Sunday Morning Comin’ Down

Sympathy for the Devil Edition.

A question I am often asked by imaginary interlocutors is: “How are TV shows made, dg?”

“Well,” I answer, admiring the alacrity with which the aforementioned interlocutor and her bevy of libidinous girlfriends disrobe because, frankly, if I’m gonna have imaginary interlocutors, then they’re damn well going to be smart, slutty and encamped at the castle with their army of nekkid friendlies, “first there is a mommy teevee show and a daddy teevee show, and they love each other very much…”

At least that’s how it is supposed to be.

In reality, of course, teevee shows are mostly the stunted, bastard whelpings of drunken Big Media hatefucks, slathered in stupid and consummated on sticky mattresses stuffed with bribe-gleaned blood money.

Creatures that one really needs the services of Katherine Hepburn playing Eleanor full-tilt-monster in “The Lion in Winter” to properly describe:

A "spindly, ricket-ridden, milky, wizened, dim-eyed, gammy-handed, limpy line of things..."

A level of talent depletion debased even further this Sunday by a kick-line of those C-List pundits who will work over a Midsummer holiday for a case of Red Bull, John McCain’s leftover sprinkle donuts, and whatever loose change they can shake out of the Green Room sofas.

This last Sunday the Mouse Circus really was virtually unwatchable, so I only subjected myself to glancing blows from it. Like watching a slasher film. Peeked at through covered eyes.

During a lightening storm.

At the height of an eclipse.

As a lone strobe light slowly dies.

I can attest to the fact that Chris Wallace was not on Fox, but do not know if he was having his hair re-plated or his venom sacs re-Vulcanized.

I can report that Brit Hume stepped in to lead the Fox News Sunday spelunking through the heart of the wingnut lie machine.

Bloody Billy Kristol opined that the Evil Liberals have turned against this war in a way that is radical and unprecedented in American history.

He did not mention that opposition to the war was founded on:

1. Having been lied and stampeded into the war in the first place by loathsome traitors like Bloody Bill Kristol in ways that are radical and unprecedented in American history.

2. Watching as the war was FUBARed by Bloody Bill Kristol’s Best Preznit Evah in ways that were so radical and unprecedented in American history, that they suggested that the Administration is tanking the whole thing on purpose like some 40-year-old club fighter being paid to take a dive.

3. Watching the degenerates who gratuitously impeachment of the previous President for the sin of being a member of the wrong political party (in a way that is radical and unprecedented in American history) turn right around and spend the next five years making a full-throated defense of their Commander Guy’s genuinely criminal and impeachable efforts to destroy the Constitution while hiding behind the War.

Bloody Billy Kristol further opined that Obama “is too liberal.” That he should not win. That furthermore, no one “with his profile” should win.

And having seen Barack Obama’s profile from a distance of not less than five feet, I can attest to the fact that it includes big ears, a broad nose, and short, coarse hair…I can well understand why Bloody Bill Kristol would find it terrifying.

Brit Hume intoned that McCain is a responsible, safe alternative to the newcomer.

Month-long-sigh.

Thing is, we have been watching this kabuki for years. Debated among ourselves how best to end it until our jaws have fallen off; until the words we first used to try to prick the attention of the Media and the conscience of the Right entered an exhausted middle age.

The simple truth is that the Patient Zero for almost all the plague our country is the 27%-ers.

The Pig People.

The Christopaths.

They are, at a fundamental level, incapable of change or evolution, and because they are not merely inertly stupid -- because they actively engaged in the business of demolishing America -- talk about "reaching out" to them is ridiculous.

That. Is. The. Story.

And yet every single day in America’s Big Money Journalism it is as if the Seven Hills Daily Pantograph doggedly reported on every trivial thing going on in Rome…except for the Visigoths who were in the middle looting the place down to the studs.

Every single day in America, FoxNews, Hate Radio, Regnery Press and all the rest reap huge profits telling vicious, ignorant people that they aren’t really vicious and ignorant. That they are, in fact, nature's noblemen! That it’s perfectly OK to drink paint, and if they wake up weak and vomiting blood, it’s somehow all the Liberal’s fault.

