Zelling it Like it Is

The hair on the back of my neck remains standing. Were I to try to shave, I would cut myself. Thank you, Lord, for a polar opposite to Jimmy Carter. They have a party in common, that's all I can vouch for.

Never in the history of the world has any soldier sacrificed more for the freedom and liberty of total strangers than the American soldier. And, our soldiers don't just give freedom abroad, they preserve it for us here at home.

For it has been said so truthfully that it is the soldier, not the reporter, who has given us the freedom of the press. It is the soldier, not the poet, who has given us freedom of speech.

It is the soldier, not the agitator, who has given us the freedom to protest.

It is the soldier who salutes the flag, serves beneath the flag, whose coffin is draped by the flag, who gives that protester the freedom to abuse and burn that flag.

No one should dare to even think about being the Commander in Chief of this country if he doesn't believe with all his heart that our soldiers are liberators abroad and defenders of freedom at home.

I didn't have the pleasure of hearing his speech (so far) since I have no television, but I just read the transcript, and my reaction, strong as it is, is based on the sheer power of his words as text. There is nothing fancy there. It's plain talk. Truth has a way of laying its own tracks and barreling down them like a freight train loaded with raw steel.

Twenty years of votes can tell you much more about a man than twenty weeks of campaign rhetoric.

Campaign talk tells people who you want them to think you are. How you vote tells people who you really are deep inside.

Zell, you make me proud to call myself Georgian! Okay, I wasn't born there, but living there most of the last 25 years has to count for something.

Read it all.

Wow! And then he was interviewed by Chris Matthews, who was up to his normal trick of asking a question and not letting his interviewee answer. This resulted:

Zell: Get out of my face! If you’re going to ask me a question, then step back, and let me answer! I wish we lived in a day where you can challenge a person to a duel. Now that would be pretty good.

Don’t pull that stuff on me like you did that young lady when you had her brow beaten to death. I’m not her! I’m not her! You get in my face I’m going to get back in your face.

Matthews pulled this stunt extensively on Michelle Malkin before summarily booting her from his show during an intermission. First he ambushed her, changing the topic from her book, In Defense of Internment: The Case for "Racial Profiling" in World War II and the War on Terror to Unfit for Command, then when he clearly had not read the book and she called him on it, he lost it. Best guess is that it's this episode to which Zell refers here. You can read her inside account of the experience on her blog: Ambush Journalism...Or My Evening with Caveman Chris Matthews.

Posted by dan at September 1, 2004 11:50 PM | TrackBack