Sunday Morning Comin' Down: "The Hour that Stretches" Edition
The Egyptian Uprising has not caused the Right to lose its mind: The Right lost its mind long ago.
Instead the Egyptian Uprising has afforded anyone who still cares with a unique lens through which to observe the deep flaws in the Right's dependence on mashing every event into its ideological template, and the inherent limits of an ideology that depends entirely on its capacity to feed its millions of adherents a hot serving of pre-cooked "Truth" every single day.
Obviously, in the long run, this maddening shortage of pre-digested opinion will make no difference whatsoever to anyone on the Right. Sooner or later, all unhappy or contradictory Conservative realities eventually find their way down the memory hole, where inconvenient talking points and lies that are past their sell-by date are swapped out with the ease and speed of a pit crew changing a tire.
On the Right, all any particular lie or paranoid conspiracy theory amounts to is a tool to be used until it is used up; another means to an end. And it is the constant avalanche of those lies -- this steady stream of ever more incredulity-inducing bullshit -- which is sandblasting away the foundations of our country by destroying our capacity to have an intelligent conversation...about anything.
But until history is written, it can't be re-written, which is what has been driving Conservatives a special kind of mad for the last two weeks.
One story -- Egypt -- has dominated the news. And given Egypt's location and history, it is a story which absolutely demands to be carved up and made to fit into the Great Wingnut Commie New Black Panther Caliphate Birther theory of world history. But how can the Brain Caste of the right speak in confident, declarative sentences about how the Kenyan Usurper has sold us out this time without knowing how the story ends? How can they write the last 30 lines of code to be uploaded into tiny brains of the Great Wad without knowing which specific outcome that code is required to produce?
A week or a month or a year from now -- once history has unfolded to something like a definite conclusion -- the collective message machine of Conservative think tanks and Frank Luntzes will have wordsmithed and poll-tested just the right combination of syllables to poop into the minds of the faithless, wingnut hordes to "prove" some imbecile point or another. After which they will queue up at every message-debarkation point and obediently regurgitate them endlessly (and with that absolutely pitch-perfect fact-averse sanctimony that has become the standard-issue moral Kevlar among American Hate Radio addicts) into every bar, workplace, blog, church chat and talk radio call bank.
But that's all in the future; right now, the Hour of the Egyptian Uprising just keeps stretching along, refusing to leave the headlines and disappear into history and temporarily robbing the Right of every familiar landmark.
Temporarily.
On a more permanent basis, I will reiterate for the umpteenth time the sad and simple truth that we cannot continue to exist as a nation, half-Fox and half-free. Subtract the Right from our American equation and our national civic IQ doubles, and we make a quantum leap in the direction of that more perfect union; continue to let them run wild like a blood disease through our body politic and we will remain a twitchy, heavily-armed, schizophrenic behemoth bleeding from our own self-inflicted wounds as we lumber our way towards third world status.
The antibodies that were supposed to help keep us from sinking into blithering serfdom -- the media -- was on full display today dressed in its Mouse Circus finery.
There were some promising flickers to institutional health over on "This Week..." as it became ever clearer that the decision to try to turn George Stephanopoulos' old "Meet the Press"-knockoff into a mass-appeal Sunday show with an international portfolio is paying dividends. In the face of the relentless, dead weight of Beltway Villagerism, without the Egyptian Uprising, I do not believe that the Christiane Amanpour Experiment would be able to stake out a media space as starkly different and demonstrably superior to her competitors as she has. But Egypt is the crisis she was born to cover, and she now has the resources at her disposal to cover it (from the Baltimore Sun):
Amanpour leads inspired ABC roundtable on Egypt
In 25 years of writing about public affairs and news TV, I have seen very few Sunday-morning, on-the-news, roundtable talks that could compare with the one Christiane Amanpour led Sunday on "This Week" from Cairo.
The energy, insights and diverse points of view brought to focus on the tumultuous events in Egypt should be a model for public-affairs producers everywhere. Amanpour herself was so animated and amped by the story that she seemed to be biting her lip at times so as not to step on the words of her guests.
I've been on a few of these Sunday morning TV panels myself in recent years. (Politico for some strange reason actually counted some of them for one show here.) And I have to say this is as good as it gets in terms of bringing multiple points of views and informed analysis to your viewers.
...
Meanwhile, at a conspicuously shallower, grottier end of the media gene pool, David Gregory continued to ply his embarrassingly ham-fisted, Establishmentarian trade on "Meet the Press" -- Live! -- from the Ronald Reagan Memorial Airplane Hangar in Simi Valley.
David Gregory: Mohamed ElBaradei ElBaradei, how's it hangin' bro-ham?
ElBaradei: The US, from the beginning, has been behind the curve.
David Gregory: Harsh!
David Gregory: Egyptian Ambassador-dude, is Mubarack leaving? Is he leaving now? Huh? Now? Huh? You know, President Obama said he had to get goin' now. So is he going now?
Are we there yet? Are we there yet? Are we there yet? Are we there yet?
Egyptian Ambassador: Bland, noncommittal answer.
David Gregory: Hey, what about them goon squads? Pretty stupid of you guys to pull that stunt, huh?
Egyptian Ambassador: Bland, noncommittal answer.
David Gregory: Do you really expect people to believe what you just said? Do ya? Do ya? Do ya?
Egyptian Ambassador: Bland, noncommittal "yes".
(Gregory looks at him notes)
David Gregory: President Fozzie Bear says his replacement would be worse. What about that, huh!
Egyptian Ambassador: Bland, noncommittal answer.
David Gregory: Thank you, Egyptian Ambassador. And now John Kerry. John Kerry, what's with this kookie situation with our ambassador?
