Pajamas Media

Fear and Loathing on the Hugh Hewitt Show

Pundit and television writer Lawrence O'Donnell created quite a stir on the McLaughlin Group and on the Hugh Hewitt Show from bashing Mitt Romney and Mormonism. But Roger L. Simon thinks the West Wing producer revealed far more disturbing things about himself than he did about the candidate or his religion.

December 17, 2007 - by Roger L Simon

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I have frequently been called a “chickenhawk” on Iraq and, though I am loath to admit it, my critics are basically correct - I am pretty much of a chicken… on Iraq and everything else. I have been since the seventh grade when I chickened out on a fight with Ernie Schaub in the yard of Junior High School 167 Manhattan. (There - I’ve finally said it!)

Still, I am not nearly as much of a chicken as Lawrence O’Donnell revealed himself to be on the Hugh Hewitt radio show last week.

O’Donnell was on to discuss some controversial remarks he made about Mormonism on the McLaughlin Group in reaction to Mitt Romney’s speech on the presidential candidate’s religion. Actually the remarks were more than routinely controversial - the Democratic pundit/television writer (The West Wing) launched a full-scale attack on Mormonism, branding its founding father Joseph Smith a racist and demanding Romney disassociate himself from Nineteenth Century tenets and behaviors of his faith long ago abandoned.

Now I want to be clear - I didn’t take seriously a word O’Donnell said about Romney and Mormonism on McLaughlin. It was a plain, old-fashioned political hatchet job of the most transparent sort. If Mitt Romney had been a Democrat running for President, you wouldn’t have heard word one out of O’Donnell about Mormonism or Smith. And whatever you think of Romney, the man has already served as governor of Massachusetts with no discernible control being exerted on him by the solons of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints in Salt Lake. The whole thing is a non-starter and made O’Donnell seem like a political hack - and I say this as an agnostic, frustrated that Romney’s rather banal speech completely ignored the contribution of religious skeptics to America.

What interests me far more is what O’Donnell said during the following exchange at the end of his interview on Hugh’s show, in which the seemingly playful pundit showed far more about himself than he may have intended:

HH: Okay. And do you believe, would you say the same things about Mohammed as you just said about Joseph Smith?

LO’D: Oh, well, I’m afraid of what the…that’s where I’m really afraid. I would like to criticize Islam much more than I do publicly, but I’m afraid for my life if I do.

HH: Well, that’s candid.

LO’D: Mormons are the nicest people in the world. They’re not going to ever…

HH: So you can be bigoted towards Mormons, because they’ll just send you a strudel.

LO’D: They’ll never take a shot at me. Those other people, I’m not going to say a word about them.

HH: They’ll send you a strudel. The Mormons will bake you a cake and be nice to you.

LO’D: I agree.

HH: Lawrence O’Donnell, I appreciate your candor.

I appreciate O’Donnell’s candor too, but perhaps not in the way that Hugh meant. In fact, when I first read those statements, my mouth dropped open.

They are particularly disturbing if you compare the estimated number of Muslims in the world (1.5 billion) to the number of Mormons (12 million) and the likelihood of either group being responsible for, say, a bombing in the New York subway. Of course, O’Donnell is clearly aware of this - all too clearly. And he has decided to opt out.

This means he has opted out as well of a whole series of the most important questions of our time, such as are there moderate Muslims, can Islam be reformed, what is the relationship between religious doctrine and violence, what is jihad, what is dhimmitude, can true democracy exist under Islam, is it terminally expansionist in its ideology, can women and homosexuals achieve their rights under Sharia law, what happens when Sharia expands into Western society, etc.

Compare those questions to whether taxes should go up or down five percent or even to the political relevance of Mitt Romney’s Mormonism and you will see just how absurd (and dangerous) O’Donnell’s terrified off-hand comments were.

Remarks like O’Donnell’s disqualify the maker from offering any serious opinion on foreign policy ever. Without the courage of your convictions, there are no convictions worth having. Indeed, in a sense, they are not convictions at all. They are not there.

