Someone please let me know when Howie Kurtz's buddy Lauren Ashburn is going to start criticizing the likes of Glenn Beck, Ted Cruz, Louie Gohmert, or Rick Perry and their cohort at Faux "news" Sean Hannity for "pulling a stunt" for publicity at the border.
Apparently none of those people were looking out for their own self-interests, political gain or for a ratings boost, but if you're Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Jose Antonio Vargas, who went down to the border and found himself being detained and arrested, it's merely some cheap theater to raise your own personal profile and make some book sales.
As always, IOKIYAR. Here's more from the panel segment from this Sunday's Media Buzz on Fox:
KURTZ: Let me switch now to the immigration crisis, which we all agree needs attention. This week, Jose Vargas, former “Washington Post” reporter, illegal immigrant, a guy who founded an organization to be an advocate for the illegal immigrants, went to the Texas border, got detained and later ended up being released. Let me play a little sound from Vargas on CNN a few weeks ago.
(Begin video)
VARGAS: America is not a country that turns its back on children. That's not who we are as a country. You know, and I don't want to bring race into this, but if these were white kids, would we be doing this to the kids? Right?
(End video)
ASHBURN: This guy has an ulterior motive for doing this. He’s on television, he most likely will write a book about this and include this in this. And he’s selfish, he’s selfish to go down to that border and pull off a stunt like that when the border patrol people have enough to worry about. He's also thumbing his nose at American law. This guy broke the law.
KURTZ: Well, he was brought here at the age of 12 from the Philippines. He has sort of come out of the closet, he did that in the New York Times magazine in 2011, and he certainly is very good at getting attention. Do you think the mainstream media treat Jose Vargas as something as a hero?
PINKERTON: Of course they treat him as a hero. Lauren’s absolutely right. And he's milking it for a book contract and a movie deal and God knows what else he'll have. But meanwhile, stories like John Winter at Fox has a headline this morning, cartels shooting heavy caliber machine guns across the border into America aiming at American officials. That story will get one scintilla of the coverage of the Vargas story.
KURTZ: If the border patrol had not only detained Jose Vargas but had decided to deport him, because he obviously has broken the law, do you think that would have been an outrage? Would the media have denounced the administration for that?
WILLIAMS: They would have seen it as, and I think this is the reason why he wasn’t deported is the administration made a decision that it was just too politically explosive at this moment. We’ve got the children at the border. We’ve got the larger argument about comprehensive immigration reform. Vargas now, I think, is the stand-in for all the 12 million illegal immigrants in the country.
He’s the best known illegal immigrant in America and so he has that status. I must say that I interviewed him on stage when he made his documentary and that documentary is going to be aired on HBO. It is a big media sensation. He is no doubt a hero to the American media and especially to the American left.
Yeah, that was really "selfish" of him to go down there and get arrested and wonder if he was going to end up being deported to draw attention to an issue he cared about. I'm sure he just loved every minute of it.
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