This Punishment Doesn't Fit The Crime

ABC News suspended the executive producer of the weekend edition of "Good Morning America" yesterday over a pair of leaked e-mails in which he used inflammatory language to slam President Bush and Madeleine Albright.

John Green, whose unpaid suspension will last one month, apologized to the White House in a call to communications director Nicolle Wallace, while two ABC executives called the former secretary of state to apologize.

"No one is sorrier than John for the embarrassment that these albeit private e-mails caused to his colleagues and to the people who were the subjects of those comments," said ABC News spokesman Jeffrey Schneider. "John would be the first to say this has been a real lesson to him. John is abjectly sorry for all the comments that have come to light, and that's appropriate."

In one of the e-mails, written during the first presidential debate in 2004 and leaked to the Drudge Report, Green wrote to a colleague on his BlackBerry: "Are you watching this? Bush makes me sick. If he uses the 'mixed messages' line one more time, I'm going to puke."

Green, who was not made available for comment yesterday, wrote his colleagues after that leak to say "how much I regret the embarrassment that this story causes ABC. It was an inappropriate thing to say, and I'm deeply sorry."

Wallace said yesterday that she "appreciated the call and the apology."

The second leaked e-mail surfaced Thursday on the New York Post's gossipy Page Six. In that note, Green wrote that Albright should not be booked on the show because "Albright has Jew shame."

Albright, who was raised as a Roman Catholic, acknowledged her Jewish heritage in 1997 after it was discovered by Washington Post reporter Michael Dobbs in the course of researching a book.

Wow, an ABC producer dislikes Bush. Noooo, I don't believe it. Big deal. There are many others like him, and also others who probably feel that Albright has "jew shame". The guy shouldn't be punished, just exposed. Transparency...it's all about transparency.