Sunday Morning Comin’ Down: Part Two

In which David Gregory continues his relentless drive to insure that “Meet the Press” is the single biggest Beltway Insider Dutch Oven in the history of teevee.

He started with this Exclusive! Interview! with President Mitch McConnell.

Greggers: Do you sense from the American People that you have a mandate to be awesome?

President McConnell: Yes. Yes I do.

Greggers: Some reviled and discredited Liberal say that those Bush tax cuts scared the Job Growth Fairy away, so how come keeping them will being the Job Growth Fairy back?

Imperial Senate Chancellor Mitch McConnell: Imagine how much worse thing would be if the rich hadn't been allowed to loot the economy for the last 10 years!

Greggers: Whoa! You just blew my mind!

Shah Mitch Reza Shah McConnell: The argument is over, Fluffy. You can sit here giving me a soothing handjobs until your arm falls off, but we won the last election, which means the entire gummint is now ours forever. And ain't no Republicans gonna give the Kenyan Usurper a fucking thing.

Greggers: You just said a lot of words.

McConnell the First, by the Grace of God, of the United States of America and Confederate States of Jesusland and of His other Realms and Territories King, Head of the Commonwealth and Defender of the Faith: I want and end to all this spending, debt and Washington takeovers and bring order to the Galaxy! Which means that Obama needs to figure out to work with Republicans in the sense that he needs to give me everything I want while I shit all over his agenda and call him a Commie.

Greggers: Do you think he can give up his dirty hippie ways and be a born again "Moderate"?

Nobelissimos Mitch Al' McConnell, Basileus to All Mankind, Sebastokratōr of the Seven Worlds, Master of the Dimensional Harmonies (though Ailes be the Wiser): Ah hope so.

Later John Kerry, described our present condition as our “Sputnik Moment” prompting millions of Americans to flood the NBC switchboard to ask

A) What a “Sputnik” was, and
B) Wasn’t “Sputnik” kind of a funny-sounding word, and
C) Was “Sputnik” the name of the place where Barack Obama was really born, and,
D) Wasn’t “Sputnik” the spy code-name John Kerry used when he betrayed America and caused us to lose in Vietnam?

For some reason, this slew of phone calls also destroyed ComCast’s Midwest DNS

Then Greggers really outdid himself by convening his own Villager Big Three Conference.

There was Greggers, of course,


who, rather than following usual Mouse Circus protocol by reading David Fucking Brooks’ latest New York Times column verbatim, instead invited Brooks on

to read it verbatim for himself.

Brooks: Centrist crap.

Greggers: Really?

Brooks: Yes. And despite 30 years of overwhelming evident to contrary, I can assure you that, in private conversations to which I and only I have access, certain unnamed Republicans are Very Serious and Reasonable.

After which, rather than reading Tom Friedman’s latest New York Times column verbatim, Greggers invited The Moustache of Understanding on

to read it himself.

Friedman: I love carpet.

Greggers: Really?

Friedman: I love desk.

Lower-order insider Matt Bai apparently couldn't make it, so Greggers read his column verbatim for him.

Imaginary Matt Bai: Matt Bai stuff!

Greggers: Really?

Imaginary Matt Bai: Yes. I have a column. In a newspaper. You know me from that time you had too many Jaeger Bombs and tried to get Andrea Mitchell to make out with Peggy Noonan. I needed my Beltway street cred re-burnished without having to, y’know, show up and deal with the parking hassle and the camera-shattering sexual tension between me and Tom Friedman.

Friedman: China!

Republican strategist Mike Murphy: Now that the Kenyan Usurper has been defeated forever and his ideology has been completely discredited, he needs to get out in front. Pivot. A rightward move.

Greggers: It is so kooky that Republicans won't specify what cuts they'll make. I don't understand it.

Friedman: I love lamp.

Greggers: Tom, do you really love the lamp, or are you just saying that because you're looking at the lamp?

Friedman: I love lamp!

Greggers: Katty Kay, we're hoping that, because you're attractive and have a British accent, the rubes who watch this puppet show and think they’re getting some kind of political wisdom will mistake you for a "Liberal" and not notice that everyone on this panel is either a Republican tool or a Centrist hack.

Katy Kay: ‘appy to ‘elp, guv!

Murphy: Obama's gotta move. He has got to give up the Liberal stuff. He let them drive the Party for the last two years, which is why he's so fucked.

Brooks: Have I mentioned that despite every outward appearance to the contrary, my secret insider telegraph system assures me that the Very Serious Washington Elites have everything under control?

Friedman: America!

Greggers: America indeed! Hey, I saw a funny cartoon. Why don't you all talk about it while I give Mike Murphy a soothing footjob under the table?




By contrast, Christiane Amanpour packed “This Week” with a diverse range of humans to talk about the actual issues of foreign policy and DADT.

I confess I did not see it all, and a couple of the guests were clearly sops thrown to fringe kook demographics (Exhibit A: Bob Maginnis, who was billed as the a “national security analyst” with the ultra-right wing fundamentalist “Family Research Council”, which has as much right to national teevee representation as a Whig Party think tank or the Ministry of Cultural of the sovereign state of Freedonia) but she at least appears to be trying something new, based loosely on putting “issues” together with “experts”.

I also get a strong vibe that, while George Will’s continued, precious and inexplicable presence on the show hints strongly at the existence of some kind of kind of Faustian blood oath extracted years ago from some weak-willed Disney corporation executive, Ms. Amanpour appears to be engaged in a clever, long-range flanking maneuver to get around this Last Defender of Hooverism.

You see, by focusing on actual, contemporary issues and forcing Will into the company of non-insider opinionators and experts of all sizes, shapes, ages, genders, nationalities and colors – especially those with lots of Scary Consonants in their names (this week Will had to dwell among Zbigniew Brzezinski, former U.S. Ambassador to Afghanistan Zalmay Khalilzad and Sakena Yacoobi, executive director of the Afghan Institute of Learning) – more and more, Will’s fussy little homilies to Calvin Coolidge make him look like a human non sequitur.

Turing him into what I believe is referred to in Japanese (loosely) as “He who sits at/look out the window”: an obsolete worker who, for whatever reason, cannot be fired, but can be forced into a humiliating irrelevance until he retires.

Which, true or not, is a comforting thought.

So, for those of you keeping score at home...

“This Week” with Christiane Amanpour: A work in faltering progress to at least try to put something together every Sunday that doesn't make one want to shame-vomit.


"Meet the Press" with David Gregory: Still marginally better than "Bitch Hunter",

but falling fast.