Every night at 8 p.m. on MSNBC, Keith Olbermann awards his daily pick for "Worst Person in the World." Some contenders are lucky — or unlucky —enough to be nominated more than once.
The bronze goes to the city of New York. Listen, the snow here was a drop in the bucket compared to almost everywhere else, but the city doesn’t get its first measurable snowstorm until Valentine’s Day and it wasn’t ready for it. Midtown streets were virtually unplowed. The place was paralyzed by two inches of slush. You guys ran out of sand or something? These plows will be along any month now.
The silver goes to Dr. Ayman al-Zawahiri, the number two guy in al Qaeda, in the latest tape he has called President Bush an addicted gambler and an alcoholic. Look, Bozo, you want to criticize him, take a number. You have a lot to work with, but if you are going to medically diagnose him by merely watching video, doctor, you are going to look as stupid as Bill Frist during the Schiavo case.
But the winners are Frank Gaffney, once assistant secretary of state for a few months, who wrote a column, and the “Washington Times,” which printed the column; the latest morons to attribute to Abraham Lincoln a “Congressmen who willfully take actions during war time that damage morale and undermine the military are saboteurs and should be arrested, exiled and hanged.” That is potent stuff. Civil war and all that. Except President Lincoln never said anything of the kind.
The quote was made up by writer Jay Michael Waller in 2003. Mr. Waller confirms this. You can read about it at FactCheck.org. He says he wrote it and “Insight Magazine” mistakenly put quotes around it. o be fair, it is not like the “Washington Times” would know about “Insight Magazine,” just because they are co-owned with “Insight Magazine,” by Reverend Moon’s Unification Church.
Well, all right, it is not like there are any Lincoln scholars out there who could fact check it for you, or any place on the Internet they could have looked it up. Nitwits!
Frank Gaffney and the “Washington Times,” today’s Worst Persons in the World.
