This is old news, but reading Mona Charen's excellent Useful Idiots has reminded me of it. It's hard to believe that you can still find this kind of mindset in the upper eschelons of American journalism, but there it is for all the world to see.

Recently, the conservative Media Research Center held their annual "Dishonor Awards" for the "Most Outrageously Biased Liberal Reporters of 2002." The winner of the "And They Called it Puppy Love Award" was Barbara Walters, who actually said this in the narration of her fawning 20/20 interview with Fidel Castro:

“For Castro, freedom starts with education. And if literacy alone were the yardstick, Cuba would rank as one of the freest nations on Earth. The literacy rate is 96 percent.”

Without exageration, this might be the single most stunning quote I've ever seen. Has anyone ever gone further to suck up to a murderous dictator? The mind reels at such fallacious reasoning. Surely, she couldn't have been buying this crap herself even as she was spewing it.

Barbara, dear. You poor, stupid twit. Literacy is not the yardstick of freedom. Freedom is the yardstick of freedom. Being able to move, speak, and think freely without being imprisoned or killed is the yardstick of freedom. And by that "yardstick," Castro proves to be an evil, murdering, tyrannical thug, as we have always known.

Her statement is akin to saying "For Hitler, freedom starts with exterminating Jews. And if dead Jews alone were the yardstick, Nazi Germany would rank as one of the freest nations on earth." The fact that she was willing to stretch this far to find a way to praise Fidel Castro should tell you something important about the bubble-heads who feed you your news.