Little Ron, Your 15 Minutes are up.

If you missed Ron Reagan Jr.'s MSNBC show (and who doesn't regularly miss it) you missed a fantastic dressing down by Christopher Hitchens. The transcript is on Radio Blogger but here is a critical exchange between Hitchins, a man who has reported from hte belly of the terrorist beast since the eighties, and Reagan, a man who has been fortunate to stretch his inherited fame all the way to a TV show on a third rate cable station:

"CH: Excuse me. When I went to interview Abu Nidal, then the most wanted terrorist in the world, in Baghdad, he was operating out of an Iraqi government office. He was an arm of the Iraqi State, while being the most wanted man in the world. The same is true of the shelter and safe house offered by the Iraqi government, to the murderers of Leon Klinghoffer, and to Mr. Yassin, who mixed the chemicals for the World Trade Center bombing in 1993. How can you know so little about this, and be occupying a chair at the time that you do?

RR: I guess because I listen to the 9/11 Commission, and read their report, and they said that Saddam Hussein was not exporting terror. I suppose that's how, Christopher.

CH: Well, then they were wrong, weren't they?

RR: No, maybe they just needed to listen to you, Christopher.

CH; Well, I'm not sure that they actually did say that. What they did say was they didn't know of any actual operational connection...

RR: That's right. No substantive operational connection.

CH: ...which was the Iraqi Baath Party and...excuse me...and Al Qaeda. A direct operational connection. Now, that's because they don't know. They don't say there isn't one. They say they couldn't find one. But I just gave you the number, I would have thought, rather suggestive examples."

Note the smug attitude from Little Ron as he attempts to sound intellectually superior by reading his DNC talking points. He is silly enough to bring up the 9/11 commission findings as "proof" that Saddam was not involved in international terror and then within ten seconds must concede that they actually stated they had no PROOF of a "substantive operational connection" between Hussein and Al Qaeda. Of course, he concedes this point and his hoisted with his own petard.

The most important point that Little Ron never concedes in his depate is that he is an amateur and is completely out of his league with Hitchins. how much you wanna bet Mr. Hitchins is not invited back for a while? Some producer in MSNBC land is in BIG trouble right now... you never book a guest that will make your show's talent look THIS stupid!

Baldilocks agrees that Ron Reagan was not even closely matched with Hitchens... nice stuff here.