John Kerry: The situation with the ambassador is crystal clear. You know, several days ago I wrote an op-ed about it.
David Gregory: John Kerry, what's with this nutty situation in Egypt?
John Kerry: The situation with Egypt is crystal clear. You know, several month ago ago I gave a speech about it.
David Gregory: Now lets watch some "Daily Show" clips.
John Kerry: Wow, that picture is crystal clear. Several years ago I gave a speech about it.
David Gregory: And dude, what's up with your face? It looks looks like a Silly putty baby sat its bare ass on a cartoon of John Kerry?
John Kerry: The situation with my face is crystal clear. Several years ago I angered a gypsy who cursed me.
David Gregory: And now, Ray-gun! Ray-gun! Ray-gun!
David Gregory: Peggy Noonan, what about Reagan's awesomeness?
Peggy Noonan: Mmmm. Reagan. Mmmmm.
David Gregory: Peggy Noonan, are you pleasuring yourself under this fine, wooden table that we have respectfully covered with a tarp?
Peggy Noonan: Fuck me, fuck me, fuck me Supply side Santa!
David Gregory: Peggers, are you rubbing one out as you sit in the majestic shadow of Air force One?
Peggy Noonan: T...t...tear d...d...down this waaaaaa...
David Gregory: Peggers?
Willie Brown: You know, some people are taking liberties with Reagan's legacy and...
Peggy Noonan (eyes afire with the rage of Revisionus Interruptus): Don't anybody say bad things about Ronald Ronald! Reagan was born sinless and perfect in every way, sent by God from Conservative Heaven to destroy the Commies!
Mrs. Alan Greenspan: No one was insulting Reagan, honey. We were trying to bag on Sarah Palin for stealing Reagan's Holy Fire without actually mentioning her name.
Peggy Noonan (sliding back into a nice, warm, coma): Well then...
David Gregory: Up next in our Web Extra, Peggy Noonan will be taking us all on a tour of the Reagan Library Gift Shop and Adult Erotic Boutique.
Peggy Noonan: Mmmm. Piece. Curve. Laffer. Shield. Mmmm.
David Gregory: Peggers?
Peggy Noonan: Touch the..naked face of...meeeeee...
9 comments:
Damn man I laughed so hard that... Well let me put it this way, what's good at getting urine out of an office chair?
Elastic time, indeed. OK, fine, I had to look up Djam Karet on the tubes (rhymes with Harry Carrey! - bonus points).
As I type this Fox NFL announces that they will have football "legends" reading parts of the Declaration of Independence. Christ, I feel I'm in an alternate universe. Thankfully, I have images of Peggy Noonan rubbing one out while moaning right-wing platitudes to ground me back to reality.
One of your finest, dg.
I don't know why I thought to check and see if something like this exists...
~
Shouldn't we EXPECT the radical reich to PRE-write history, later using that brief pit-stop to re-write it, counter, if needed, to whatever actual history evolves?
John Puma
Well, Mr. Puma, in this case I think the guys behind the curtain actually realize that Egypt could go in so many remarkably different directions that they've decided to go into a holding pattern. What they pre-write could be so amazingly, obviously wrong that even they couldn't paper it over with happy crappy BS before the Reaganbot's heads start vibrating and smoking.
Drifty, "moral Kevlar" is sublime!
The screen captcha of "poxids" works too.
Big Brother's rep is safe.
1984 stands as the model for how they would do it if only they had the talent and work ethic of the Stalins and Hitlers of a bygone era. Fortunately they don't. The line failed. Something must be keeping capable people out of the power roles.
If these people were any good at their work, they would have achieved the control over real-world events that the machers in 1984 have. You get the world divided up into 2 or 3, max, power groupings, that each police their clients. That way, there is no room for these embarrassing and revealing gaps in the story line.
If your universe is limited to Oceania, Eurasia and Eastasia, then Oceania is either at war with Eastasia or it isn't, in a simple binary relationship. Either way, the story arc is simple enough that even if the identities of who's at war with whom changes, no matter how abruptly, everyone at the Minisyry of Truth can get right to work building that new reality of Oceania having always been at war with Eastasia, wihtout missing a beat. And that's important in this business, because it's just like comedy -- it's all in the timing.
So, sure, in the cheap knock-off of 1984 that these buffoons have created in their sloth and general maladroitness, you can't rewrite history until after it's been written. But that's the point. That's the condition they have to create, the condition they have to be clear-headed enough to create consistently so that they can execute the jumps with perfectly controlled timing -- that you can rewrite history before it's been written. You have to have stopped history to do that.
That's the step that is beyond them. They are quite inventive at creating false narratives, so a lack of the will to mendacity is not the shortcoming here. And the success of even the most dazzlingly stupid and counterfactual of their concoctions proves that the problem isn't that there are any limits on what people who are mostly proeoccupied with their own lives will believe about world events.
What is lacking is that these people just don't measure up. Sure, there's an Inner Party of privilege and bennies, the club that you're not a member of. But there's no one awake up there in the clubroom guiding events. They're all asleep in their armchairs after a too good lunch, accompanied by a nice wine with each course and port with dessert.
This is brilliant.
Wonderful.
But you went to Meet the Meat when I thought you were going to nail Faux Noise.
While Christiane Amanpour was in Egypt, two clicks down channel was Faux Noise Sunday with another privilege child of nepotism [and Total Journalistic Disgrace and liar who hates his father], Chris Wallace on location at - Cowboys Stadium for the Super Bowl!! Wallace interviewed the NFL's commissioner, two former players, a Fox Sports broadcaster, and moderating a panel of football analysts.
Top THAT, Amanpour!
You can always update your post to slap around one more "journalist"!
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