No Wonder People Hate Us

Conor Friedersdorf at the American Scene transcribes the following exchange from Mark Levin's radio program yesterday afternoon:

CALLER: I just wanna say, Obama is a lot smarter than you folks give him credit for. You guys were on a roll, I have to admit, with all those tea parties. Everything was rolling along, the Republicans were gaining momentum. And he managed to change your entire conversational focus. And you let those three hundred thousand people —

LEVIN: My God. He’s so smart. His own party voted against him on Guantanamo Bay. How stupid was that, Cindy? His own party refused to fund the closing of Guantanamo Bay.

CALLER. Yeah but you know he can just move those people over here anyway. He’s already doing it with the one guy.

LEVIN: Yeah, sure, he can do whatever he wants. Let me ask you a question. Why do you hate this country?

CALLER: No, I love this country.

LEVIN: (angrily shouting) I SAID WHY DO YOU HATE MY COUNTRY?WHY DO YOU HATE MY CONSTITUTION? WHY DO YOU HATE MY DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE? You just said it. He can blow off Congress. He can do whatever he wants, right?

CALLER: Well, he seems to, he just moved (inaudible).

LEVIN: Answer me this, are you a married woman? Yes or no?

CALLER: Yes.

LEVIN: Well I don’t know why your husband doesn’t put a gun to his temple. Get the hell out of here.

Conor gamely offers an intellectual rebuttal to Levin:

The host is weirdly blind to the irony that he himself thinks a wartime president possesses the power to house detainees where he sees fit, at least if the President asserts that his chosen policy is needed to keep America safe. As we all know, President Obama thinks that Gitmo is a PR disaster that helps Al Qaeda recruit more terrorists, and therefore makes us less safe. So by the host’s own standard of executive power—not to mention Dick Cheney’s standard — President Obama possesses the inherent power to close Gitmo, what Congress says be damned.

I'd offer a less sophisticated comment:

Imagine some commuter - a nonpolitical person, a family man or woman, a taxpayer and billpayer - who happens to flip the dial on the radio on the way home and hears that exchange. What would such a person think? Wouldn't it be something like, "I dont know what's wrong with that horrible man, but I do know this: whatever side he's on, any decent person would have to be on the opposite"?