Give Her A Break, Imus Many years ago in a place long, long ago and far, far away, Don Imus was irreverent and somewhat amusing. (Well some people thought so, although I never really listened to him, I just knew about him. We didn't get him during his 'glory' years in northwest Tennessee.) Those days are long over. Way, way out of line on the Jill Carroll comments made by his radio team the last couple of days. It seems to me that certain members of the media are demonizing her and, honestly, I don't know why. (Be sure to read the story with the timeline of how everything went down since her abduction.) All of the sudden, you are hearing pundits discussing Stockholm Syndrome and a whole bunch of other things about Carroll's "performance" after her release. This is possible, but she doesn't need to be dragged into political wargames when she just spent three months held captive by people who said quite clearly they had no trouble killing her. The woman was held hostage since January 7. Her appearance yesterday on the video was not to entertain anyone, she had just been released from a kidnapping, for crying out loud. The Guardian has a piece on the politics of terrorism, and how murdering Carroll would have been a bad thing politically because the Christian Science Monitor mobilized efforts with some very well-thought out help to get Carroll back. I've never been kidnapped. I have no idea how I would react if someone had a gun to my head giving me an execution date if things weren't done. She was released unharmed, and isn't that the point. She said she was treated well, however, who knows because of her three months in captivity. She was the 31st journalist to be kidnapped in Iraq. Howard Kurtz of the Washington Post wrote a column today about how Carroll appeared in the video that's been playing on the news channels. He reminds us that she was still in Sunni custody when she made that video, so we shouldn't judge her reactions (which many, including Imus' RagTag Team of Duh) thought was too positive towards her captors. He reminds us she was most likely shell-shocked and would feel more comfortable when she was on American Soil. Are people upset she didn't die? She didn't martyr herself. For pete's sake, this is ridiculous, and Imus, you know better. UPDATE: Here is a bit more on the story with a few more details in it.  ¶ 3/31/2006 04:00:00 PM