O’Donnell’s cowardice would not be interesting, however, were he not typical. O’Donnell’s kind of fear is all around us. We have it among artists who censor themselves and journalists who are afraid to speak out. These people have buried their traditional liberal values under a veneer of false tolerance and trendy cultural relativism and essentially turned liberalism on its head.

O’Donnell is no longer a liberal in the sense I understood it growing up. In fact, he runs away from defending the basic canon of liberalism without which it cannot exist - free speech. A true liberal is a man like Flemming Rose who had the courage to defend that freedom against the onslaught of opposition to the publication of the Danish cartoons. Where was O’Donnell on that? Quivering in his corner, worrying whether he will be shot? Where was O’Donnell (a man of the entertainment industry, no less) when director Theo Van Gogh was stabbed to death by an Islamist on the streets of Amsterdam for making a film critical of Islam? Busy attacking George Bush, I imagine. The courage of Rose and Van Gogh (and Ayaan Hirsi Ali and Ibn Warraq and Wafa Sultan, etc.) is paying O’Donnell’s check from the McLaughlin Group in a very real sense. He owes them all a commission.

O’Donnell’s words remind me more clearly than anything in recent days why I no longer identify as a “liberal” in its modern usage. It has become a meaningless term. I may be a chicken, but I am not a coward. I have criticized Islam often and I will continue to do so.

Striking screenwriter Roger L. Simon is the CEO of Pajamas Media.

25 Comments

Drugstore Cowgirl:

Excellent article. I still often wonder why you, Ron Silver and many other liberals understeed what happened on 9/11 and so many others didn’t. I’m sort of leaning toward those who loved and respected America and always wanted it to be better and those who swallowed that poisoned anti-America pill. An over-simplication for sure but possibly part of the–to me–puzzle.

Dec 17, 2007 - 5:50 am buck smith:

LO’D is a chickendove, I guess. He is not the only one.

Dec 17, 2007 - 5:53 am QuickRob:

O’Donnell takes his own pathetic moral shortcomings lightly. That Lawrence is so openly accepting of his own disgraceful lack of personal conviction is the part that really bothers me.

Dec 17, 2007 - 7:06 am Curly Smith:

In Lawrence O’Donnell you see the real reason for Bush Hatred and BDS — fear. They are afraid of our enemies and will do anything to appease them. Oh sure, they’ll bravely stand-up to attack anybody who won’t respond but they’ll cower in a corner if a thug glances in their direction. They’re not the “baby boomer” generation; they’re the “Neville Chamberlain” generation.

They fawn over Hugo Chavez, Kim Jong-il, Vladimir Putin, Fidel Castro, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and every other dictator because they’re afraid. But it doesn’t stop there, they also scurry to excuse violent criminals because they think that will keep them safe. Sadly, fear isn’t the best defense, it’s not even a poor defense. Instead, fear is the quickest route to victimhood. Lawrence O’Donnell and his ilk are the reason that violent crime thrives in large cities but don’t worry about Larry, he has an armed bodyguard.

Dec 17, 2007 - 7:32 am Jimi:

Roger - one correction - it is “The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints”, not the “Church of the Latter-Day Saints”.

Next, the article is spot-on, you don’t hear O’Donnell telling Harry Reid to renounce his Mormonism. Plus, he doesn’t even know anything about the church other than the hatchet jobs he has read about in liberal or anti-Mormon publications. But as we have seen, he’s fairly intellectually dishonest so we shouldn’t be surprised.

Dec 17, 2007 - 7:48 am Fred Beloit:

Now purely on a philosophical level, you understand, it seems all one would have to do to shut this nitwit O’Donnell up is to threaten to kill him if he ever speaks in public again about anything. Hmmm. I reiterate, pure speculation.

Dec 17, 2007 - 7:54 am LSD:

I’ve seen this sort of thing alot and it reminds me of the kid in junior high who shows off by cussing out his mom.

