"You'll help my ratings tomorrow because everybody thinks you're going to beat me up"

In the anxious moments before the battle over who will get to the kitchen first for supper, Tiny and Baby agree with Zell Miller that it's a "hill worth dying for." (For Tiny and Baby watchers who think they've seen this photo before, it resembles but is not identical to this one from an earlier post, "Is it soup yet?" This photo was in fact taken only moments ago this afternoon as the animals were applying "The Think System" to get us moving.)

"Well it would help if we had more in the media who understand that when they criticize America or the military or anything that relates to this country, when they criticize that, it's magnified many times over overseas," says Zell Miller in an exclusive interview with bloggers at Lance's Red State Rant [via Beth of My Vast Right Wing Conspiracy]. (How cool is that?):

An example is the Newsweek situation. They should have known better than to have done that. Even if it's true they ought not to have printed it. It's not true, but even if it were true, they should not have printed it because they knew -- anyone would know that it would cause riots, people being killed. There are certain things that the media should and should not do when we're at war, and we're at war.

That was in answer to Captain Ed's excellent question:

For such a consumer nation, America seems to do poorly “selling” ourselves overseas. How do you think we can improve in this area so that people understand what we stand for and what we believe, in the most positive light?

A thoroughly delightful post from start to finish, with lots of totally excellent questions from a handful of bloggers.  We loved Lance's capsule of Miller's book-signing-table manner:

I see why he did so well in politics, he connects with people in a way few can. I almost expected him to look at me and say "Can I get you a biscuit, a glass of tea or something." Everybody was family to Zell. He is truly a gracious man.

Any blogger worth his VRWC stripes would have fallen in love for life with anti-Democratic-Party Democrat Zell, of course, after his dressing down of the clueless Chris Matthews in the infamous duel-challenge interview during the Republican National Convention last September:

I wish I was over there where I could get up a little closer into your face . . . You're saying a bunch of baloney . . . You're hopeless . . . Chris, I wish we lived in the days where you could challenge a person to a duel.

We just indulged in the pleasure of listening to said interview again, and it's a pure joy. Fascinatingly, Matthews' MSNBC producers realized what a crowd pleaser they had on their hands, even as it was underway. In the wrap-up, Chris invited Zell back, saying "You'll help my ratings tomorrow because everybody thinks you're going to beat me up." At bottom, the MSM is just another business.  The bottom line rules.

Comments

[andophiroxia]

It was funny when Zell brought up the topic of Chris browbeating Malkin. He was pointing out in a not-so-subtle way that he was a bit less of a man for doing that. Plus, he called him on his act; browbeating him with questions. It's nice to see some shining examples of real men out there.