Sunday Morning Comin' Down

"You say you tweet a revolution." Edition.

So where were we?

Oh yeah.

Quote of the day?

"The looting and whatnot" -- Tom Friedman, from "Meet the Press"

Hillary Clinton was on every channel today and sounded something like this:

For more than 30 years we have luuuurved the Egyptian people and told the gummint they have to reforms. And now, as long as the Egyptian military continues keep their trigger fingers calm, We're gonna be like three little Fonzies here. And what's Fonzie like? Come on Yolanda what's Fonzie like?

Yolanda: Cool?

Hillary: What?

Yolanda: He's cool.

Hillary: Correctamundo. And that's what we're gonna be. We're gonna be cool.

Chris Wallace on Fox mercilessly grilled John Boehner thusly --

Wallace: So, Republican Speaker John Boehner, your saying that all of Obama's so-called investments are unacceptable?

Boehner: Well, Chris, The American People...

And we're done with Roger Ailes' crackhouse network.

So we click...click...click...

Back over to "Meet The Press", where David Gregory mercilessly grilled John Boehner thusly --

Gregory: So, Republican Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, what about these cuts?

McConnell: The message The American People sent is...

Sigh.

In the last six year, I'm sure I've done over 200 of these Mouse Circus "Sunday Morning..." playlets and watch hundreds more, and I honestly am hard pressed to recall another time when the contrast between the grave, complex realities of world events and the fatuously smug dysfunction of the Villager Sock Puppet brigade was on such blinding display it was on "Meet the Press" today.


First came the Tweets.

Gregory: Hey, lets look at a bunch of tweets Chuck Todd.

Chuck Todd: That's a lot of tweets, David Gregory.

Gregory: Would you call it an assload of tweets, Chuck Todd?

Chuck Todd: Many American would, David Gregory. According to our new Gaffer/Quinnalporpoise poll, 44.5% of Americans either agree or are quite likely to agree if you bought them a couple of Stingers, while the Nabob/Abendigo numbers say 48.2%.

Gregory: Wow, Chuck Todd, that is nearly a majority.

Second came an "interview" with Tom Friedman that [as I have already written one post down]

consisted of The Mustache of Understanding standing in front of a camera at Davos -- at the single point on the face of the Earth which, at the moment, is almost literally the opposite end of the cultural, political, climactic, ethnic and economic Universe from everything that is happening in Egypt -- to yap out platitudes about globalism:

Friedman: You know, the first rule of politics...

Friedman: You know, the big danger in punditry is to confuse your hope and the reality of the politics...

Friedman: You know, the looting and whatnot...

Friedman: There are three things that could happen: Something good, something meh and something bad.

Gregory: Tom Friedman, you are wise beyond all human understanding and other than getting everything fucking thing wrong for as long as anyone can remember, you have never been surprised by anything in the Middle East. Does this surprise you?

Tom Friedman: Not a bit. Now I have to go -- we're doing naked 1995 Krug Clos Ambonnay champagne and Truffle Chutney shots off of Arianna Huffington's tits in the hotel hot tub.

Gregory: Sounds exciting.

Friedman: Winner gets to pick an industry to randomly fuck with, use our captive media courtiers to bubble up to 100 times its actual value, cash out and strip it bare at the top of the market, toss the carcass on the scrap heap of history and call it "creative destruction".

Gregory: And now, back to our panel.

Harold Ford, Junior: You have lots of people in Egypt who have education and stuff.

Gregory: Great insight, Harold Ford, Junior!

Chuck Todd: The White House is afraid of what effect this may have on Israel.

Gregory: Would you like to randomly interject some words and phrases, Republican analyst Mike Murphy?

Murphy: Turkey. Muslim Brotherhood!

Gregory: And based on that, what are the likely outcomes?

Murphy: Two things that might happen -- One good and one bad.

Harold Ford, Junior: I read on Wikipedia that the median age in Egypt is 24. Also I would like to mention that I am under 40. This is important for reasons I obviously do not understand, but which I will vaguely imply with words like "global citizen".

driftglass: Why, Harold Ford, Junior?

Harold Ford, Junior: In order to get my turn on camera while at the same time not saying anything definitive that will make me look like an idiot a week from now.

driftglass: Not to worry, Harold Ford, Junior. The Friedman Rule applies here -- no one on these shows is ever held responsible for anything they say.

Harold Ford, Junior: I agree with everyone about everything. I wall now say "Walk to the middle." "Alienating the extremes on the Left and the right." "Compromise." and "Center." very quickly, back-to-back.

Gregory: Your ham-fisted navigation of this complex topic back to safe vocabulary that we can all enjoy has given me a steely erection.

Over on "This Week..." Christiane Amanpour violated every canon of Village Punditry by actually going personally to the place where the story is breaking and interviewing people on sight and/or who have actual, deep knowledge of relevant history and events.

For example, it took Mohamed ElBaradei about ninety seconds, to seal the collective wisdom of the "Meet the Press" sock-puppets inside an oil drum and sink it into the sea:

All this talk of "The Muslim Brotherhood" is bullshit. They're a crackpot religious minority just like your own goofball Christian fundies, and that the Egyptian gummint has been using as a boogieman to justify their repression.

Way to go, Christiane.

Unfortunately, we have to take points away for letting George Will open his cake-hole to talk about Napoleon, France and how that might happen in Egypt.