Every night at 8 p.m. on MSNBC, Keith Olbermann awards his daily pick for "Worst Person in the World." Some contenders are lucky — or unlucky —enough to be nominated more than once.
The Bronze for Thursday, Oct. 5, goes to Detective Timothy Heinz of Spokane County, Wash. The phone company gave him the number associated with obscene calls to at least 20 college women in the area, and based on that he proceeded to get and execute a search warrant to search the home of a 67-year-old man and his wife, preceding which the man says, Detective Heinz said to the other police, “Now let’s go inside and get some porn.” The raunchiest thing they found: a copy of the “Lion King” that belonged to the man’s granddaughter. In writing down the phone number, the detective had transposed some of the digits. It was the wrong house.
Our runners up, the good old Department of Homeland Security. “60 Minutes” got access to part of the infamous “no-fly” list. On it, Saddam Hussein, also 14 of the 19 hijackers from 9/11, and everybody named Gary Smith, John Williams and Robert Johnson. Not on it, the 11 British suspects arrested in that purported plot to blow up jets using liquid explosives.
But our winner, commentator Paul Weyrich on NPR about the Foley scandal. “Here’s the real problem,” he said, “it has been known for many years that Congressman Foley was a homosexual. Homosexuals tend to be preoccupied with sex.” When the host suggested that that was just an opinion and many would take exception to it, Mr. Weyrich explained “I don’t care whether they take exception to it; it happens to be true.”
No, actually. But let me repeat this, brainiac. This isn’t about Foley being gay. It’s not about what the kids did, it’s an adult, male or female, straight or gay — taking sexual advantage of children and other adults protecting that adult. Commentator Paul Weyrich, today’s Worst Person in the World.