Sunday Morning Comin' Down

Gregger's really earned his pay today: reducing the complex and dangerous story of labor, democracy, taxes and the social contract now playing itself out in Wisconsin into a cartoonish, corporate-friendly farce.

If Greggers had been 1/2 as hard on Governor Walker -- and bothered to get at any of the difficult, embarrassing issues at the heart of the matter -- his tone-shift from bored/accommodating (hey, Walker, what about them Liberal bloggers and that kookie prank call) to dogged/aggressive (hey, Trumka, some random goof yelled Hitler. Doesn't that discredit the entire labor movement!) would have been much less noticeable.

(I suppose given the fact that the Mouse Circus performers had to be beaten on the head with sticks just to get one them to include even one representative of Labor in a discussion of the biggest Labor story in memory...the fact that Trumka was permitted in front of a camera at all is something of a miracle)

Instead, trivia and questions about process and "the politics of it all" was used to dissipate valuable airtime into a thin mist of pointlessness, while Gregger's pointedly avoided making any mention of the Koch Brothers' role in all of this, or the tax cuts which Walker used to blow a hole in the Wisconsin and get this while party started.

Last week, the big question was how in the world Walker could possibly survive after;

A) Being exposed as a liar,
B) Being exposed as a complete tool of the Koch Brothers political machine and,
C) Being stupid enough to allow himself to be so massively and publicly exposed as such.

Or, as Mamet put it in "House of Games":

You see, in my trade, this is called - what you did - you cracked out of turn. Huh? You see? You crumbed the play.

This was never a question for me: I have rarely gone wrong betting on the bottomless inattentiveness, ignorance and reprogrammability of the Pig People (me from a few days ago:)

...given the billions the Right has spent on cultivating that Base and constantly upgrading its propaganda machine, I have no doubt whatsoever that were Scott Walker to rub shit in his hair, set it on fire and run through the state capitol -- naked and accompanied by bazouki music -- yelling "David Koch cock tastes like Norweigan Jarlsburg!", within 2-3 months (and probably much sooner) the Golem Right would have completely forgotten it ever happened, and would retain only a vague, Fox-flavored aftertaste that Scott Walker is one tough, anti-Socialism sumbitch, and the protesters were all lazy moochers, welfare cheats and outside agitators.

So why is this worth mentioning?

Because the scam doesn't work without loyal drones like Greggers carrying its water. And because between the original broadcast of "Meet the Press", the two times it is re-run on MSNBC on Sunday, and the other times it is re-re-run on Liberal Talk Radio Central, Gregory's capacity to pollute the terms of the debate by smothering the media world in his establishmentarian, Beltway drivel is not to be underestimated.

Elsewhere, President McCain and Vice President Lieberman want to give weapons to the Libyan opposition and use American fighter pilots to shoot down planes over Benghazi. Because while America's track record of improving things by sticking our huge military johnson into the middle of other people's troubles in the Middle East is has been singularly awful, no matter how often or spectacularly things blow up in our faces, it always works out well for President McCain and his Likud Party dik-dik bird.

Leaving me with naught to do but once again pick Mamet's pocket:

You say I acted atrociously.
Yes. I did.
I do it for a living.