Mullings: An American Cyber-column By Rich Galen

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The Road to Nowheresville

Wednesday April 30, 2003

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From the Pulaski County Lincoln Day Dinner
Little Rock, Arkansas

Post-Toronto Day 6: I'm cured. But if you missed the mini-travelogue about my thinking I wasn't cured, click here: SARS Travelogue!

Remember Ashleigh Banfield, the "Ground-Zero Girl" of MSNBC? Following September 11, she dyed her hair and took off for Afghanistan. MSNBC gave her a prime-time show on which she could go to where ever the story was and report On Location. She was at the top of her game.

She fell off.

Ashleigh Banfield is now bumping along at the bottom. Last November, regular Mullsters will remember, Ms. Banfield was sent to Miami to cover the Jeb Bush election night event. No major reporter was there because by the time the election rolled around, Governor Jeb had sprinted out to a double-digit lead over his Democratic rival and election night, the conclusion was foregone.

Only the forlorn - Ashleigh and the Mullmeister - actually set up shop in the ballroom and the filing center.

All this, to point out that last week Ms. Banfield gave a speech at Kansas State University in which she excoriated her colleagues for their one-sided reporting of Operation Iraqi Freedom - an event for which Ms. Banfield was passed over by the assigners at NBC even though she had, arguably, spent more time in the region than anyone else on the payroll, except for Peter Arnett.

She said in her speech, according to Reuters, that the reporting on the war, "wasn't journalism because I'm not so sure we in America are hesitant to do this again, to fight another war ... because it looked like a glorious and courageous and so successfully terrific endeavor."

A. Can we decode this to mean it "wasn't journalism" because she wasn't there?
B. It was a "glorious and courageous and so successfully terrific endeavor."
C. What's that "we" crap, sister? According to the MSNBC web site, as recently as 1995 Ms. Banfield was anchoring the news in her home state of CANADA.

Memo to the NBC assignment desk:

There's a really interesting story going on in Toronto right now ...
Signed, Everybody.

For all those on the Left who warned that the Arab streets would explode before, during, and after the US liberated Iraq because of the tone-deaf Bush Administration's approach to foreign policy, the AP's Ibrahim Hazboun wrote from Ramallah that Yasser Arafat told the Palestinian Legislative Council "In this very sensitive and dangerous period the whole region is facing, I call your respected council to give confidence to the new Cabinet that will be presented by my brother" Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas.

The vote was 51-18-3 in favor of the Abbas Cabinet.

Nope. This isn't working at all.

You know that the United States still owes the UN something north of $600 million in past due payments. You also know that the United States pays something north of 20% of all the operating budget for the UN. And you know that New York City is in a huge budget crisis.

Here's the Mullings idea ju jour: Make a deal with the UN to BUY the entire United Nations complex in Manhattan AND pay all the dues in arrears if the UN will leave US soil by 2008. Five years to pack up and get out.

US would then deed the complex to the City of New York which could sell the whole thing for condos and balance its budget for the next 50 years.

HOWEVER! We should insist that the UN not move to Geneva or to Paris or to some other garden spot. We should insist it move to someplace like Theresnakeshereland, Africa. Duplex apartments for the ambassadors and senior staff will be much, MUCH cheaper in Central Africa than they are on the Upper East Side of Manhattan.

Let them put their mouths where our money is.

On the Secret Decoder Ring page today: The link to the SARS Travelogue, a bio of the new Palestinian Prime Minister, the Ashleigh story, a Mullfoto of the Clinton Library, and a Catchy Caption of the Day.

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