God Bless You, Shep (a tribute to Shep Smith) [View all]
http://thedailybanter.com/2012/08/god-bless-you-shep/#.UBwLzy6NMsw.twitter
By Chez Pazienza: Ive been putting off writing something like this for a very long time. True, for quite a while Ive kept a running tab of his scathing, subversive and generally balls-out brilliant comments the ones that have gotten him justifiably tagged as the lone voice of reason at his place of work but never have I come right out and written a full-fledged paean to Shepard Smith. The reason for this is that I feel strange doing it because Shep isnt simply somebody I watch on TV and whose work I admire from afar hes someone I know very well. I came up through the ranks with Shep at WSVN in Miami almost 20 years ago; he and I moved to Los Angeles roughly around the same time soon after and we played poker and drank beer on the weekends; I saw him as recently as last year at a party on South Beach. Hes a good guy a great guy, actually and hes been a terrific friend. Thats probably why I get even more satisfaction than the average person every time Shep opens his mouth and launches a spitball made of nitro glycerin into the well-oiled machinery of his employer, Fox News.
The latest example of Shep playing the endlessly entertaining role of Loki, the God of Chaos, over at Fox comes to us just this week a couple of days ago, in fact. During a segment on his afternoon show, Studio B, Shep mentioned, apropos of nothing, that Wednesday was national badminton day, but he then went on to say, Lets forget National Day of Intolerance; lets just stay with badminton, an obvious reference to the resentful, right-wing ridiculousness that was Chick-fil-A Appreciation Day. That Shep took a swipe at an event that was surely dear to the enlarged hearts of Foxs audience of white, bitter middle-American Christians was amusing enough but when you throw in the fact that the day-long pledge of allegiance to Jesuss favorite chicken sandwich was the brainchild of Mike Huckabee, who happens to also be a host on Fox News, youve got a moment of truly glorious on-air insurrection. Thing is, its exactly the kind of behavior weve come to expect from Shep.
For the past several years, Sheps been building to the point hes at now one where hes perfectly secure in his position and knows damn well he can say whatever he wants and get away with it. You can see the sense of liberation all over his face; its written in the mischievous smirk thats become his trademark. Whether its mustering up just the correct amount of flippant disrespect or righteous indignation and bucking the Fox News group-think or playfully and hilariously derailing a conversation he finds tedious by throwing out a totally bizarre non-sequitur Itll make you crazy, the V
You guys watch True Blood? Shep injects either the necessary amount of sanity or just the right amount of insanity to the proceedings, always highlighting just how crazy things regularly are at Fox News.
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