As The New York Times hails Chris Hayes as the new weekend "wonk prince" of MSNBC, Monica Crowley called him out as a "kook" in her new book What the (Bleep) Just Happened? She recalls how Mr. I Don't Like the "Hero" Word showed the same instincts on the JournoList e-mails. He didn't see where one would quibble with Jeremiah Wright's indictment of America.
"At one point Chris Hayes of The Nation tipped his kook hand," she wrote:
“Our nation disappears people,” he wrote on JournoList. “It tortures people. It has the bood of as many as one million Iraqi civilians – men, women, children, the infirmed – on its hands. You’ll forgive me if I just can’t quite dredge up the requisite amount of outrage over Barack Obama’s pastor.
There is was: kookdom in all of its anti-Americanism. No wonder so many in the left-wing media sought to protect and advance Obama. The media honestly believed in th eman and his mission and they would do whatever they could to make his presidency a reality. No rigorous probing into his background. No demands that he realease the most basic life records they require of other candidates, such as college and law-school records. Selective Service registration, media records, law practice client list, or Illinois state senate records.
In fact, Hayes explicitly wanted everyone to drop the Wright story, as the Daily Caller revealed:
“I’m not saying we should all rush en masse to defend Wright. If you don’t think he’s worthy of defense, don’t defend him! What I’m saying is that there is no earthly reason to use our various platforms to discuss what about Wright we find objectionable,” Hayes said.
(Reached by phone Monday, Hayes argued his words then fell on deaf ears. “I can say ‘hey I don’t think you guys should cover this,’ but no listened to me.”)
