Draft Dodger Still Hosing the Troops: Alan Wurtzel

Behold the face of a truly despicable man. 

During the Vietnam War, his country came calling -- and Alan Wurtzel, from a well-off family, and not particularly burdened with any feelings of patriotism or loyalty or duty, hung up the phone. Let someone else go in his place. He stayed in college through a Ph. D in 1974 -- I'm sure it's just a coincidence that he waited out the entire draft, huh? 

Whether his draft-dodging then was legal or not, it's legal now -- President Carter's first act as President was to pardon the draft dodgers, draft rioters, and deserters... just like his last act was to abandon the military and diplomatic personnel that his weak and vacillating foreign policy had condemned to captivity in Iran.

Now Wurtzel's a vice president of NBC -- apparently not one of the news personnel being laid off at the flailing network -- and a millionaire many, many times over. But he's not so secure in his position that he can resist sticking it to the troops in a new war. 

During Vietnam, Wurtzel callously expected some working-class kid to fight, and maybe die, in his place. This time, he went out of his way to make sure an ad encouraging people to remember to thank the troops overseas won't appear on his network. He used a flimsy pretext, but the real reason is crystal clear: he, and his network, loathe the troops so much that a simple "Thank You" ad was more than he could bear. 

It almost sounds like a guilty conscience is bothering him -- if a creature like Wurtzel has a conscience. 

UPDATE: Wurtzel didn't make the decision alone, but with an NBC shyster named Richard Cotton, who is a major contributor to Democrats. It turns out that, like most NBC staff, he prefers Dems quite a bit -- almost $50,000 worth in his case. I'm sure that doesn't impinge on his ability to be objective. Or have anything to do with Wurtzel and Cotton's previous decision to run similar ads for their pal John "Genghis" Kerry. Heh. (Note: this update's been revised to clarify its meaning).

UPDATE II: According to Jules Crittenden (a blog worth reading, from an MSM insider), quoting the Washington Post, Wurtzel has wavered and the ad will run. I guess somebody was going to look up his political giving next. 

The ads, produced by Freedom's Watch, have run on conservative Fox News -- but also on liberal CNN. They ran in the New York Times, which didn't find them offensive to its delicate lower-Manhattan sensibilities. (The Times ad says "Thank You" over a picture of a soldier reading a letter, and has the Freedom's Watch URL -- the very item that enraged Wurtzel). But the ads so upset Wurtzel that they're banned on NBC. His excuse? The ads aren't that bad, but there are things on the web page that he thinks are "too controversial" for his network. If the political group would just change its politics to match his, all would be peachy.

He is, however, cool with infomercials. (In that link, he denies that he'll run bogus infomercials... but the authors have the goods on him -- $11 million worth. Ironically, it's a Dateline NBC story! Hoist by your own petard).

And in 2004, they accepted an ad with almost identical wording, in support of the troops... which then sent viewers to the entirely non-controversial (according to Wurtzel) campaign website of John F. Kerry. (He was in Vietnam... briefly... in case you haven't heard. Kerry, I mean, not Wurtzel). This was Kerry's attempt to recover from his slandering the troops in Iraq as "terrorists," recalling his "Genghis Khan" slurs against the other Vietnam veterans. According to Wurtzel, that's consensus, not controversy.

Physical cowardice, moral cowardice and unethical greed combined in one man. Not all that rare -- especially, in Wurtzel's business. Especially, on NBC. Newt Gingrich's take is that they're "candidly, against defending America." He also points out (on that same video clip) that "this is the network that gave thirty-five hours to Al Gore for global warming propaganda. Gave it to him." And he goes on to say, "I think NBC's refusal to run these ads is just a stunningly dishonorable thing." Yeah, but that's not controversial... if you're Wurtzel. He's been doing stunningly dishonorable things for decades.