Judge Jeanine Pirro’s television career began as the host of a reality courtroom show not unlike Judge Judy or any of the dozens of other knockoffs. But for the last few years, she’s become a regular contributor to NBC’s Today as well as the host of Justice with Judge Jeanine, Saturday nights on Fox News Channel. Frankly, we hadn’t heard of her until this past weekend when she delivered a rant about President Obama and the fiasco in Iraq. Based on the reactions online and in social media, the segment has elevated her within the hierarchy of sociopathic rogues, screechers and former morning zoo deejays in the far-right media.
Pirro’s five-minute tirade had everything: finger-wagging, fear-mongering, misinformation, wild conspiracy theories, the phrase “cut and run” and, naturally, ball-shaming. It’s a cocktail of Obama Derangement Syndrome delivered with laser-like precision directly into the outrage cortexes of typical Fox News viewers, likely inducing octogenarian white-guy erections with tensile strengths not experienced since Don Ameche, Wilford Brimley and Hume Cronyn splashed around in that magical pool in Cocoon.
Let’s [cough] dive in, shall we?
1) They’re coming to get you! Usually when fear is used as a rhetorical weapon, it’s dropped with a little more subtlety than Pirro’s opening hit:
“I told you that you need to be afraid because they are coming for you.”
Yes, you personally. Doesn’t matter where you are or what you do, they are coming for you — clearly because they hate viewers of Jeanine Pirro’s Saturday night show.
2) Bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb. And bomb. There was a brief glimpse of sanity when Pirro said she’s opposed to sending ground troops. But this dollop of rationality ended when she went off on a bomb binge:
“My resolution? Air strikes. Bomb them! Bomb them! Keep bombing them, bomb them again and again. And I don’t care how long it takes. Just take out ISIS. Take out their convoys, and take out those troops.”
This would be fine were it not for the fact that ISIS is also deeply intertwined in civilian populations, complicating the air strikes option. Air strikes require surgical caution and planning, not indiscriminate bombing of anyone that looks like the enemy. First of all, there isn’t sufficient intelligence to pinpoint the location of all ISIS forces. Plus, if we take out their convoys, they’ll figure out a way to move in smaller groups. And if the Iraqi security forces continue to bail out of the fight, airstrikes wouldn’t really stop the ISIS advance. Plus, as we’ve witnessed in the past, the Fox News hosts who are calling for air strikes today will surely rip Obama to shreds afterward for doing exactly what they called for.
3) Here’s a great big lie.… CONTINUE READING
(ht Patrick Rooney)