Did 'Daily Show' Steal Don't Ask Don't Tell Bit From Me?

The short answer is "no," but it's a nice entree´ into another distracting brouhaha, in which the messenger eclipses the message.

In this case, a question that I intended to ask at Wednesday's White House Press Briefing, and which I began writing an article about Thursday morning, was remarkably similar to a bit that was on The Daily Show Thursday night.

I held that article up so I could try to get that question in at Friday's briefing, which I did:



Imagine my surprise, then, when Comedy Central's Indecision Forever website accused me of lifting my question from Stewart? (They have since corrected this.)
I originally wanted to do a bit about how any of a thousand AOL employees could have given Stewart the hot tip that
I was writing about Don't ask/Don't tell's relationship to detainee photos on Thursday, at which point he rallied his writing staff to pick clean the bones of my work, but I think it's more important to address the underlying issue.

Which is that we are discharging otherwise qualified soldiers from the military simply because they are gay. We are depriving their fellow soldiers of their skill and expertise because we don't like their partners' matching 'nads.

Just as the central issue in Pelosi-gate is not what Nancy Pelosi knew and when, but whether we tortured people. If Nancy Pelosi knowing something makes it right, we're in big trouble.

Just as Maureen Dowd's lifting (inadvertant or not) of a paragraph from Josh Marshall doesn't negate the foregoing 19 paragraphs in which she makes the point that we might have tortured to obtain political propaganda.

So, in the final analysis, Indecision Forever's full-throated retraction (and that of its source) is not worth nearly as much to me as the fact that Jon Stewart and I copied each other on the message that "Don't ask/Don't Tell" is a danger to our troops.

Tommy on: Daily Dose:

• Comedy Central and Tommy Christopher in Feud
• Fox News' Question Hog Major Garrett Cops Major Attitude
• Obama's attempt to block photo release: Good idea, bad idea?
• Inside The White House Press Briefing Room
• I Have Only One Question: Is This Canon?