Goodbye, and Good Riddance
Merry Christmas, weeks early. It’s a great day in American. Bill Moyers is leaving weekly television.
Yes, that’s right, Mr. Moyers, the liberal, hypocritical, and smug prince of thug-journalism, who raised concepts such as situational ethics and moral relativism to a high art form, will be leaving public television on April 30, 2010, according to a recent item in The New York Times by Elizabeth Jensen in her “Media Decoder” column.
“Mr. Moyers said he had been planning for some time to retire the program on December 25, but was asked by PBS to raise the funds to continue through April, which he did,” writes Ms. Jensen.
The “program” to which she is referring is “Bill Moyers’ Journal,” which began in April 2007. It is a weekly, no-holds-barred, advocacy program on the Public Broadcasting System for the liberal agenda in America.
And what journey onto the depths of Hades his “Journal” was.
Ms. Jensen reports that “PBS said in a statement that it was in the middle of a “review and reinvention” of its news and public affairs programming, and that it would announce plans for its lineup in January.”
I guess with a Democratic administration in power; there is no need for Mr. Moyers to continue to leach off taxpayer dollars and bash the Republicans and act-out on Bush Derangement Syndrome on the so-called politically-neutral Public Broadcasting System.
According to Ms. Jensen, Mr. Moyers said that his program has recently been having a “good run of it … so I feel it’s time.” He said he was not quitting television work, although he has no new projects planned.
Our younger readers may not be aware that Mr. Moyers, who was born June 5, 1934, first distinguished himself on the national stage as the White House press secretary for President Lyndon Baines Johnson from 1965 to 1967.
Mr. Moyers and President Johnson shared a long sordid history of working together.
It is ironic to note that Mr. Moyers is an ordained minister; when one considers the course, blunt, if not profane, behavior that historians have characterized President Johnson’s rise and maintenance of power, for which Mr. Moyers played a critical role.
In an April 3, 1966, article in The New York Times, Patrick Anderson wrote: that Mr. Moyers explained his relationship with President Johnson as “I work for him despite his faults and he lets me work for him despite my deficiencies.”
His quote from 1966 may have been the only hint at humanity he may have ever had in a career that has witnessed him, in his later years, become unbearably preachy, condescending, boorish, and blinded by his politically ideology, which has further tarnished his conflicted and complicated legacy.
For every mean-spirited thing I have to say about Mr. Moyers, I have a half-dozen much nastier remarks which I have forsaken due to my shriveled – but nevertheless – functional sense of decency.
For the sake of time, let’s gloss over allegations that in his younger years Mr. Moyers is alleged to have been involved in witch-hunts over the sexual preferences of Johnson administration officials. That was the subject of a lengthy Washington Post article last February 19, by Joe Stephens:
“Even Bill Moyers, a White House aide now best known as a liberal television commentator, is described in the records as seeking information on the sexual preferences of White House staff members.”
Oh, let’s not overlook accusations that he was involved in threatening at least one journalist, Morley Safer, of “60 Minutes” fame, who had aired awkward behavior of U.S. troops in Vietnam, with an investigation into his “communist ties.”
Glenn Garvin, writing for The Miami Herald, said in a particularly hard-hitting column, “Bill Moyers’ Journal, gay-bashing edition,” on February 19:
“Of all the second acts in American public life, none has amazed me more than that of Bill Moyers. He spent the first decade of his adult life as one of Lyndon Johnson's dirtiest henchmen…”
Mr. Garvin also reminds us of this little gem: “Without any apparent sense of irony, he viciously excoriates the U.S. press for its supposed subservience to the White House on Iraq, Afghanistan and the war on terror.
“Amazingly, when Moyers is ranting that the Bush administration fabricated everything about Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction, nobody ever asks him about the Johnson administration's fantastical account of the imaginary 1964 attack in the Tonkin Gulf that became the excuse for the Vietnam War, an account he helped to construct.
“Everything about Moyers’ years with Johnson has somehow vanished down the memory hole,” writes Mr. Garvin.
Not mine. To forgive is divine. To forget is not my policy.
It gets better. “Other lowlights include Moyers giving the FBI the okay to spread dirty stories about Martin Luther King's sex life, and his ongoing role spinning fanciful tales about the war in Vietnam as Johnson's press secretary from 1965 to 1967,” says Mr. Garvin.
Oh – let’s not forget. Mr. Garvin reminds us that “Moyers helped thwart the seating of an integrated delegation from Mississippi at the 1964 Democratic National Convention, and asked the FBI to investigate 15 members of the Senate staff of Johnson's opponent, Barry Goldwater.”
And another thing – oh, forget it, you get the picture. Remember these little tidbits from Mr. Moyers’ past the next time you have the misfortune to endure one of his sanctimonious preachy sermons on PBS.
Fortunately for America, Mr. Moyers days on PBS are numbered.
Mr. Moyers leaving PBS is one less two-faced hypocrite in a sea of pollution that permeates today’s liberal-biased media.
Good riddance. Don’t let the door hit you on the behind as you are leaving.
Perhaps the only thing that might be as equally good for American would be if Katie Couric would also retire. We can only wish.
Kevin Dayhoff writes from Westminster. E-mail him at kevindayhoff@gmail.com.
|