So much for our new era of national unity.
When Rep. Gabby Giffords was shot in Arizona, the pundits and political class predicted that it might be a turning point in political dialogue, ushering in a new era of civility. That lasted almost a week
But that was comparatively impressive: the killing of mass murderer Osama bin Laden on Sunday May 1 sparked pronouncements from talking heads about Americans being united again in a cathartic event.
That lasted about a day. Or less.
Can we enter the brevity of that national unity in the Guinness Book of World Records?
The sharp polarization and outright joy many Americans experience when badmouthing the party they don’t belong to and making unfounded accusations was nowhere more evident than on talk radio shows. I know because Sunday May 1 through Wednesday May 3 I drove roundtrip from San Diego, CA to Pinole, CA and monitored local and national AM talk radio for 19 hours.
Donald Trump: can I borrow your straight jacket?
It would be harder for the CIA to find liberal talk shows than bin Laden, but some do exist. Liberal talkers invariably did verbal high fives about the fact a Democratic President caught bin Laden, virtually rubbing it in the faces of Republicans that “their” President caught bin Laden.
In Conservative Talkland, hosts such as Rush Limbaugh and Michael Savage initially acknowledged and praised Obama’s role. But by Tuesday most conservative talk show hosts and callers were insinuating that the non-release of the bin Laden photos and changing White House accounts of the killing meant the government was lying, Obama staged it to boost his poll numbers and that congratulations really belonged to George Bush. Bin Laden’s timely exit became a mere side issue.
Republican bigwigs maintained the drumbeat. The New York Daily News reported that George W. Bush was more POUT-US than POTUS, turning down going with Obama to Ground Zero because he felt he Obama hadn’t given his administration enough credit. Several GOPers suggested their administration’s info really turned the tide and, man, oh, man didn’t that water boarding pay off. Experts strongly disagreed.
Any day now you expect former Bush administration officials to say that if Obama got bin Laden in Abbottabad well, then, they spotted him first in Costelloabad.
The truth? If you compare Bush’s reaction to reports of bin Laden in Tora Bora and Obama’s response to more uncertain info that bin Laden was holed up in a neighborhood in Pakistan, when the “3 o’clock in the morning call” came Bush overslept and Obama responded.
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Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.