Apologies to Al Franken, but Tucker Carlson is a thin idiot.

If you have any doubt about it, read his whiney essay, "Can’t buy me love," decrying the world for its alleged ingratitude toward the U.S for our alleged big-heartedness (www.pbs.org/tuckercarlson/unfiltered/">Tucker Carlson Unfiltered).

The too cute pundit, recently axed along with his show "Crossfire" on CNN, admits that the U.S. is sending "huge amounts" of money (sic--it's only "huge" compared to what we were going to send, not compared to what much smaller countries like Spain are sending, or to what Amnerica usually sends, and not compared to the amount the U.S. spends on weaponr--two new F-22 fighters cost much more than the entire U.S. tsunami aid pledge) for tsunami relief only because of criticism of the miniscule amount of aid originally offered by the Bush administration. But he goes on to say, "Let's not expect that money to win us any affection."

Why such gloomy expectations about the response of Indians, Indonesians, Malaysians and Sri Lankans towards American aid? Because, he pouts, the French allegedly didn't love us for the Marshall Plan aid we provided after World War II, and the Iraqis aren't grateful for the billions of dollars he claims we are "pouring" into Iraq--"much of it for humanitarian purposes."

The French, of course, had reason to be a bit resentful towards the U.S. in those post-war years. First of all, America basically did squat to help them as Hitler's Wehrmacht overran their country, until the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, by which time all France was under German control. Second, our much-ballyhooed Marshall Plan aid after the war was mostly loans that had to be repaid with interest. And finally, the U.S. massively interfered in post-war France to undermine the French left—not something that other nations, particularly alleged democratic allies, take kindly to. (The whole Marshall Plan, for that matter, was really not humanitarianism, but rather was all about trying to head off a Socialist/Communist takeover of Western Europe after the war.)

As for those ungrateful Iraqis! Our unprovoked and illegal invasion of their country has only leveled some of their cities, and only killed 100,000 or so of their people. The least they could do is appreciate that miniscule fraction of the $100 billion a year we are spending in their country rebuilding some of the stuff that we’re continuing to blow up!

Carlson's written version of the essay on the PBS website at least corrects for the factual error that he fobbed off on viewers on PBS, when he made the startling claim that the U.S. is providing more in humanitarian aid in Iraq than it is spending on the military effort. This of course is ludicrous. The Pentagon spends nearly $4 billion a week on destruction, while Congress only allocated $18 billion for reconstruction, and not even 25 percent of that amount has been spent a year later (most of it to pay politically well-connected U.S. firms that funnel the money right back to U.S. shareholders).

I confess I'm kind of surprised he didn't include a grumble or two about the ungradeful Vietnamese, who over the years have shown so little graditude for all the "humanitarian aid" we fired at--excuse me--lavished on them over the course of two decades.

For the rest of this column, please go (at no charge) to This Can't Be Happening! .