Sunday Morning Comin’ Down

Returns.

In response to the hundreds dozens seven imaginary email I got from my Mom about WTF ever happened to Sunday Mornin’ Coming Down, well I still watch the Mouse Circus and still jot down my little notes.

And in murky ugly of the due diligence needed to krill-filtering that data I noticed something.

Maybe you noticed it too.

Here’s a hint: “What do Iraq, Iran, Georgia, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Israel, Al Qaeda, George W. Bush and the word "torture" all have in common?”

For the 5th or 6th week in a row - ever since the state funeral for Punkin’ Haid Russert -- the Mediopolis has banished every one of those topics -- along with all of human history and the rest of the planet (except various photogenic parts of Beijing) -- into the cornfield.

Because, as was summed up on "This Week…" a few weeks ago by Matthew Dowd (as always, all quotes are loosely translated by me from Kremlinspeak into the tongues of men):

“This election will not be about issues. It will be about how we feel about stuff.”

This meme has been repeated in every corner of the Mediopolis, and for the simplest of reasons:

A) Teevee exists to sell us crap.

B) The Dancing Mice on the Mouse Circus are there to do whatever it takes to hang onto our eyeballs long enough for their overlords to smoothtalk us about tiny pills and big investment portfolios that’ll get our dicks iron-hard, and gaudy cars and undetectable hair dye that’ll get us women so we’ll have something to do with all those iron-hard dicks.

C) Discussions about facts, policy and history and the thing that used to be called “news” that occurs when those things aggressively intersect are boring and make the eyeballs go away.

And if regular old news is boring (and therefore bad for advertisers), political conventions are, by their very nature, super-ooper-duper boring. As the immortal Gilliard (about whom more later) once said, party conventions are basically trade shows with better exhibits. Nothing even remotely approximating “news” happens at them – certainly nothing so vital that requires 400,000 journalists and bloggers hot on the scene for weeks with “…everyone using everyone else's coattails” to wipe their noses (quote from Ray Bradbury, “Fahrenheit 451”).

So...

1. Facts and stuff are hard.
2. Pundits are lazy.
3. The audience is dull.
4. And the advertisers want to push product.

And so, viola, the “news” is now finally jettisoned entirely and replaced by what pundits love best; feeling, hunches, opinion polls on likability, and “I hear he likes her, but he said that she said she like-likes him, but then my cousin – who knows a guy who’s in college – said she really, really likes this other guy” high school cafeteria rumor mongering.

Of course anyone who can had a teacher who made the London Fire come alive for them, or can even just remember all the words to “Conjunction Junction” after more than a quarter of a century knows that education isn’t boring at all when it’s done with joy and passion and flair.

But filling the public airwaves with Gossip Girl slag is so much easier, so there we are.

Sigh.

Onward.

Now as you may or may not know, before the national disgrace begins on Sunday, the local affiliates here run a local versions of Cirque de Rodent.

The LocalFaux is still chartered to run the talking points handed down from Massa’s House, but in Ultraviolet Chicago, it has to temper the cask-strength Red State ideology with the reality that they are deep inside enemy territory. We’re a city that’ll gladly have a beer with former Illinois State Treasurer/former Chair of the Republican Party, Judy Barr Topinka, or a glass of milk with former Republican governor Jim Edgar, and talk politics, but we are not tribe that takes a lot of shit off of NeoCon Pez Dispensers.

So sometimes LocalFaux is worth a mention, like today, when they gathered together and interviewed three local women of political prominence: the altogether awesome Representative from the Illinois’ 9th District (The Fightin’ Ninth! [h/t S. Colbert]), Jan Schakowsky (D), former Democratic Party gubernatorial candidate Dawn Clark Netsch and very tall State Rep Christine Radogno (R).

To her everlasting credit, Representative Schakowsky challenged everything, as did Netsch, more-or-less and in an altogether more genteel way.

The same-as-it-ever-was Fox Frame for l’affair Palin would be familiar, even to those who have only ever seen Fox walking past Circuit City display windows:

"Is it fair that people are challenging Palin's fitness to serve based on her gender and being a Mommy?"

Schakowsky: Who exactly is saying that?

Fox: Y'know...people.

Schakowsky: Who? Specifically? Give me a fucking name, because I haven't heard anyone, anywhere say anything like that.

Fox: Er…ah…somethingsomething “bloggers”. You're not playing the game right!

Schakowsky: Oh and by the way, this "Palin the Maverick" thing is bullshit. Palin supported the “Bridge to Nowhere” until it started to stink up the nation press. Then she kicked it as it was already hitting the ground, but kept the money. Also, as mayor of North Mayberry, she actually hired a lobbyist. Got her dinky town some of that sweet, sweet federal handouts that she suddenly abhors so much. Thanks to Mayor McGovernment Cheese, the taxpayers of the Lower 48 States were forced to pay $1,000 in federal handouts for every man woman and child in Wasilla, Alaska.

/brief driftglass aside --

Alaskans under The Queen of All Welfare Governor Palin were the second greatest recipients of federal handouts per capita in the United States. On top of which, Alaskans pay no taxes and receive yet another yearly welfare check from their government.

You know, if my job was to fly around Illinois tossing bales of other people’s money out to the crowds, and then beg the federal government for more, I could probably be the most popular governor in America too.

