Way back in 2007, Media Research Center president L. Brent Bozell III wrote a column chastising the media for giving celebrities -- liberal celebrities like Alec Baldwin and Sean Penn, in particular -- platforms from which to opine on matters of national significance. Bozell's argument, in a nutshell, was that these celebrities, for all their passion and verbosity, are no more “mentally impressive than a plate of mashed potatoes.”
Well, Bozell must have a very soft definition of “mentally impressive,” as NewsBusters announced this morning that their newest blogger is “legendary country and rock musician” Charlie Daniels, best known for his 1979 hit, “The Devil Went Down to Georgia.” Daniels' lesser-known works include crypto-Confederate anthems like “The South's Gonna Do It Again,” and charmingly offensive anti-Muslim ditties like “This Ain't No Rag, It's a Flag.” Just to dispel any doubt as to what kind of “rag” Daniels was singing about, the first line of the song helpfully explains that “we don't wear it on our heads.”
And fittingly enough, Daniels' first post for NewsBusters deals with alleged Ft. Hood shooter Nadal Malik Hassan and the threat of radical Islam. You can read it if you want -- he seems to have culled most of his arguments from the comments sections of third-rate conservative blogs and offers nothing new, thought-provoking, or rational. In truth, all you need to know about Daniels' thoughts on America's relationship with the Muslim world can be gleaned from these two sentences: “I know that all Muslims are not terrorists. I have met some who seemed like fine people.” That's very big of you, Charlie, to allow the possibility that some of the Muslims you've met could be fine people.
I would also recommend checking out the Soapbox blog on Daniels' website, in which he opines on various political matters. The "Open Letter to Immigrants" was a particularly fun and patronizingly offensive read (“We have our own laws in this country, some will make sense to you and some won't.”)
If Bozell considers Baldwin and Penn to be on par with a plate of mashed potatoes, then Daniels is something like day-old grits.