Posted on 06/03/2004 7:47:12 AM PDT by kattracks
CBS "60 Minutes" star Mike Wallace defended his decision last night to use a Washington, D.C. World War II memorial event that both he and USA Today founder Al Neuharth attended on Friday to bash President Bush as unfit to be commander-in-chief.
"It seemed to both to Neuharth and to me that it was the right venue [to do this] because we talked about it ahead of time," Wallace told Fox News Channel's Bill O'Reilly.
"It was a venue in which we are celebrating a war in which so many people died. But they died in the service of something that they deeply believed in," Wallace added.
The event, held a day before the unveiling of the official WWII Memorial on the Capitol Mall, was supposed to offer journalists a chance to swap war stories and reminisce. But Wallace and Neuharth quickly departed from the script to take pot shots at Bush.
The CBS veteran's remarks included unfavorable comparisons between FDR, George Washington and Bush and an assessment that the Iraq war effort "sure is not a noble enterprise."
Last night, however, after O'Reilly repeatedly questioned the propriety of politicizing the memorial event, Wallace shifted gears, confessing, "I should not probably have said it there."
Wallace = Anti-American scum.
Just my opinion of course.
This jerk is there to "celebrate war" ??? The left is having a hard time keeping their ideology straight.
I always thought Mike Wallace was supposed to be a reporter...not an editorialist.
Well, I think Mr. Wallace is unfit to be a reporter.
He has every right to speak his mind, but his timing and judgement are dreadful. He should be ashamed.
Never trust an 85-year-old man who still has acne.
"It was a venue in which we are celebrating a war in which so many people died. But they died in the service of something that they deeply believed in," Wallace added.
Once again, Old Media doesn't take the time to know how others besides themselves think about the issues. If they had asked the TROOPS and absorbed the overall sentiment, they would find that a high majority of them "deeply believe" in the Iraq mission.
Muck Fike Wallace. He is a DISGRACE to the name Wallace!
These dims are DESPERATE! They are already using any tactic to try to defeat the president. I haven't seen so much desperate scrambling since the pigs got loose last summer.
Apparently, the pigs got loose this summer, too...
We probably cannot get rid of him, but we might be able to "help" Fox to decide that the kid must go.
Mike Wallace is a disgrace to his generation.
The real hard left scum either opposed WWII or supported it only because we were fighting on the same side as Stalin. As soon as Hitler was gone, they began to undermine our defense against the communists. This most certainly included Kerry and his ilk, who still consider the Cold War a "mistake."
So Wallace and his crony Neuharth besmirch a non-partisan memorial dedication with partisan rants and the liberal media says nothing, yet if President Bush so much as mentions Iraq in Normandy, the media will have a cow. Just another day in liberal-bias world.
I watched and listened to that "interview," and was simply appalled. If anyone thinks Wallace and 60 Minutes doesn't have an axe to grind in this election, just replay that interview, and the footage from the Memorial event. It fully explains why the constant drumbeat on the 60 Minutes shows to trash our President and this war. The show is nothing but a Kerry informercial.
Is this entirely accurate? Weren't a lot of servicemen drafted into WWII? I seem to have a sense of history that not every American was 100% behind WWII. I am thinking of one of my favorite movies, "The Best Years of Our Lives," and it features a scene in which an onlooker complains to a major character about the U.S. being "tricked into the war" or something to that effect. In other words, even popular culture at the time recognized divisions concerning the war. I've had the impression that there were pretty dedicated isolationists who opposed WWII as well...although most Americans recognized that it involved a greater cause. Of course, his wartime service didn't exactly guarantee accolades to Winston Churchill in the immediate postwar era, either. It seems to me, bottomline, that not every American was behind WWII at the time, and not every American opposes the Iraq war now.... Very unfair to compare current situation to one of more than half century ago. Oftentimes history takes time to come to a realistic assessment of the situation. And I could not agree more with you about "reporter" Mike Wallace and his supposed objectivity. If someone on Fox news made such a politically charged comparison, you'd never hear the end of it.
So Wallace admits it was a premeditated hatchet job worked out bewtween CBS and USA Today. Nothing "spontaneous" as it were. No temporary lapse in judgement.
So if Wallace now says it was not such a great idea--I guess he and Neubarth need some "keepers" arond to ensure they don't act out any more (total lack of propriety) bright ideas.
Of course, the good "Reverend" Neuharth is the paragon of right and wrong, eh, Mike?
Arrogant @sshole.
To quote Dickie Roberts, Mike Wallace is "nucking futs." I don't know what that means, but it sounds like it applies to Mike Wallace.
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