Oh gawd.
Prominent conservative commentator and RedState.com editor Erick Erickson will join CNN as a political contributor, appearing primarily on CNN's new show John King, USA¸ the network announced Tuesday.
Yey!
So Erick will be sitting in on something I've never heard of called "John King, USA" which sounds super fun. It's the new show taking Lou Dobbs' old time slot and premieres on March 22 at 7/6 central. Apparently CNN was concerned that cranky crazy people would miss their daily dose of nutso without Dobbs around, so they tracked Erick down, and turns out he lives right there in Atlanta (perfecto!) so they locked him down just as fast as they could.
The post goes on to describe just what a great thing this is for everyone:
"Erick's a perfect fit for John King, USA, because not only is he an agenda-setter whose words are closely watched in Washington, but as a person who still lives in small-town America, Erick is in touch with the very people John hopes to reach," said Sam Feist, CNN political director and vice president of Washington-based programming. "With Erick's exceptional knowledge of politics, as well as his role as a conservative opinion leader, he will add an important voice to CNN's ideologically diverse group of political contributors."
Got that? Because Erick lives in Atlanta (or some posh suburb? I have no idea) he's "in touch" with the folks John King hopes to reach on his new show. Lovely. Oh -- and because of his "exceptional knowledge of politics" and because he's an "opinion leader." So he's also smart-ish, and people (ignorant people, but whatever) follow his ideas. So he's our man!
So great: the Best Political Team on Television Newest Fringe Right Wing Mouthpiece gets to add the gentleman guy who has previously shared such insightful and professional gems as:
"The nation loses the only goat f*&king child molester to ever serve on the Supreme Court in David Souter's retirement."
and who described Barack Obama's Nobel Peace Prize as
"an 'affirmative action quota' pick"
and who openly advocates using violence to accomplish his political goals, saying
"At what point do the people tell the politicians to go to hell? At what point do they get off the couch, march down to their state legislator’s house, pull him outside, and beat him to a bloody pulp for being an idiot? At some point soon, it will happen. It’ll be over an innocuous issue. But the rage is building. It’s not a partisan issue. [...] Were I in Washington State, I’d be cleaning my gun right about now waiting to protect my property from the coming riots or the government apparatchiks coming to enforce nonsensical legislation."
Apparently, this is God's will. On redstate Erick opined,
"CNN made an offer I couldn’t refuse. I’ve joined the network. Starting next Monday, you’ll be seeing a lot of me. I’m very excited by the opportunity. Thanks for the prayers and well wishes. This is the path God put me on and it was totally unexpected, but I go where the good Lord leads."
So I guess it was not only that God wanted him to join CNN, but that God wanted him to get rich doing it. Cool, isn't it? Thanks, God, for not happening to lead me to Habitat for Humanities or the Make-A-Wish Foundation or some local community food pantry dump where I could do actual good... but not get rich. This works out better.
Another chubby, angry, intellectually-challenged white guy selling violence, hatred, bigotry and fear. Another "regular guy" making millions by appealing to the most ignorant amongst us with fact-free lowest-common-denominator bullshit designed to inflame the angry pitchfork wielding masses of idiots CNN wishes it could bring home to its advertisers.
And because it's CNN, we're supposed to pretend he represents the "mainstream" media, and that the fringe extremist radicalized viewpoints he'll bring into our living rooms are somehow less inflammatory, less unacceptable, less outrageous, than they would be if he were on Fox.
Because hey -- on Fox you expect to be openly lied to.
"Starting next Monday, you’ll be seeing a lot of me."
Oh God.