Afternoon Radio Treat
At 1PM this afternoon, my local Pacifica station (KPFT 90.1) broadcast a special show hosted by HCDP chair Gerry Binberg with special guest the Hon. Chris Bell. The topic, of course, was Bell’s ethics complaint filing against House Majority Leader Tom DeLay. About five minutes into the show, after Rep. Bell briefly laid out the substance of his complaint, Gerry started to take calls, and who should call in by Rep John Culberson, a Republican and backer of Tom DeLay. Hilarity ensued.
Of course instead of engaging Bell on the substance of his complaint John Culberson employed the time-honored GOP defense style of attacking the messenger personally. The two main thrusts of Culberson’s “defense” of DeLay were that Bell was a “pathetic loser” and that the complaints were based on things that happened at least a year ago. Culberson also dismissed the alleged ethics violations as “garbage” simply because Tom DeLay himself said they were untrue and Tom DeLay, to paraphrase, is an honest man with nothing but the interest of his constituents in his heart. Any time Bell tried to speak to the substance of the alleged violations, Culberson called him a sad loser that was trying to talk over him. In reality, the only person that came across as laughable and pathetic was Culberson.
There was also a caller that first tried to represent herself as a disinterested party that didn’t care about things like campaign contributions to Tom DeLay. When Bell tried to explain to her why there was more to it than that, she immediately began attacking his motives and revealed herself as a GOP partisan (after, of course, whining that the show was partisan which was laughable since it was being broadcast on a radio station that is unabashedly liberal). It was great radio.
Now, Bell did try explain that the reason why this complaint is coming out now was that it had taken time for his office to build their case against Delay and there were delays (NPI) in their investigation due to Bell’s attention being focused on his own primary campaign. He said that it didn’t matter when he filed the complaint, because he would have been criticized whether he won his primary election or not. He also said that if in the unlikely event it turns out that there is nothing to his complaint, he will gladly take his lumps.
The news out of the show was that the House Ethics committee, from what I understood, had ruled that there was enough to Bell’s complaint to examine it further and not dismiss it. This news is good. Bell pointed out that this committee is actually balanced in the ratio of Democrats to Republicans, so it will be harder for DeLay’s cronies to simply brush this matter under the rug.
Again, it was a great show. Hopefully KPFT will either re-broadcast it or at least put an audio file of it up on their website. If so, be sure to listen.
