Pee Wee Carlson's Playhouse

Today's episode: Crimes against humanity make for must-see TV

Over at Pee Wee Tucker Carlson's playhouse on MSNBC (The Situation), the gang was considering what great fun it's going to be watching Saddam Hussein's trial -- assuming that US television carries it. Playmates include MSNBC utility seat warmer Monica Crowley and actor Donal Logue. Guess who comes across as being the most intelligent?

Pee Wee sets the stage for the discussion:

[I]n Iraq, Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein now the unwilling underwear model. Iraq's national security adviser says that he, Saddam, expects the trial to begin before mid-October. And that trial will be televised throughout the Arab world. The goal of the telecast is to show Iraqis that Saddam has gone into the past and gone with the wind, and probably blowing in the wind, too.

Wha? Seems Tucker's been taking speechicution lessons from Bush. Anyway, Pee Wee runs on about how America is brave and honorable and noble for televising (if we do) Saddam's trial -- and then Logue bursts his pretty balloon.

PEE WEE CARLSON: There's been a lot written about how, oh, about how this trial is going to expose various unattractive moments in American foreign policy. And I totally buy that. I think it probably will. But what it is really going to expose is the transparency of the American system.

Here, we are the only country, one of the few countries willing to air this stuff. We don't have to have a public and televised trial for Saddam Hussein, but we're willing to. And I think it sends a powerful—as much as I have concerns about the war itself, I think it sends a powerful and good message about America to the rest of the world.

LOGUE: That's a good point. I mean, he's going to tell people the off-color jokes that Donald Rumsfeld told him when they were hugging and kissing back in the day.

Good one. The professional newsters recover sufficiently so that Monica Crowley is able to add this hard-hitting point: dictators will think long and hard about dictating if they realize that their trials will be shown (well, maybe, if the ratings are good) on US television.

CROWLEY: This is going to be must-see TV. And I hope that American television broadcasts it, too, because we do know that Arab TV—it's going to be seen all over Al-Jazeera live. And I hope that American television shows it, too, because this is going to be the ultimate in accountability for the world's dictators.

That's right: the ultimate in accountability for the world's dictators is to be tried on American television. And this will be Saddam's fate -- unless the abductor/murderer of Natalee Holloway is charged and his trial coincides with Saddam's because you know which one will be the ratings winner.