Comments for Conservative Radio Host Has Himself Waterboarded (Video)

Conservative Radio Host Has Himself Waterboarded (Video)

2009-05-22T19:45:06Z

Via Yglesias, and Jon Chait, we have conservative shock-jock Erich "Mancow" Muller has himself waterboarded to prove that it isn't torture:

"I want to find out if it's torture," Mancow told his listeners Friday morning, adding that he hoped his on-air test would help prove that waterboarding did not, in fact, constitute torture..."

"The average person can take this for 14 seconds," Marine Sergeant Clay South answered, adding, "He's going to wiggle, he's going to scream, he's going to wish he never did this."

With a Chicago Fire Department paramedic on hand, Mancow was placed on a 7-foot long table, his legs were elevated, and his feet were tied up.

Turns out the stunt wasn't so funny. Witnesses said Muller thrashed on the table, and even instantly threw the toy cow he was holding as his emergency tool to signify when he wanted the experiment to stop. He only lasted 6 or 7 seconds.

Below is a video of Muller, post-waterboarding. For those who can't watch this at work, suffice to say he had a change of heart.

View more news videos at: http://www.nbcchicago.com/video.

Comment from deva on 2009-05-22

2009-05-22T20:10:45Z

Wow, that's powerful. And I already believed waterboarding to be torture. I smell a viral smash hit.

Comment from Miles Ellison on 2009-05-22

2009-05-22T20:15:45Z

It's never torture until you experience it.

Comment from J. Smith on 2009-05-22

2009-05-22T20:22:39Z

Not that I would wish that experience on anyone, but...wow. I'm interested to see if Sean Hannity has anything to say about it...

Comment from RL on 2009-05-22

2009-05-22T20:26:36Z

And of course it is a MUCH DIFFERENT THING to volunteer to go through this, knowing that it will be done only once as a test.

Imagine yourself in the position of someone who is truly being tortured. And who has no control, no way to stop it, and no way to know when it will be done again. You can't imagine it. I don't think anyone who hasn't been tortured can imagine it.

Comment from Just Another Greg on 2009-05-22

2009-05-22T20:36:35Z

I very much doubt that Sean Hannity will say anything about this, let alone have the stones to go through it himself. The man is simultaneously a bully and a pussy.

Comment from RL on 2009-05-22

2009-05-22T20:40:21Z

Agreed. But isn't that the case with all bullies? Cowards.

Case in point: torturer-in-chief Dick Cheney.

Comment from ChuckPinLA on 2009-05-22

2009-05-22T20:48:00Z

Have these people lost their minds? The Geneva Convention is pretty easy to understand. It doesn't matter whether you call someone a prisoner of war or otherwise. You can't torture people, period.

Comment from RL on 2009-05-22

2009-05-22T20:50:25Z

I think you're right. First place I saw it was here but it's already on first page at HuffPost.

Comment from RL on 2009-05-22

2009-05-22T20:56:02Z

My sense of the people like Cheney, and Hannity and Kristol who still support him, is that there are two tiers. There are those, like Cheney, who are utterly convinced about their own correctness. They have so much surety that facts don't matter. They are delusional. We call these people fanatics. There aren't many of those and they are irretrievable.

And then there are those, like Kristol and Limbaugh, who support the fanatics for their own political or economic reasons. Human waste.

And there's a third tier - those who listen to the likes of Limbaugh and are simply ignorant. These are the only ones who are retrievable. Mancow has actually done something good today by educating some of those folks.

Comment from Winston Chang on 2009-05-22

2009-05-22T20:58:39Z

After looking this guy up, I don't think he's part of the same alliance as Rush/Hannity/Beck et al. For one he didn't endorse a Republican candidate in the last election, and most of what he's known for is shock-jock style pranks. Which is of course why he'd be willing to go through with this in the first place, and why he'd be easily disowned by the aforementioned hosts. They know it's torture, or at least know that it's likely to be torture, They say the things they do purely for political points.

Comment from Stacy on 2009-05-22

2009-05-22T21:02:31Z

I know he probably didn't do this for the right reasons, but good for him for actually going through with it. I imagine that must have been incredibly powerful for a lot of his listeners.

Comment from muzz on 2009-05-22

2009-05-22T21:15:08Z

decadence & decline of the american empire 2009: get yourself tortured to promote your brand and entertain the nation at the same time. sell it under the motto "public debate"

brilliant

Comment from Joshua Lyle on 2009-05-22

2009-05-22T21:23:58Z

Whenever I hear the word "unimaginable" or variations on the phrase "you can't imagine" in reference to occasions inside of human experience I think "this person's imagination sucks". The outcome of an unstoppable force hitting an immovable object is unimaginable; imagining torture is pretty accessible to those that take the time to learn from the experiences of others. Of course, imagining something isn't the same as experiencing it, but it isn't the same even for people that have previously experienced it so that doesn't seem like a coherent objection in this case.

Comment from Jennifer D. on 2009-05-22

2009-05-22T21:30:31Z

I can't watch this. When there's a video of Cheney doing it, I will be on "board."

Comment from Chris M on 2009-05-22

2009-05-22T22:02:08Z

Coates will tell you the guy claims he is libertarian and that Libertarianism is/was a branch of the Republican party.

He should walk down the hall and tell Megan she's conservative. And he should tell my very conservative in laws who voted for MONDALE for pete's sake that they are now Republicans.

Comment from Kylopod on 2009-05-22

2009-05-22T22:29:02Z

A blind man can imagine the color red all he likes, but he'll have no idea what red is like until he actually sees it himself.

Comment from Kylopod on 2009-05-22

2009-05-22T22:30:20Z

I would advise against it. It might kill him.

Comment from Miles Ellison on 2009-05-22

2009-05-23T00:05:53Z

It might not. Cheney has heart attacks as often as Fred Sanford and he isn't dead yet.

Comment from LMB on 2009-05-22

2009-05-23T03:38:52Z

If you want to see a video of someone actually getting waterboarded (Christopher Hitchens, a reporter for Vanity Fair), then go here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4LPubUCJv58

And then you can read his article describing it (in more detail than here) at:

HTTP://WWW.VANITYFAIR.COM/POLITICS/FEATURES/2008/08/HITCHENS200808

He decided it was torture as well...

Comment from Josh Jasper on 2009-05-23

2009-05-23T23:43:35Z

Well, "Coward" isn't a gendered insult implying weakness, for one thing.

Comment from pontificatrix on 2009-05-24

2009-05-25T00:40:34Z

How is it that these conservative jocks couldn't imagine that having water poured into your breathing apparatus would be severely unpleasant? They had to experience it firsthand to realize this?? DUH.

Although perhaps it's of a piece with the Repubs' recent denigration of empathy as a capacity unbecoming to the SCOTUS.

http://www.slate.com/id/2218103/