It's almost too easy to make fun of Hollywood liberals these days, but I heard something yesterday that genuinely stunned me.

I was listening to the Sean Hannity show, which I didn't even realize was on in South Florida until I stumbled upon it yesterday. It may have been a repeat or "best of," since it was Labor Day, but in any event, his guest was Ed Asner. Now I know that Ed Asner is the nuttiest of the nutty Hollywood leftists. Though I think Lou Grant on the old "Mary Tyler Moore Show" is one of the great sitcom characterizations of all time, it's no state secret that Asner went 'round the bend on political issues long ago.

Still, I was not prepared for what I heard. Hannity said to him something like "You really, honestly still think we haven't given Communism a fair chance in this country, don't you?" To which Asner responded (paraphrasing): this country has been whipped into an irrational frenzy about Communism since 1917. They've never really heard what it's about because of all the negative propaganda.

I suppose I believed intellectually that such a species as Asner belongs to still existed, but to actually find a specimen in captivity is nearly staggering. This is a system that has conservatively resulted in over 100 million murders in the past 85 years, and we haven't given it a fair shake. I've concluded that Asner is actually a right-wing ploy to motivate conservatives. He's collecting a check from Richard Mellon Scaife. There's simply no way in the year 2003 that this guy can be for real.