Sunday, September 15, 2019

Sunday Morning Came and Went



If you'll join me in the Wayback Machine for a minute we can take a quick peek at why the media is broken beyond repair.

Set the date of September 19, 2014.  Put your earplugs and goggles on.  Exhale deeply so you won't burst a lung.  And -- whammo! --  it's five years ago.

September 19, 2014.

The GOP is about to roll up some big numbers during the midterms.

Donald Trump is just another loud, racist Republican asshole who gets to go on Morning Joe any time the spirit moves him and Tweets shit like this every single day. 



David Brooks is two months away from declaring that his Republican Party has purged itself of all it's creepy racist Sarah Palineqsue weirdness and is awesome again.

But the real story are the Sunday Shows.

It's September 19, 2014 and coming up after the commercial, Grover Fucking Norquist will be a guest on NBC's "Meet the Press".  Then there will be a little terrorism talk.  Then Ramesh Ponnuru will be on a panel of talking heads, along with Neera Tanden.

As you move down the dial you'll find CNN's "Crossfire" host Newt Gingrich (who would go on to become the husband of the US ambassador to the Vatican and a regular Fox News bile-spigot) and Democratic strategist Donna Brazile (who would also go on to become a Fox News flunky.)  Republican strategist Ana Navarro (now a Never Trumper) and Wall Street Journal columnist Bret Stephens (who was hired away from the WSJ shortly thereafter to slop the Conservative pseudo-intellectual trough for The New York Times.)  Former Sen. Joe Lieberman, who still exists and rises from his tomb from time to time to scare small children.  And there's Republican strategist Karl Rove and Democratic strategist Joe Trippi talking past each other on "Fox News Sunday".

And hey look!   It's Brit Hume and Juan Williams who are still helping Fox News wreck America to this very day.  And George Will, who now nests at the Washington Post and occasional gets called up to shag fungos for MSNBC.  In the five years that have passed since 2014 Byron York got a new bob but is still the same insufferable Republican fop.  And Judith Miller, who has been bumped down to the Olde English 800 malt liquor-end of the media bar (Translation: Newsmax) , still has enough wingnut welfare credits for someone to hand her an adjunct fellow gig at the Manhattan Institute.

All of which is to say that, in the Beltway media, once you're in The Club, it is almost impossible to get kicked out.  Your job title may change, and your place at the table may be moved around based on the immediate needs of the institution, but like contract players during the days of the Hollywood Studio System, if you hit your marks, say your lines and don't get too sassy with the suits, the networks will clothe you and feed you, put a roof over your head and put your kids through college no matter how objectively deranged or craven or ridiculous or wrong you may be.

Because it's not the news. 

It's just a show where every player knows his or her part.

For example, remember that one time just a few months ago when Chuck Todd put on his Big Boy Serious Face and emoted real hard that he had found within himself something that resembled a "principle" which he would not violate?
Chuck Todd: "We're Not Going To Give Time To Climate Deniers"
Surprise!  He never meant a word of it:
Chuck Todd pledged: “No air time for climate deniers.” Denier Liz Cheney to be on MTP Sunday.
They're just lines from a script, to be taken no more seriously than teevee doctors in the 1950s telling you which brand of cigarette they prefer:

  


No, I'm Not Going To Politicon



1 comment:

Robt said...

So it was all fake news/ history that the Newt was ousted from Speaker by his own GOP majority for corruption and immorality. That give the network opinion circuit the notion that what all Americans are clamoring for is to hear what the Newt's intellectual authority on everything
is.
Oddly, they did not hold up Denny Hastert this way.

Although I am sure, even on the MSNBC day time line up. Example as Mrs. GReenspan would have an aching inquisitive elbow to bring on the Hastert to get the Hastert's lowdown as a respectable former congressman's expert opinion on how the economy is so great.
How the GOP doesn't believe in interfering in the Free markets. How his GOP does not believe in giving other peoples money conservative ideological farmers who wanted their GOP to make China pay more for their products., losing those markets and now bailing them out.
You know, that picking winners and losers conservative 15th sin.

When these network "liberals" of the liberal media question Democratic candidates of how they are going to pay for things. Which they never ask of any GOP.

The response by all dem candidates on how to pay for Medicare for all???

Respond with Mexico will pay for it.

The biggest pass to GOP lately is, Americans with the names like Captain Smith Private Anderson or Citizen Caine are not of Mexican decent, but are having to pay for Mexico for that wall.