Linda Foley: Meet Rudyard Kipling

Rudyard Kipling had Linda Foley’s number.

Linda Foley

For God and the soldier we adore,

In time of danger, not before!

The danger passed, and all things righted,

God is forgotten and the soldier slighted.

~Rudyard Kipling

Linda Foley is the President of the Newspaper Guild, 35,000 member union of “media workers.” On Friday the 13th in St. Louis, she gave a speech in which she accused the United States military with targetting and murdering journalists:

Journalists, by the way, are just being targeted, ah, verbally or, ah, or, ah, politically. They’re also being targeted for real. Um…in places like Iraq. Ahn and, ah, what outrages me as a representative of journalists is that there’s not more outrage about the number, and the brutality, and the cavalier nature of the U.S. military toward the killing of journalists in Iraq. I think it’s just a scandal.

Here’s the insight Rudyard Kipling gives us into Foley’s speech: the liberals still don’t understand that we are at war.

After slandering our military, she has the temerity to talk about the need to defend free speech, the free press and the freedom of association:

And so as you go forward on this struggle, keep in mind that the other part of the First Amendment, besides the free speech and the free press part, also talks about the freedom of association. And I’m telling you right now, . . .the ability of workers in media and elsewhere to form free trade unions, is imperiled as it’s never been imperiled before. . . there never has been a democracy, in this world, that has not had both a free press and a free trade union movement.

Does she think we keep those freedoms, for free? Our military is busy defending her freedoms — while she is self-righteously safe here at home.

Unbelievable. Just as Kipling said: the soldier is slighted . . . because she thinks the danger is passed.

Thanks to the Dusty Attic for a full transcript, which puts the lie to Foley’s “I was taken out of context” defense. And, even better, hear it for yourself! Trey Jacksons has a 3:22 minute video up, so you can parse her speech, word for word.

Worst of all, you can hear the laughter from her audience when she gets snarky about Republicans, and the applause when she insults the military.

A great roundup today over at Word Unheard, who pointed me toward the transcripts and video. See also his indispensable Foley fisking here.

LaShawn Barber also has extensive coverage and links.