Durbin almost redeems himself

Though Senator Dick Durbin may have come off as an unprincipled pissant cry baby when he apologized to republicans for his comments on Gitmo, he was definitely on his game while grilling Kenneth "advocacy is a big word" Tomlinson, Chair of the CPB. Now if only he'd stood up to the big guns.

SEN. RICHARD DURBIN: What was Mr. Mann's expertise? Why did you happen to hire him? According to Senator Dorgan who’s seen the raw date, he was paid thousands of dollars, his data riddled with spelling errors was faxed to you from a Hallmark store in downtown Indianapolis. What is this Mann's background for judging a program like Moyers’s program and whether it’s liberal or not?
KENNETH TOMLINSON: Well, he worked for twenty years for the National Journalism Center, which is a 401(c)(3) organization.
SEN. RICHARD DURBIN: National Journalism Center?
KENNETH TOMLINSON: National Journalism Center.
SEN. RICHARD DURBIN: What is that? I don’t --
KENNETH TOMLINSON: But the point of watching it –
SEN. RICHARD DURBIN: Excuse me, what is the National Journalism Center?
KENNETH TOMLINSON: It’s a center here in Washington that found internships for --
SEN. RICHARD DURBIN: And they're straight down the middle of the road, moderate centrist group, right and left?
...
SEN. RICHARD DURBIN: Well, I got to get to the basic question here. I won't go through the list of some of Mr. Moyers's more liberal guests -- Frank Gaffney, Grover Norquist, Richard Viguerie, Paul Gigot – on his liberal program --
KENNETH TOMLINSON: It is our experience --
SEN. RICHARD DURBIN: But let me ask you this if I can: Did you feel that it was your responsibility or authority to go out and put together the “Wall Street Editorial Page” show and to find subsidy for that? Did you feel that that was your responsibility to do?
KENNETH TOMLINSON: I felt that the law required us to reflect balance in our current affairs programming. I was not the only one involved in encouraging a program that represented a diverse point of view from the Moyers show.
SEN. RICHARD DURBIN: So following Mr. Moyers’s comments in St. Louis, can we expect you to do the same for The Nation magazine? Are you going to raise $5 million to make sure they have a show?
KENNETH TOMLINSON: I don't see -- I don't see today we have a balance problem. We have a 30-minute show, “Now,” and we have a 30-minute show, The Wall Street Journal. That's balanced. Let the people decide. Balance is common sense.
SEN. RICHARD DURBIN: But, Mr. Tomlinson, the people, I said at the outset, already decided. They thought that the Corporation for Public Broadcasting was presenting balance. And they thought that, you know, they gave it high approval rating. You have perceived a problem here which the American people obviously don't perceive.