Dec 17, 2007 - 8:20 am southdakotaboy:

I don’t think alot of liberals have thought through the implications of what he said. mR. O’Donnell has publically admited what it takes to protect your religion from attack by the left in this country. How long do they think it is going to take some fedup Christians to take the hint. There is a slow building anger in this country over matters of religion and this kind of statement will backfire on liberals.

Dec 17, 2007 - 8:34 am Gael Forsman:

Good Golly, he (L.O’D) only spoke aloud many of the tenents of the LDS that concern us, and personally, after living through the equal rights era,and as a woman, I would have deep reservation regarding both a mormon and an evengelical. What is wrong with that?

Dec 17, 2007 - 9:33 am Roger L. Simon:

Gael Forsman, I am an agnostic tending toward atheist and certainly a supporter of women’s rights, but what you wrote doesn’t track with reality. Romney was governor of Massachusetts. Did he govern according to Mormon theology? No way.

End of story. (O’Donnell was a self-involved blowhard.)

Dec 17, 2007 - 9:43 am Snoop-Diggity-DANG-Dawg:

From a previous article: “I count myself firmly in the tradition of Wilson, FDR, Truman and Kennedy…”

Me too, Mr. Simon. But this ain’t yer father’s democratic party anymore. It’s been hijacked by the far left and I can’t vote for it anymore.

Everything Wilson, Kennedy and Truman ever stood for is now anathema to their party.

Dec 17, 2007 - 10:19 am M,W. Kaul:

Many of us have watched, bemused, as clearly weak men (and women) have deigned to fight back against harmless adversaries such as George Bush and other civilized people. Standing up to the “pope” is a happy pastime for teenage minds and those with steely nerves fuss about the minimum wage and latent racism infecting everyone. Picking their adversaries carefully, standing brave and true, Larry Odonellicky has told us more than we want to know about him. While everyone cannot be Marcus Luttrell or Jimmy Stewart piloting planes for his country, many of us know who and what counts in perilous times. The media, like politics, attracts mostly weak people who want power and perks and want to talk about how great their contributions are. The rest of us are left to do the doing. And those with sense is afraid of Islamofascism and what is happening to innocent people around the globe in the name of this special religion which functions like a cult. How do you think they got 1.5 billion followers? Islam has conquered many cultures and religions in the past just the way it is conquering now; the only difference is some of us face it and some of us don’t.

Dec 17, 2007 - 10:56 am Rubicon:

The gentlemen also told us that he & his type are willing to attack anyone or anything that cannot or will not violently defend itself because they plays by civilized rules.
Many objections to America & her actions are coming from those who use disruptions & verbal attacks against those who act civilly with them. Its easy to attack America because we permit free speech. It also means, the attacker need not fear rebuttal, because it will not be in the form of violent retribution.
The number of attacks against America are incredible. In America, we allow free speech. But those folks would be dead if they were in Iran, or Saudi Arabia, etc. Here they spew vitriol with impunity. They admit elsewhere they would shut up.
So, are they really attacking America, or is it they attack those they feel safe disparaging, knowing the only response will be a pathetic verbal defense. The media who love blood, publicize the attacks, but they rarely give the rebuttals equal press!
The man has told us to count on any who are willing to speak up & out and to discount as pathetic, those who attack any who play by the rules.

Dec 17, 2007 - 5:09 pm RE:

As the hysterical coward that he is, Lawrence O’Donnell is an excellent poster boy for the American Left. His behavior is repeated by so many on the left, that being to viciously attack the harmless , but go dead silent in the face of any consequence. It’s epic cowardice.

He’s a pathetic life form. That the man stand the sight of himself in the mirror is rather astonishing.

Dec 17, 2007 - 6:22 pm wooga:

So can we finally get rid of the self-righteous phrase “truth to power” and replace it with the more accurate “truth to benign”? After all, the only “power” they’ll stand up to is the one that won’t cause them any real harm!

