Media's Edward Snowden Haters Club Keeps Growing

In trashing NSA leaker Edward Snowden on Sunday, CBS's Bob Schieffer joined a fast-growing club of establishment pundits who have derided his actions and questioned his character.

It has seemed sometimes that commentators have been trying to compete for who can come up with the most sneering description of Snowden.

The New Yorker's Jeffrey Toobin, for instance, called him a "grandiose narcissist who deserves to be in prison." Tom Brokaw dismissed him as a "high school dropout" and a "military washout."

The Washington Post's Richard Cohen seemed likely to win the contest when he confusingly dubbed Snowden a "cross-dressing Little Red Riding Hood." (Huh?)

Schieffer might have managed to trump all of those rivals, though, when he lamented that Snowden did not live up to the likes of Rosa Parks or Martin Luther King:

Rosa Parks, Martin Luther King, Jr.--they are true heroes. I'm not ready to put Edward Snowden in that category. For one thing, I don't remember Martin Luther King, Jr. or Rosa Parks running off and hiding in China.

He then called Snowden "just a narcissistic young man who has decided he is smarter than the rest of us" who may not have even had a "valid point."

While it's definitely true that Snowden will probably not leave a legacy on the same scale as Rosa Parks, it's a bit of a strange test to match him against two of the greatest people in human history. Judged against them, most people would fail. For now, though, Schieffer is in first place in the anti-Snowden contest.