I don't see how one could come to any other conclusion when reading this piece from Mediaite about a confrontation between NRO's Rich Lowrey and the liberal pundit.
The imbroglio erupted when Colmes said that Iowans would get off the Santorum bandwagon once they discovered some of the "crazy things" he's said and done.
The segment was pegged to Santorum's polling surge in Iowa, which Colmes argued wouldn't last "once they get a load of some of the crazy things he's said and done, like taking his two-hour-old baby who died after childbirth and played with it for a couple hours so his other children would know that the child was real..."
"That's a cheap shot, Alan," Lowry interrupted, the first of many interruptions that would leave Colmes sitting back in his chair, staring daggers at Lowry, and asking to be alerted when it was his turn to speak again.
The incident they're referring to is the 1996 birth of a premature baby boy to Rick and Karen Santorum. The child only lived for two hours, and the Santorums dealt with the tragedy in an unusual way:
The description of this grief stricken family dealing with the loss of a newborn is inspiring - and a little unsettling:
The childbirth in 1996 was a source of terrible heartbreak - the couple were told by doctors early in the pregnancy that the baby Karen was carrying had a fatal defect and would survive only for a short time outside the womb. According to Karen Santorum's book, "Letters to Gabriel: The True Story of Gabriel Michael Santorum," she later developed a life-threatening intrauterine infection and a fever that reached nearly 105 degrees. She went into labor when she was 20 weeks pregnant. After resisting at first, she allowed doctors to give her the drug Pitocin to speed the birth. Gabriel lived just two hours.
What happened after the death is a kind of snapshot of a cultural divide. Some would find it discomforting, strange, even ghoulish - others brave and deeply spiritual. Rick and Karen Santorum would not let the morgue take the corpse of their newborn; they slept that night in the hospital with their lifeless baby between them. The next day, they took him home. "Your siblings could not have been more excited about you!" Karen writes in the book, which takes the form of letters to Gabriel, mostly while he is in utero. "Elizabeth and Johnny held you with so much love and tenderness. Elizabeth proudly announced to everyone as she cuddled you, 'This is my baby brother, Gabriel; he is an angel.' "
I never had children and I am unsure if I would have handled the tragedy of losing one in childbirth the way the Santorums did. But I am 100% sure that the description by Colmes that they "played" with the dead infant was so out of bounds and so beyond the pale of political discourse that he should be fired from Fox and never hired by a responsible media organization again. It was a shockingly rancid thing to say.
Colmes apparently called the Santorums and apologized for his comment - an apology that was graciously accepted (although I don't think too many of us would have been so forgiving). But what kind of person makes a statement like that in the first place?
Allah calls it "bloodlust" - as in political combat gotten out of hand. That's certainly part of it. But there is an inner voice in all of us that whispers in our ear the boundaries past which none of us should stray when engaged in debate. Colmes doesn't appear to have that inner voice - or a conscience, or empathy. Or he sees his opponents as less than human - a sickness not limited to Colmes but widespread among partisans on both sides.
Let this be a lesson to all about how not to engage in political conversation.
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