THE END OF ASHLEIGH?: The New York Times today reports on the seeming decline of the longtime object of my affection, MSNBC's Ashleigh Banfield. Just two years ago Ashleigh looked like the biggest rising star in cable news, but now she's fallen out of favor as an on-air personality, and is also in trouble with her bosses.
Proving once again that, as a result of a right-wing version of political correctness, moderate critiques of US foreign policy and/or President Bush are no longer acceptable in American discourse, Miss Banfield is in trouble with the NBC suits for comments she made in a speech at Kansas State University last month. In the speech she chided the news networks for unbalanced coverage of the Iraq war, and also criticized her network's hiring of far-right-wing radio personality Michael Savage, who has attacked Banfield as a "mind slut," "porn star," and "accessory to the murder of Jewish children." And rather than ask for Savage's apology, the brass of MSNBC has asked Banfield to apologize, just as spineless university administrators have long forced newspaper editors to apologize to nutty campus activists (not the other way around) for violating the other kind of political correctness.
To me, it all went downhill for her when, "in order to blend in," Ashleigh chopped off her beautiful blond locks when she accepted the assignment of reporting from Pakistan and later Afghanistan- that was one instance when, indeed, the terrorists won. Like Samson, Ashleigh derived all of her strength from her hair and while it eventually grew back, the damage was done, and soon afterwards she was taken out of primetime in favor of the likes of Alan Keyes, Jerry Nachman, Phil Donahue, and now Keith Olbermann and Jesse Ventura. Let's hope Ashleigh finds another job on a more respectable network; she deserves much better.