What I Found on FoxNews.com

We are so deep into electioneering politics this year that it has gotten ridiculous. So much so that we shouldn’t be afraid to laugh at said ridculousness.

Fox News features Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid embroiled in a sizzling scandal: He, for a period of time, had on his staff a woman (specifically noted as “Hispanic”) who had entered into a sham “green-card” marriage with a Lebanese guy with a Muslim-sounding name. Turns out it’s not legal to get married just to get legal residency in the US, and this Muslim-seeming guy admitted to authorities his having a sham marriage and was subsequently deported. This occurred only a month after the Reid-staffer began working for him, and she was let go after an “internal investigation” by Reid’s office.

But a burning question remains: when did Harry Reid himself know about this woman, and for how long before firing her? (I guess that’s two questions)

“The Nevada Republican Party called on Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid Tuesday to personally explain how somebody who confessed to a sham marriage with a Lebanese national later deported ended up on his staff — and precisely when he found out about her past.”

Seriously? Who the hell wants to know that? Oh, right. The Republican Party, who also want Reid to lose his campaign for reelection. They would ask stupid questions, if only to insinuate that the Senator lacks proper judgment. The article, however, moves on to suggest that Reid supports Hispanics and their de-sanctifying marriage with illegal Muslim immigrants that might also be threatening national security.

It’s actually pretty damn clever. Take an interesting piece of gossip and hit on all the conservative dog whistles in a compelling anecdote about an illegal immigrant marrying another immigrant (who was probably illegal at some point in her blood-line) in order to skip over the usual immigration process. Not only that, but this dude may or may not be a terrorist!

“Tarhini had been the subject of an Oklahoma City Joint Terror Task Force investigation. Following his arrest in 2009, he was interviewed by FBI agents who sources say asked about his ties to extremists groups. Some sources said they determined he did not have ties to any terror group, but other sources close to the case said that could not be ruled out.”

Holy shit! Queue the anti-immigration “watch-dog” groups who say our national security is being threatened by foreigners burrowing their way into the halls of power, and voile! You have a headlining attack-ad on Fox News against a Democratic candidate.

That’s what this is, after all, isn’t it? Every campaign does this; find the kinks in your opponent’s armor and blow them out of proportion with the goal of eliciting an emotional reaction amongst the audience. Hopefully it translates into votes. You want to stir up fear a the ballot-box, but this isn’t a campaign mailer or a TV ad: this is Fox News. It’s meant to look just like real journalism, even though it’s nothing more than tabloid fodder, political gossip that misses the larger point. Think about this rationally, just for a minute. What reason is there to think that Harry Reid can be fairly judged by the actions of this one woman? It’s her private life, and once it came to everyone’s attention, she was fired. The dude was deported! What more do you want? Who cares when Reid knew, or if he knew, because it doesn’t really matter now that the whole thing’s over and no one got hurt. All it does is throw more shit in an already toxic election-season.

And it’s not enough to go after Reid; now we bring former staffers and their personal lives into the fray, which is really classy. I especially like how these unnamed and unverifiable sources claim that the Lebanese guy (who was targeted by authorities for what? Merely being Middle-Eastern?) may or may not be linked to terrorists. I’m not defending what these people did (since it’s clearly illegal), but turning this woman and someone desperate to stay in this country into criminals in order to tarnish the image of a political opponent should be seen as unsavory. Instead, people call it journalism. There’s a human story in all this, but it’s ignored because it’s not about how or what we win, only that we win.

I’m done laughing now.