Typically the only crime against humanity committed on "Imus in the Morning" is painfully unfunny dialogue.
But after journalist Jill Carroll was freed from captivity in Iraq late last week, the show obliterated the line between lame attempts at humor and truly dangerous stupidity.
From the moment Carroll was released on Thursday, Don Imus's duo of Mensas - news reader Charles McCord, who's known for his conservative views, and executive producer Bernard McGuirk, who pretty much serves as the program's idiot-in-residence - joked that the journalist was a little too sympathetic to her Iraqi captors and weirdly anti-American.
You can see the transcripts (Thursday and Friday), but for a small taste of what I'm talking about check this out:
"MCCORD: She cooked with them, lived with them.
IMUS: This is not helping.
MCGUIRK: She may be carrying Habib's baby at this point."
The rest of the discourse is roughly as high-minded, but you get the gist. Of course, all of this was set against the backdrop, largely established in the right-wing media, that as a reporter Carroll was against the war and the stories she wrote before she was captured were biased toward Arab causes.
Now as sick as the comments on Imus's program may have been, they could hardly be classified as shocking because those guys are radio buffoons. Nobody takes them seriously. That is, unless you're Washington Post media columnist Howard Kurtz.
On Friday, Kurtz wrote a piece for the Post's website that gave credibility to the idea that Carroll is a little too sympathetic to "the enemy." The column was about Carroll's first interview at the Iraqi police station before she was in American hands. As would be expected, Kurtz buried his ridiculous point under several paragraphs of caveats about all the dead and injured reporters he's known throughout the years. (Wow - he really said goodbye to Bob Woodruff before he left for Baghdad. What a guy!) But this is really all you need to know:
"I must say, though, that I found her first interview yesterday rather odd. Carroll seemed bent on giving her captors a positive review, going on about how well they treated her, how they gave her food and let her go to the bathroom. And they never threatened to hit her."
Now I know Kurtz often is accused of having a conservative bias, but he's also an experienced reporter and a guy who's covered the media for many years. How the hell could he allow himself to jump to such ridiculous conclusions without giving events time to play out? Of all people, he should've known better.
By now Kurtz must feel like a complete jackass - and if he doesn't, he certainly should. On Saturday, after being delivered into American custody, Carroll released a statement through her newspaper, the Christian Science Monitor. You can see the full text, but again, all you really need to read is this:
"During my last night in captivity, my captors forced me to participate in a propaganda video. They told me they would let me go if I cooperated. I was living in a threatening environment, under their control, and wanted to go home alive. I agreed.
Things that I was forced to say while captive are now being taken by some as an accurate reflection of my personal views. They are not. The people who kidnapped me and murdered Allan Enwiya are criminals, at best. They robbed Allan of his life and devastated his family. They put me, my family and my friends--and all those around the world, who have prayed so fervently for my release--through a horrific experience. I was, and remain, deeply angry with the people who did this.
I also gave a TV interview to the Iraqi Islamic Party shortly after my release. The party had promised me the interview would never be aired on television, and broke their word. At any rate, fearing retribution from my captors, I did not speak freely. Out of fear I said I wasn't threatened. In fact, I was threatened many times."
So there we have it, straight from the mouth of Habib's wife.
Look, I know I don't have to go into a lengthy sermon about the bravery of the journalists - men and women - who risk their necks to try to get us a true picture of what's going on in Iraq, or any other war zone for that matter. It goes without saying that Jill Carroll and everyone else over there is extremely courageous and should be commended for what they're doing. I'm also not going to try to psychoanalyze what would drive someone to want to go over there and do it in the first place.
I'll just say that I don't have the balls to do anything remotely that dangerous - and neither does Howard Kurtz. For journalists to not give this woman some room to breathe while she gets her bearings after spending 82 days as a hostage is simply unconscionable.
And what's even more remarkable is Kurtz still seems clueless about how off-base he was.
Take a look at the transcript from Sunday's "Reliable Sources" on CNN. At no point did he acknowledge that he was one of the chief wing-nuts questioning Carroll's motives, and he even spent some time wondering about whether the Post's coverage of Carroll's release was too fawning. Talk about missing the story completely.
Here's the bottom-line: Whatever you think of Jill Carroll, Howard Kurtz owes the woman a big time public apology. And the Post really ought to stop the guy before he opines again.