, his boss Brian Tierney and their other freeper pals, has been given carte blanche to release any invective that pops into that tiny particle of brain matter that he is so desperately trying to cultivate through neural synaptic accidents.

Good for us. Not so good for media conglomerates that put their First Amendment rights above the collegial suggestions of those of us who truly know what's best for American families to watch on TV.

As my lefty blogger “betters” and I have noted, it is truly worth a chortle to hear freepers like Ferris invoking the “first amendment” over Disney’s disingenuous fraud of a movie when these people were the first to complain about the treatment their beloved Ronnie and Nancy R. received in that soap opera about them a few years ago…they were frothing at the mouth to keep it from airing on CBS and had it moved to the Showtime cable network – that was such a triumph of “free speech” also, wasn’t it?

Thus, please be advised of the changes that will result with our ascent to power. Henceforth:

All documentaries, docudramas, movies of the week, mini-series, sitcoms or infomercials that mention Democrats in anything remotely approaching a negative light will be previewed by the Office of Partisan Scrutiny, led by the epitome of accuracy and fairness in filmmaking, the Academy Award-winning auteur Michael Moore.

Oh, and Kenneth Tomlinson didn’t put his imprimatur all over PBS and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, right? And his nomination hasn’t even been voted down, but only “frozen.” I guess that’s how the Repugs punish one of their own.

And as I noted earlier, Ferris impugns Michael Moore without making any substantive comments on his films (and he could file some legitimate complaints if he wanted to, but they would only be anecdotal, certainly about “Fahrenheit 9/11”). This is “par for the course,” I realize.

White House requests for airtime from now until January 2009 will not be approved until any and all presidential speeches, statements, declarations or attempts at homespun humor have been vetted by the Ministry of Mendacity, cochaired by former CBS anchor Dan Rather, former Democratic presidential candidate Al Sharpton and former ambassador Joe Wilson. (The first two are confirmed, but we're still verifying who recommended Mr. Wilson for the post.)

I read this and I recall some of the truly great writers who have worked for the Inquirer, some of whom taught me at another time like Dick Cooper, as well as William Marimow and Tom Gibbons, people who had more talent in one of their cuticles than someone like Ferris would ever have in their entire bodies. How the Inquirer has fallen into disrepute since that time, so much so that someone like Ferris, some wretched scab of a wannabe writer, would actually be granted column space, is symptomatic of the business as a whole unfortunately.

Current series will be updated. For example, in That '70s Show, instead of the kids hanging out in Eric's basement, we'll have them grow up and move to Capitol Hill.

I’ve never seen that show, though I’ve heard it’s good, so I’m particularly bewildered by that remark.

Eric (Ned Lamont), Kelso (John Kerry), Hyde (Jack Murtha) and exchange-student Fez (special guest, Iran's Mahmoud Ahmadinejad) will reminisce weekly about the glory days, the late '70s. Some sample themes: "Losing a War Isn't Really So Bad"; "Learning to Love Being Humiliated by the Islamic Republic"; "A Humbled Superpower Is a Happy Superpower," and "FISA, Pop Rocks and 8-tracks, All Still Hip." Alas, Eric's dad will no longer be central to the show. But we'll have his picture (cameo appearance by Joe Lieberman) on the wall, tagged "Casualty of War."

As Atrios says, “OWWW! THE STUPID! IT BURNS!!"

So let’s see…assuming there’s anything remotely related to common sense in that last paragraph – a stretch, I know – it sounds as if Ferris is trying to draw some equivalency between John Kerry, John Murtha, and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. I’d pay for the privilege of watching Murtha dress down Ferris face to face over that one (I have no idea whether or not Ferris served, and I’m not going to waste my time trying to find out). And I know Kerry has been making noise about the Swift Boat liars lately, but though I respect Kerry, he’s “a day late and a dollar short.”

And in his freeper frenzy, another synapse fires off and Ferris decides to throw Joe Wilson into the mix (and FISA law is irrelevant to Ferris also, of course, as well as the notion that Connecticut voters are intelligent enough to see Joe Lieberman for the utter fraud that he is and vote for Ned Lamont based on other issues besides the Iraq war).

Next week, more details on our plans to keep politics and partisanship out of future Sept. 11 commemorations.

Enjoy the rest of your Constitution Day.

What? No gratuitous winger reference to Ward Churchill? You're slipping, Ferris.

I should point out that, yesterday, the Courier Times published a column by Dan Thomason on the ABC movie, and I read most of it since it was still better than anything Ferris had to say, until I got to the line "Bush had only been in office 8 months before 9/11"...I don't think anyone ever noted that "John Kennedy had only been in office a few months before the Bay of Pigs" (he was blamed for it, as he should have been, though I think he recovered, and Dubya should of course be treated the same way).

Also, regarding 9/11, there's the lumping together of intelligence failures with Bush and Clinton in an effort to make Dubya look legitimate, and I even saw a note in Thomason's column that "this goes back to the Carter administration," but why is it that Reagan always gets a pass here? If it hadn't been for our interference in the Russian-Afghan conflict, bin Laden and al Qaeda would not have had the opportunity to learn about weapons and tactics from us when they fought as part of the mujahadeen against the Soviets.

Finally, it might be a good idea for the Inquirer, about which editor and executive vice president Amanda Bennett once hilariously boasted that “we are the Internet in Philadelphia," to allow comments to the columns by their brilliant writers such as Ferris instead of saying at the bottom of the column "Email so and so at their address." Had they done that in this case, I’m sure the comments would have truly been memorable.