Jonah Goldberg of National Review has a new book, The Tyranny of Cliches: How Liberals Cheat in the War of Ideas. Rather than merely discuss its premise, he decided to go on Piers Morgan’s CNN show for an interactive demonstration.
Authors go on talk shows to discuss their books all the time. In this case, discussing Goldberg’s book takes about 30 seconds. Morgan then launches into a 10-minute tirade about the negative reactions to Barack Obama’s despicable “Romney wouldn’t have killed bin Laden” political ad.
Morgan is apparently very upset about the blowback his beloved President has been receiving. CNN’s health insurance must be rather sketchy, because instead of sending him to see a therapist, they decided to let him work out his issues on the air.
Goldberg is a full-time pundit as well as an author, so he might reasonably expect to chat about the issues of the day when appearing to discuss his book… but Morgan was astonishingly unprofessional to hijack the interview for a long harangue about a single, largely unrelated topic. CNN owes Jonah Goldberg a heartfelt apology, and should probably consider releasing Morgan so he can follow his heart and join the Obama 2012 campaign full time. Well, fuller time.
Incidentally, while CNN viewers would have no way of knowing it based on Piers Morgan’s dismal failure as a host, Goldberg’s book is about the way “’objective’ journalists, academics and ‘moderate’ politicians peddle some of the most radical arguments by hiding them in homespun aphorisms,” according to its Amazon.com entry. That sounds a lot more interesting than listening to an Obama apologist drone on about the sole positive achievement of his presidency, which Obama is busily working to transform into a toxic and divisive political cheap shot.
