Sunday Morning Comin’ Down -- Part 1 of 2

“The Tell-Tweety Heart”

In which, on this week's exciting episode of ”The Chris Matthews Show” it appears that Norah O'Donnell may have killed Chris Matthews and hidden the body under the studio floorboards.

I've seen this happen before.

At first she starts out all cocky…

O'Donnell (dramatic aside): You should have seen how wisely I proceeded -- with what caution -- with what foresight, with what dissimulation, I went to work! I was never kinder to the old man than during the whole week before I killed him.

And goes along as if nothing at all has happened...

O'Donnell (dramatic aside): I smiled, -- for what had I to fear? I bade Helene Cooper (The New York Times), Howard Fineman (Newsweek), Joe “Jokeline” Klein (Time) and Ceci Connolly (Washington Post) welcome. The shriek, I said, was my own in a dream. The old man, I mentioned, was absent in the country.

O'Donnell (aloud): Ceci, you’ve been covering the President’s one-on-one arm-bending campaign on this.

Connolly: Mad Max Baucus has been given months of running room to get drunk and tell “pull my finger” jokes in his mighty Tree Fort ‘O Six, and still hasn’t got shit done.

Until...

O'Donnell (dramatic aside): I talked more freely to get rid of the feeling: but it continued and gained definitiveness -- until, at length, I found that the noise was NOT within my ears.

Jokeline: You can never prove that something is “deficit neutral”.

O'Donnell (dramatic aside): I talked more quickly, more vehemently but the noise steadily increased.

O'Donnell (aloud): Doesn’t the President need to be bold? To project boldness? To reboldenate this Presidency? To reboot his boldtivity?

Fineman: OK…

O'Donnell (dramatic aside): I arose and argued about trifles, in a high key and with violent gesticulations; but the noise steadily increased. Why WOULD they not be gone?

O'Donnell (aloud): And aren’t people really, really afraid now? Like, soil-themselves-in-terror afraid that something awful is about to happen? Huh? Huh?

Cooper: I think the White House is hot-to-death thrilled with Joe Wilson.

Jokeline: My first reaction is “And the voice of the koo-koo is heard in the land.” But over the succeeding days it has become a real thing about jamming some “prove your citizenship” bullshit into the bill.

driftglass (dramatic aside): Like “The Simpson’s” Krusty the Clown, Jokeline has two, distinct public personas.

The loud, obnoxious, spotlight-obsessed

money-whore clown...

And, once in a great while, a blunt, bitter observationalist

who makes a little coin telling a little truth until something better comes along.

Today, the second guy showed up.

O'Donnell (dramatic aside): It grew louder -- louder -- louder! And still these goof chatted pleasantly about fucking health care this and that , and smiled.

Jokeline: Now that is a ridiculous provision. Because there are all these geezers who show up at the hospital all the time. What, are you gonna make them hunt up a birth certificate that was lost in the Chicago Fire?

O'Donnell (dramatic aside): Was it possible they heard not?

O'Donnell (aloud): Could that make it into the bill?

Connolly: The White House wants to sign a bill. Any bill. And if they decide they needs to load it up with anti-abortion language, or anti-immigrant language, or anti-flag-burning language, or anti-killer-robot language, or anti-space-alien language because some inbred, South Carolina toe-picker gets on some Fox America Under Threat Screaming-Siren Breaking News Special carrying a sign that says “Commie Kenyan Obama Wunts to Take Mah Guns and Give Mah Helth Care to Aleen Space Zombies! From Space!” then, by God, you can bet there'll be some strong, anti-alien-space-zombie language inserted the next day.

O'Donnell (dramatic aside): Was it possible they heard not? Almighty God! -- no, no? They heard! -- they suspected! -- they KNEW! -- they were making a mockery of my horror!

O'Donnell (aloud): Next up, "Is the anti-Obama venom unavoidable?”

O'Donnell (dramatic aside): "Villains!" I shrieked, "dissemble no more! I admit the deed! -- tear up the planks! -- here, here! -- it is the bleating of his hideous “Hah”!"

Epilogue:

While six of the "journalists" who make up the "Matthew's Meter" say, yes, the anti-Obama hatred was unavoidable, six say Obama partly brought it on himself.

Fineman: He didn’t talk to Main Street. He needs to spend every minute of every day constantly reassure crazy people on the Right that he doesn’t want to abort Sarah Palin;s baby and shoot grandma in the head or turn Murrica into a Franco-Islamic Communist Caliphate. This is perhaps unfair, but after all, he is Black.


Jokeline: I was at some town meetings this summer, most recently in Arkansas. And this is an awful lot about race. And not just because of Obama’s name or skin color. If you’re working class white, you’re seeing Latinos and Asians.

driftglass: And bears. Oh my.

But why is this coming up now during a health care debate?

Jokeline: Because they’re being egged on by demagogues in the Republican Party. By Boss Rush Limbaugh. And I call him The Boss, because there is not a single, Republican elected official who is willing to call him out on his lies.

Cooper: Because there are a lot of White people – particularly in the South – who have just lost their shit over a Black man being President.

Fineman: Let me repeat it in case I was not condescending enough the first time – this White House needs to constantly kiss wingnut ass every way they can think of. Maybe it’s unfair, but after all, he is Black. Also he was forced to behave like a filthy, filthy Liberal to save the economy from crashing and burning, and the doublewide trailer crowd who his policies probably saved from living in refrigerator boxes and begging for nickels on freeway overpasses will never forgive him for it.

Connolly: We’ve always had a cranky element who have been unhappy about stuff. But now they have the internet!

Jokeline: But you used to have grownup leaders of political parties who would shout the crazies down. That’s not happening anymore.

And of course, Jokeline is right about the relationship between Boss Limbaugh and GOP Party Leaders.

But Malcolm X says it so much more clearly.


End Part 1 of 2