Sunday Morning Comin' Down

In which David Gregory -- the custodian of the most influential public interest program in the United States -- continues to do for the profession of journalism what Jack the Ripper did for London night life.

Give his past as Jack Abamoff's former bag-man and spectacularly failed politician and  notoriously sleazy Bible-grifter, Ralph "Babyface Killa" Reed has the distinction of being one of the most multi-dimensionally awful human beings in American political life.  His public career should be (to quote Steve Benen from the link below), dead, dead, dead.  

And yet, thanks to the heroic intervention of "Meet the Press" host David Gregory 



and "Meet the Press" Executive Producer Betsy Fischer Martin...

It. 

Is.

Alive.

From Nicole Belle at "Crooks and Liars":

Ralph Reed Casts Doubts on Obama's Honesty. WTF, Meet the Press? 
By Nicole Belle

Those protectionist Villagers are at it again, inviting one of their cocktail partners to opine on a top-rated national program, who deserves no such recognition. And shame on David Gregory and Executive Producer Betsy Fischer Martin for promoting it by inviting Ralph Reed to insult the President of the United States' honesty in his undisclosed role as proxy for the Mitt Romney campaign. 

What qualifies Ralph Reed to talk about President Obama's honesty? Even last year, Steve Benen argued that any association with Reed should be toxic...

But being a pro means not leaving the job of soaping Republican balls to amateur, which is why Mr. Gregory personally interceded to make sure "Meet the Press" hit it's weekly Unchallenged Wingnut Lie quota (via "Think Progress", with a big h/t to reader "DS" for sending the link along):

NBC’s David Gregory Misquotes Obama, Falsely Claims President Said ‘Al Qaeda Has Been Defeated’

By Judd Legum on Sep 30, 2012 at 12:11 pm

This morning on Meet The Press, David Gregory twice asserted that, in May, President Obama declared that “al Qaeda has been defeated.” Gregory used that claim to advance a theory that Obama was simply not concerned enough about al Qaeda in advance of the attack on the American embassy in Libya. Here’s the transcript:

GREGORY: The President has said as recently as May of this year that al Qaeda has not had a chance to rebuild, that al Qaeda has been defeated. There is an election on, as we’ve been talking about, and the President’s challenger said plain and simple, the President failed to level with the American people and call this a terrorist attack, because you had to be concerned about another terrorist attack from al Qaeda in the Middle East after the President said that al Qaeda had been defeated. 

That is not, however, what Obama said in May. Gregory was apparently referring to an address that Obama delivered from Afghanistan in May on the one year anniversary of Osama Bin Laden’s death. Here is what Obama said:

And one year ago, from a base here in Afghanistan, our troops launched the operation that killed Osama bin Laden.  

Still, there will be difficult days ahead. The enormous sacrifices of our men and women are not over.

So, the truth is that Obama did not say al Qaeda had already been defeated and specifically acknowledged that there were “difficult days” and “enormous sacrifices” yet to come.

Meanwhile, Mr. Gregory's tinier, brunetter counterpart on "This Week" absolutely gives the game away (emphasis added):

STEPHANOPOULOS: But let me just stop you there. If truth is going to be on trial, isn't that going to have to be up to the candidates? I don't believe the moderators who've been chosen or the mandate they have is to be fact-checkers in this debate.

And that, in a pistachio nutshell, is the mentality behind America's Sunday Morning Mouse Circus.  What happens on camera has nothing to do with truth or fact or journalism.  It is an entertainment.  A gladiatorial conflict in which bookers throw Ann Coulter and E.J Dionne in a cage with a couple of sharp sticks and let them have at it.  No rules, no refs and woe betide the poor fool who steps into the ring thinking lying and cheating will be penalized.

Lying, cheating and slander are the necessary elements of the weekly, flaming, seven-car pile-up at the Mouse Circus NASCAR circuit that keep the rubes stopped and rubbernecking long enough to hear about the wonders of Exxon and Boeing and various penis-embiggening nostrums.

Of course, regardless of many millions of dollars this weekly ritual -- this corpse-dancing of the rotting remains of American Beltway journalism in front of the cameras, all rouged-up and pimped out as if it were still a vital, crusading thing -- puts in the pockets of corporate executives, it's corrosive effect on our democracy continues to be an unmitigated, ongoing, man-made disaster 

This makes a lot of us truth-and-fairness-Nazis on the Left incredibly angry, which is why, as part of every Sunday progarm, a Centrist sideshow clown is invariably rolled out to entertain the mob (and tamp down on us truth-and-fairness-Nazis) with an amusing fit of "Both sides do it" Tourettes.

In performing your critical function as an informed citizen of the most powerful and dysfunctional democracy on Earth, this profane, shambling, toxic mess is the very best the multi-billion dollar enterprise of American corporate political media has to offer you.  

And this is the best it will ever offer you until the amount of professional pain visited on the people who serve this mess up every week becomes unbearable enough for them to change to recipe.