Which begs the real question: Do you think the fact that Sarah Palin presided over one of America’s most welfare-dependent cities and states has anything to do with all of the unwed teen mothers running around up in The Last Frontier?

/end brief driftglass aside.

That’s one reason for you to know Schakowsky’s name. The other is, those in the know say she’s in the running to take over the Obama’s Senate seat should he win in November.

Random fragments from ABC's "This Week"…

George Will: The reaction McCain got from Rush Limbaugh was “Guns, God and Babies, Hot Damn!” which was also the reaction from his Party.

George Stephanopoulis: There are two competing gut reactions…

Martha Radditz: One thing that helps McCain is that Bush is out of the news.

David Fucking Brooks: McCain would have to get help from Dems and Independents anyway, ‘cause there aren’t enough Republicans to staff a Republican administration. Eight years of Bush have exhausted them.

Who knew looting the treasury and destroying the country could be so fatiguing?


According to John McSame on "Face the Nation"...

Sarah Palin excites America. She’s a lifetime member of the NRA. She was a point guard! And mayor’s are important. And stuff.

Also Fannie Mae and Freddy Mac being taken over by the Evil Liberal Gummit is a classic example of why we need change in Washington D.C. What with all the cronyism and corruption. And lobbyists. And special interests. And people at the top doing a horrible job and getting paid hundreds of millions of jobs.

Gonna have more regulation! Yesiree! The system is a failure because the Congress was so beholden special interests that wrote all those loopholes.

driftglass: You mean special interests loopholes writers like your close personal friend and economic advisor, Phil Gramm?

McSame: My advisors, friends, major funders and leaders of my Party may all be poster children for exactly the same kind of endemic evil that I am pretending to denounce…but that doesn’t count because…wait for it….waaaaait for it…now!

Not Bob Schieffer: What is "The Hanoi Hilton?"

McSame: Bingo!

Yay! What do I win?

Four more years of George Bush By Proxy.


Schieffer: What about the denigrating, derisive way your Party talks about “community organizing”, especially when you yourself called people to cut that shit out?

McSame: I think it was a reaction to the Obama campaign denigrating her job as a “small town mayor”.

Schieffer: There were 36 African-American delegates out of 2,600 at your convention. How can your Party survive like that?

McSame: We can’t . We have to reach out to African-Americans and Hispanics.

driftglass: And of course do that in a way so the army of bigots and reactionary idiots on which your Party depends don’t notice. Won’t that be a problem?

McSame: Not really. Those people are idiots.

driftglass: Touché, sir.


On NBC's "Meet the Press"...

Biden was Biden.

I just flicked past it every so often, because I can’t imagine he could really do anything implosive.

He did fine, but when did he acquire the horizontal nictitating membranes that hang uneasily over his eyes like little dime-store awnings?



The only real “news” came oozing out of "Fox News Sunday" and was rather a sight to behold.

The “bash the Liberal” part was…yawn.

Wallace: How are you gonna run against Sarah Palin?

David Axelrod: Were not running against Sarah Palin.

Wallace: Aren’t you eskeered of Sarah Palin?

Axelrod : No. We’re running against John McSame.

Wallace: But isn’t Hillary Clinton going to campaign for you? And by the axiom of association by menstruation doesn’t that mean you are misogynists who are super scared of Sarah Palin and hate her awesome vagina awesomeness?

And so forth.

But Little Ricky Davis – the stoat-shaped gentleman who is running the McSame campaign – was quite remarkable.

Wallace: Isn’t McSame’s campaign being run by orcs and lobbyists and evil trolls?

Davis: Go ahead and run again our staff. That was all six weeks ago a million years ago.

Wallace: What about all the sweet, sweet pork that Palin took when she was a Mayor? The lobbyist she hired? The Bridge to Nowhere bullshit. The half a billion in pork she went after when she was Governor.


Little Ricky just talks right over him. When Axelrod even tried to talk past Wallace to make his point, Wallace just upped the volume until he won the shout-down.

With Little Ricky, for the first 30 hours, Wallace just rolled over like a good doggy and took it.

Then…

Wallace: This works better if you let me ask questions. When will she agree to an interview?

Davis: When we fucking well feel like it. Look, your own network had a lovely, celebratory ass-kissing video about what an awesome Mommy she has been. So there you go.

Wallace But…that’s not the same thing as being questioned by journalists?

Davis: It’s not like there is no information out there. I don’t think our campaign is obliged to let the Evil Liberal Media set terms.

Davis: We run our campaign, not the news media. Why would we want to “throw Sarah Palin into the cycle with piranhas” that want to go after her family and children!

Davis: She will have to opportunity to speak to the American people. She gave a great speech last week.

Wallace (Now seeming genuinely bewildered. Like a very obedient pet suddenly confused and frightened over being beaten for no apparent reason.): But…but…that’s not answer questions.

Davis: The information that the news media has hardly been putting out about her has hardly been fair and balanced. She will be made available to he news media when and if we fucking well feel like it. On the terms that we decide.

Wallace: So you will not commit to having you candidate submit to interviews?

Davis: No.

Wow.

Sarah Palin -- coming soon to a “Modern Bride” or “Guns & Ammo” near you.


Finally, in the spirit of Senator McSame’s spirited denunciation of bitter, partisan rhetoric less than three days ago, Senator McSame’s campaign manager paused before leaving the Fox studio long enough to remind America that “Obama has put himself and his personal interests ahead of his Party and the country”.

But of course, you already knew that.