Fair and long overdue criticism. I enjoy Hugh Hewitt oftentimes, but when he’s wrong he’s wrong very annoying, stubborn, non productive ways. Well, now he can take up the Toon Affair with Condoleeza Rice.

Hewitt is frustrating to listen to. He has a good stable of guests, but he is so full of himself and his “legal” mind that he will think himself into a corner very rapidly without reflection on how it traps him into a complete loss of perspective.

He really believes that lawyers reason better than other people, when in fact, they carve, distort, and twist facts better than anybody.

He is intellectually dishonest and uses lawyers’ tricks to support his emotional beliefs. Being glib and facile, controlling the mute button, and of course, he wins every argument on his show. Nice.

“He really believes that lawyers reason better than other people..”

Wow! I thought I was alone on this one! He really ground off a piece for me when he blindly backed that California Republican Party hack John Campbell over the Minuteman guy Jim Gilchrist and then came out and intimated that illegal immigration is not really the problem it’s made out to be..

..guess he found a cheaper lawn service for his home in Irvine (admitted gratuitous slam from me).

An aside: while Bryan and a lot of bloggers are willing to put up (as in my case) inane and puerile responses in the interest of a constructive dialog, Mr. Hewitt’s site offers no alternative other than a “contact me” e-mail link — which is often ignored.

My profound thanks for the forum, Bryan.

Sounds about right to me. But I am always suspicious of the phrase, “I could go on”. It’s a phantom point. It doesn’t lend credibility to the argument. But I like this blog better than Hugh’s in general. It allows comments, for one thing. (Hugh should open his up for a few.) It looks better and it is more interesting.

Hugh Hewitt is fun sometimes, but tends toward tunnel vision that is both the product of simple egotism and in the “Cartoon Jihad” a laughably naive desire to make a terrorist propaganda war into a tempest in a tea pot. In other words the West should giggle, “Oh, my it’s raining!” when visiting Islam pisses on our livingroom carpet.

Hugh is intellectually outgunned by almost all in Dodge city on this point. Consider Daniel Pipes. I don’t care if one likes him or not, he is knowledgeable, smart and one ignores him at risk of missing the train . For want of a better term, his article “Clash to End All Clashes” links to a NRO symposium of Middle east intelligentsia, whose varying perspectives are fascinating and show how shallow Hugh’s persistent silliness is. It is magna cum laude proof that indeed “the road to hell is paved with good intentions.”

This is a great blog Preston but the text editor for comments is the worst of ANY. Christ, get something useable.

Hugh is unnerving, pigheaded and very wrong at times but he is a hardcore Republican which I can respect. He gets my continued loyalty. He drills Democrats for a living and does it very well so cut him some slack.

But I do like this blog much better. Views are closer to my own.

Great piece! Hewitt’s judgment is poor. I wrote a post about him in November.

Also to give Hugh a bit more slack in this I think is that he really does agree with you but that there is no reason to give our enemies propaganda. It makes fighting this war harder and can get Americans killed.

That I think is very true.

Perhaps when we win this war many many years from now and after a lot of Muslims have been weaned into Western thinking for some time, we can then have the argument.

Hugh cannot of course come out and say that or else he will have brought a JIHAD on himself (and thus lose effectiveness in his personal mission to persuade the world on everything)

Hugh does indeed have the bigger picture in mind and I guess he is right that pissing off millions of muslims does us no good at this stage of the war.

Sorry Dan, that is just dopey. The issue here isn’t that the actual cartoons printed by the Danish paper were insulting, but that the Imam’s lied about, created their own blasphemous cartoons, and then lied about it in the Name of Allah. Seems to me the Muslims are directing their anger at the wrong people…they should be killing their own Imams. Well if they were consistent and rational, which this whole incident calls into ver serious doubt.

Here you go:

The Danish “Cartoon War” is an information warfare operation by conducted Islamist terror groups and at least two Middle Eastern dictatorships (Syria and Iran). If people “get” this fact, their understanding of the real stakes here will become much deeper. The question right now is whether “reprinting” the cartoons help the enemies’ information warfare operation.

Hugh Hewitt, quoting Austin Bay here.

That’s at least addressing the issue.

Was he saying the same thing about the Abu Graib Abuse Photos? They were run over, and over, and over, and over, and over, and over by CNN, ABC, etc…After all the soldiers involved had been removed and an investigation begun.

The U.S. Military asked they not run the photos and said it would only outrage Muslims, as well, and get more Americans killed. Nick Berg had his head sawed off shortly after.

