From the Salmon

So my wife tells me I really shouldn’t pay any more attention to FoxNews’ John Gibson. And, as usual, she’s probably right.

Earlier this week, I called him a Hack Provocateur for making absurdly offensive statements about African relief efforts in his “My Word” segment. On Tuesday, he outdid himself.

Many of you may be following the recent revelations that Karl Rove, President Bush’s political strategist and Deputy Chief of Staff, may have been responsible for blowing the cover of a CIA operative as an act of political retribution. On Tuesday’s Daily Show, Stephen Colbert had this to say about the scandal a-brewin’:

JOHN STEWART: What are the ramifications of this, now that Rove’s involvement is known?

STEPHEN COLBERT: Well, Bush has a real problem on his hands here, Jon. What honor should he bestow on Karl Rove?

STEWART: What — Did you say “what honor”?

COLBERT: Yes, Jon. George “Slam Dunk” Tenant got us into Iraq on mistaken intel. He got the medal of freedom. Condi Rice sees a memo warning “Bin Laden Determined to Attack the United States,” ignores it.... Boom, gets kicked upstairs to the Secretary of State. For a bungle this bad, I think we might be looking at Chief Justice Karl Rove.

See, but that was comedy. Colbert was being deliciously ironic.

John Gibson? Not so much....

I say give Karl Rove a medal, even if Bush has to fire him.

Why? Because Valerie Plame should have been outed by somebody. And if nobody else had the cojones to do it, I’m glad Rove did — if he did do it, and he still says he didn’t.

Have trouble following that? Me, too. And the rest of it doesn’t get much better.

Make sure to watch the video, because the web transcript doesn’t quite capture the disdain with which Gibson tells us that “lil’ wifey” was responsible for sending Ambassador Wilson to Niger.

That’s right, Gibson dismisses an accomplished undercover CIA operative specializing in WMD intelligence as “lil’ wifey.”

And in Gibsonland, she’s the criminal, not Karl Rove. Her crime? Possibly suggesting that the right person to investigate claims that Saddam was trying to purchase nuclear weapons materials from Niger might be someone who had decades of diplomatic experience in Africa (including Niger) and who was acting Ambassador in Iraq during Operation Desert Storm.

Yep, we’re through the looking glass, folks.

And, as hard as it is to turn away, I really need to stop watching John Gibson.