I’m a veteran, and I don’t wear dogtags (anymore). Fox host Maria Bartiromo isn’t a veteran, and she wears dogtags, to honor the veterans in her family.
After thinking about it, I’m OK with it; it’s nice that she pays tribute to her father, who served, and uncle, who was KIA in World War 2 (see story here).
I don’t think she wears dogtags on TV or in public very often, anyway, because this is the only photo I found of her with dogtags.
What I don’t like about Bartiromo, once a respected financial journalist but now a Fox propagandist, is her sycophantic fawning over Trump, a draft dodger who disrespects our veterans. She’s also a liar.
As a promoter of Trump’s election lies, she was a defendant in Smartmatic’s defamation lawsuit against Fox and several of its hosts — and the only individual defendant not dismissed from the suit — that resulted in a $787.5 million settlement paid by her employer (details here).
Some stuff she says on TV is idiotic; I’ve commented about this before (here), and about her low journalistic ethics (here). She’s not stupid; she does it for the money. At Fox, the money is the best she’s ever made.
The stupidity continues. Campaigning against Biden on Fox, she asked Ben Carson if the president would live to see the 2024 election. “You’re a doctor,” she told Carson. “Do you believe President Biden makes it to the election or will he be — I mean, the Democrats are not stupid, right?”
On cue, Carson replied, “Well, you have somebody who’s impaired with the nuclear codes in charge of the military, in charge of the safety of the people of our country,” and added he’s certain Democrats are plotting to replace him as the nominee (see story here).
This is stupid talk, of the sort Bartiromo often makes herself a party to. This is Carson talking as a politician, not a doctor. He hasn’t examined Biden, and doesn’t have access to Biden’s medical records. Even a qualified medical professional can’t diagnose someone from afar. I’ve seen psychiatric profiles of Trump played in the media knocked down for this reason. It’s media theater, nothing more, and has a foul aroma of wishing for someone’s death.
Bartiromo’s dogtags are theater, too. They’re not hers, because she never served. It’s not stolen valor, because she says she wears them to honor her relatives, and I’m willing to believe that. But if she loves our country and wants to uphold what our veterans fought for, she should stop hawking Trump to her audience and try being an honest journalist again.
That’s not asking her to endorse Biden; it’s only asking her to be objective, and stop making up things about Biden’s health in order to sway an election.