Constructive criticism respectivefully delivered will not hurt the conservative cause. It is much too strong. He is much too strong.

We don’t get Hewitt’s radio show down here as far as I know so I can’t comment on that part.

I used to read Hewitt’s blog every morning. I pretty muched stopped when he got into name calling over the Myers nomination. He refused to credit the serious arguments opponents of the nomination made and then accused them of name calling when he was the one doing the name calling. It was weird, almost wilfully blind.

As an aside, I found it amusing during the Alito hearings to hear Dems saying the far religious right had torpedo’d her nomination. From what I could tell that was flat wrong - generally it was the intellectual secular cons that raised issues with her nomination and the religious right argued in her favor.

Since then I check in a lot over there but not as regularly. I wasn’t even aware of his take on the cartoons, but it doesn’t surprise me, nor does his unwillingness to honestly engage in debate on the issue.

Simply, that’s why I’m here and not reading Hugh Hewitt.

I agree with Hugh about alot of things, but this is another of those times when he is simply wrong and won’t admit it in the face of overwhelming evidence. The jihadis don’t need an excuse. The cartoons did not “provide” an excuse. Hugh doesn’t know the first thing about using propaganda and isn’t willing to learn. If those cartoons had never been drawn, the current riots would still be occurring over some other fabricated excuse. Hugh’s solution to this is submit so totally that the jihadis won’t have any “excuses.” That’s: 1) a coward’s way out; and 2) silly because it wouldn’t work anyway…they’d just fabricate something to serve their purpose (e.g. fake cartoons…now where’d I get THAT idea???). These current riots are just the jihadis’ version of Krystalnacht, with very similar goals.

You guys have described Hugh’s pigheaded superiority complex to a tee.

On the one hand he’s worth listening to, but after so many examples of his “not playing fair” it’s difficult to trust him on most things.

It appears to me that his motivation comes in part from his law school days. He still wants to win the prize as the “great debater,” not realizing that we see through his bullying tactics every time. You can almost hear his glee every time he cheats intellectually.

He chooses an outcome that he desires, and then he will say anything … not realizing that the more he does it, the more he pisses off everyone.

I think Hugh’s arguements on this matter have been reasonable. I’m not sure I agree w/ him, but he does bring up some good points. And he does it in an intelligent, reasoned argument.

Is inflaming the average muslim something that we really want to do right now? The cartoon issue is driving moderate muslims toward the radical camp.

On the other hand, it has exposed Islamofascist hypocricy and intolerance to the world. And it is waking up some people on the Left, who were previously acting like useful idiots for OBL.

I am not sure whether or not I would encourage a newspaper to publish the tunes. When push comes to shove, however, I guess they should - not to do a “gotcha” on the muslims, but because it is their job to inform their readers - and the cartoons themselves are an important part of the story.

Many see the extreme reactions to the cartoons as being emblematic of the cancer at the heart of modern Islam: the radicalization of the religion financed by Saudi AND Iranian money. This schadenfreude is only amplified by the fact that, in the West, we are constantly bombarded with propaganda which all but denies that Islam has anything to do with modern terrorism and constantly repeats the fallacy that Islam is the “religion of peace.” I’ve lived and worked with many Arab muslims in their own countries and most of them are just regular folks. However, I have noticed a marked increase in the last decade in the radicalization (even here in the U.S.) of such “regular folks” which often appears to be connected with Saudi “religious” teachings (and the associated largesse) that are spread by their embassies and consulates. Thus, I think that the radicalization is far more widespread than is commonly acknowledged. While relatively few are radicalized to the point of becoming terrorists, an actual majority sympathizes with and supports the terrorists’ goals to one degree or another. If you want an analogous situation, think of the widespread support for the IRA (often expressed financially) found among the “regular folks” of Irish descent in America during the 70’s and 80’s. So, when idiots start attacking embassies and threatening to “butcher” westerners, well, it’s damn near impossible to resist the impulse to throw a big “I told you so” towards the apologists for the muslim radicals, because the widespread reaction highlights the widespread nature of the problem. To put it more succinctly: 1) Islam IS part of the problem; and 2) Nothing we do can make them hate us any more than they already do.

Thought I would enjoy this blog until I see I have once again met the Mier’s crowd. Shame.

I place Hugh in the same category as Dick Morris: the more emphatic his position, the more likely he is wrong.

I don’t get him on the radio here in RI. Knowing I too take issue with several of his losing positions, I suppose I should be glad for that. Sorry to hear he can be annoying as well as wrong.