(Yes, I know ‘truth’ isn’t accurate either, but because the progressives see truth as relative, the phrase only makes sense with it in there).

Dec 17, 2007 - 6:52 pm Wolf Pangloss:

I agree with you on the content of O’Donnell’s character, but I can’t let this pass:

“the basic cannon of liberalism without which it cannot exist - free speech.”

That’s “canon” unless you’re speaking metaphorically of something that launches something else into the world as explosively as a bombard.

Dec 17, 2007 - 8:13 pm Yaakov Watkins:

The really interesting thing is that O’Donnell has demonstrated that he trusts Bush to not misuse the Patriot Act. If he were really afraid of Bush, he would not open his mouth.

Dec 17, 2007 - 8:33 pm profligatewaste:

Lawrence O’Donnell: Liberal Rage Boy

Dec 17, 2007 - 9:51 pm JC:

I recall a blog posting a while back from a guy in Portland. He went into a coffee shop and while there listened to several different conversations going on around him, primarily concerned with how terrible a “police state” the US of A is becoming.

Since this blogger’d just recently returned from Libya where and estimated 16% of the country is paid informants for the government and secret police, this struck him as absurd, and he blogged about how he had to resist the temptation to go over to the largest group and say “Secret Police! You’re all under arrest!”

Frankly, I wish he had. Perhaps they would have realized then that open public conversations in gathering places with no fear of any kind of reprisal can hardly happen in a true police state.

As so many have already noted — speaking without fear of consequences hardly denotes courage.

Dec 18, 2007 - 3:52 am Ted G.:

O’Donnell has, unwittingly, revealed the ultimate solution to the critical cowardice of the left by admitting that he is afraid for his life if he criticizes the wrong political group.

Well, Republicans, you have your answer.

Behead the likes of O’Donnell.

(For the fearfully politically correct, I am forced to state this is satire).

Dec 18, 2007 - 10:15 am everydayjoe:

Let me get this straight…

LO’D places self-imposed restrictions on his God-given right to Free Speech as declared by the 1st Amendment, out of fear of retribution by “elements of society” that will not, in good faith, honor his right to a bigoted opinion?

Then is it presumptuous to assume, (or painfully obvious), that he is also one who chooses not to provide for his own protection by exercising his rights under the 2nd Amendment, nor to take responsibility for himself?

If true, then by his own admission and volition, he becomes the epitome of an ugly American.

…cowardly liberal elitist, indeed.

Dec 18, 2007 - 10:22 am RLS:

As a Mormon, we like to live by the tenet “by their fruits, you shall know them”. I appreciate him recognizing this in our culture. We do strive to live like our Savior, Jesus Christ and do good works. Unfortunately, this principle works the other way and shows the other kind of fruit also.
I think it is sad that our media allows such “fruit” to have such national airtime. Do we not have better people to hear from than this?

Dec 18, 2007 - 1:56 pm Bosch Fawstin:

What a punk and what a damn confession on shutting his trap against Muslims, which he suggest he wants to spew the same vile on, were it not for his cowardice.

Dec 18, 2007 - 8:33 pm Firefirefire:

L O’D is a “girly-man”

he picks on those who will not violently strike back.

Shut up larry,you’ve made a fool of yourself.

Dec 19, 2007 - 10:02 am pst314:

“the basic cannon of liberalism….

“That’s ‘canon’ unless you’re speaking metaphorically…”

I think “liberal cannon” is unintentionally but beautifully apt: A “Quaker cannon” or “Quaker rifle” is a fake gun or real gun which has been rendered unusable. The term, which originated in the late 18th century, derived from the Quakers’ well-known pacifism. Often these fakes were logs mounted on wheels and intended to deceive the enemy from a distance.

The “courage” of people like Lawrence O’Donnell is just of this sort: Mere posturing.

Dec 19, 2007 - 8:15 pm