Lieutenant Steven Hauk Forces Farce News Host To Diss Grave Of Adrian Cronauer

On Monday, the world lost an legend as well as a great man as well as just a fun guy to be around with when Robin Williams, star of (for grown-ups) Good Morning, Vietnam (1987), Dead Poets Society (1989), The Birdcage (1996), and Good Will Hunting (1997), and (for kids) Hook (1991), Aladdin (1992), Mrs. Doubtfire (1993), Jumanji (1995), Night at the Museum (2006), and Happy Feet (2006), tragically took his own life via "suspected suicide". Williams was truly one-of-a-kind, a man who President Obama described as "an airman, a doctor, a genie, a nanny, a president, a professor, a bangarang Peter Pan, and everything in between [who] arrived in our lives as an alien—but he ended up touching every element of the human spirit. He made us laugh. He made us cry. He gave his immeasurable talent freely and generously to those who needed it most—from our troops stationed abroad to the marginalized on our own streets. The Obama family offers our condolences to Robin’s family, his friends, and everyone who found their voice and their verse thanks to Robin Williams."

We've yet to lose and don't want to lose Farce News' only legitimate "Voice of Reason" Shepard Smith. Whereas other Farce News hosts and contributors slammed Obamacare and/or put out many a conspiracy theory about the President, Smith, the host of Reporting, formerly known under the titles Studio B (no relation to the original animation studio of My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic) and The Fox Report, hasn't done so, taking a liking to Obamacare, and telling the people who work for his own network to "bring [Sgt. Bergdahl] home first [then] investigate." His show is the only one in which Farce News lives up to its "Fair & Balanced" slogan.

Unfortunately, he wasn't fair or balanced at all the day of his passing, when he commented that Williams was a coward for having killed himself. It contains so much dissentry that I wonder if Lt. Steven Hauk from one of Williams' films came up with this story and inserted nasty things about the comedian while Smith was talking:

Hard to imagine, isn't it? You have loved three little things so much, watched them grow, and, they're in their mid-20s and they're inspiring you, exciting you, they fill you up with the kind of joy you could never have known and, yet something inside you is so horrible, or you're such a coward, or whatever the reason, that you decide you have to end it.

Since then, Mr. Smith has apologized for this remark and defeated the Hauk, issuing the statement as follows:

I spent an entire hour talking about how much this man affected people's lives and brought greatness to this world. I was just wondering aloud what could have made this man want to end it all. And it reminds us that we all have responsibility as friends and neighbours to help take responsibility to prevent this from happening. There are people who process suicide as a black-and-white-issue. I don't process anything as black-and-white.

Mr. Smith, although you've the right to say "sorry" now, this fails to make your statements about the comic any less wrong, and yet it's great that you said you were sorry. By calling one a coward for succumbing to a brutal disease (depression in this case herein), however, you have reinforced the stigma associated with American mental illness that prevents people from getting their much-needed help.

And that's why what Shepard Smith initially said about Robin Williams is Very, Very Ugly.

- Thom Hartmann.