Which is probably why this innocuous, nearly-invisible exchange between Little George Stephanopoulos and Big Ted Koppel on “This Week” jumped out at me.

Johnathan Capehart (pundit who we shall not see again until Thanksgiving festivities take out all 10,982 pundits in front of him) tosses the ball up with this:

Talking about faith also gives Obama a chance to remind people, "Hey, motherfucker; I'm a Christian!" I am amazed that in every poll after poll, over 10% of Murricans still believe he's one of Those People."

Lil George (to Ted Koppel):

Ted, he's been combating this shit on teh internets all year long. It is an incredible problem. You, Ted, spent so much time on Nightline and now on Discovery talking about "race". How big a shitstorm do you think this is gonna be.

Big Ted:

In the final analysis... There was this wonderful story in I think the Washington Post the other day...about Flag City, USA. A town in Ohio. Where people are "exposed" to what is the truth -- that Obama is Christian. That there is no reason to question his patriotism -- but all of these rumors that have come through, connected to the fact that he is an African American, has made (apparently) this entire community "uneasy" about him. And the rumor mill has been far more effective than the ads; any newspaper stories; than any television stories. And I think there is just a small but significant fraction of Americans for whom...

And this is where Lil George talks right over Big Ted.

Lil George: And they see it printed on that screen and think, somehow, its true just because of the fact that it comes in on that email.

But that is very much NOT the road down which Koppel was rolling.

If you replay the video, and listen under Stephanopoulos' interruption, this is point Koppel was trying to get across:

“And I think there is just a small but significant fraction of Americans for whom...the truth in this instance is never going to matter.”

Which sounds like a small thing, but for me it was almost a cultural event, because it is almost the only time in my memory when a Big Time Newscritter sat in front of a camera and called bullshit on some specific, identifiable group other than “bureaucratsinwashington” or “liberalelites”.

Because in Stephanopoulos' world (as in fairy tales of old) knowing and using the True Name of things comes with the possibility of dire fucking consequences, and so one must never, ever, ever, ever, ever call the 27%-ers out by their True Name lest All Conservative Hell break loose.

And so, in Stephanopoulos' world the 27%-ers are people who have merely been somehow bamboozled by the medium through which the message passes.

They are innocent naifs, bedazzled by Teh Sparkly Internets.

The inhabitants of Stephanopoulos' world will never come within a million miles of even forming their mouths to say the words “Jesse Helms was a despicable, racist motherfucker who stayed in power for as long as he did because his supporters and admirers were and are despicable, racist motherfuckers, one and all.”

Instead, the inhabitants of Stephanopoulos' world believe that on the occasion of the death of this evil man we should toddle down to the Piggly Wiggly and buy some brand of Kiwi shoe polish powerful enough, to buff this turd of a human being to a shine high enough, so that he can be buried under a gooey, compromise word like "Controversial" or “Provocative”.

But Koppel -- admittedly in the weakest, most tepid way possible -- was trying to at least hint at the terrible truth that dare not be spoken, because its implications are so enormous.

The truth that, fundamentally, it's not that our courts that are broken. Not our roads and bridges. Not our schools.

Not something from which science or engineering or manufacturing will rescue us. Not something we can figure out, prototype and then make a fortune selling a million units for a buck apiece.

Because it is we ourselves that are broken.

When I look at Dubya’s poll numbers staying absolutely dead-level week after week after week regardless of what he has fucked up this week, or how badly, I learn nothing new about George W. Bush. But A-B-Cs behind just about everything else I need to know about America stand painfully revealed. Those numbers confirm for me for the unmpteenth time that inside the mushy skulls of the 27%-ers there is nothing but a hatbox of junk machine parts, still twitching and clattering mindlessly along on corrupted software that was already obsolete before men walked on the Moon.

The 27%-ers are slugs madly fighting for the right to jump into the salt bucket and drag us all down with them, and any solution to the problems that vex us must begin with their grotesquely mutant versions of patriotism, economics, virtue and civilization being discredited, sequestered and driven into oblivion.

Our first, great, national problem is that our fellow citizens -- in their millions -- are damaged beyond repair.

And our second, great, national problem is that our media refuses to talk about it.