Slate’s Tim Noah has been doing a fine job chronicling the long list of scapegoats conservatives are blaming for the Abu Ghraib prison scandal. From gays to pornography to Quentin Tarantino, the right is having a field day pointing fingers and holding everyone responsible except the Bush administration.
With this in mind, a few friends have noticed that the “blame America” conservatives have yet another culprit: MTV.
[W]hat is surprising and what should shock our nation’s conscience is that these U.S. soldiers took photos and home-made pornography of the abuse as “trophies” for their actions. As Chuck Colson pointed out at yesterday’s Pastors’ Briefing, when you mix young people who grew up on a steady diet of MTV and pornography with a prison environment, you get the abuse at Abu Ghraib.
First, if there’s anyone who should know about a “prison environment,” it’s Colson. The man was locked up for a couple of years after helping organize the illegal wiretapping of Democratic Party headquarters as part of Nixon’s Watergate scandal.
Second, as Barry Lynn said, MTV is an awfully silly target.
“This is one of the stupidest things said about the Abu Ghraib scandal to date. Seeing Colson and Perkins stoop this low should not really surprise me, but I’m disappointed at their lack of imagination. Surely they could have found some way to blame the scandal on same-sex marriage, Bill Clinton or activist judges. Blaming every horrible thing that happens on MTV is SO ’80s.”