"Wonklash": The headache caused by whipping back and forth between the tiny, feisty Island of the Sane where smart people engage passionately on subjects as diverse as Basel II, the GOP plan to demolish social security and Loving v. Virginia....
...and the rest of the Sunday Morning dreckbag parade: a place where "serious" means George Will being rolled out of cold storage once a week to wax nostalgic about Calvin Coolidge and clowns like John McCain making their 11,765,215th "Exclusive!" appearance to say all the awful, stale, stupid things that are the wallpaper for every Villager discussion of politics and culture.
Compared with the efforts of Melissa Harris-Perry and Chris Hayes, the rest of the Mouse Circus feels like it should either be run in sepia tones, interspersed with MovieTone News updates about Marshall Tito...or from a towering pulpit luridly lit by torches and flanked by brownshirts.
I spent a chunk of this Sunday (and Saturday) watching grownups talking about serious things. During the commercials, I flicked over to "Meet the Press" long enough to watch things like the horrible David Gregory giving GOP tool Ed Gillespie another "Meet the Press" reacharound.
Wonklash.
3 comments:
In a rare moment, I actually caught some of the Mouse Circus this morning, specifically Santorum on Face the Nation.
I was stunned -stunned! - to see Bob Scheiffer actually ask follow up questions and not let Rick's idiot non-answers slide. Smarmy Rick started getting peturbed ("It wasn't a stillborn, it was alive for two hours" -creepy), and Bob sorta wouldn't let him go on contraception and wanting to eliminate public schooling. Sadly, Santorum kept dodging and tap-dancing and Scheiffer let things slide after the 2nd or 3rd try.
It was a cruel reminder - a tease, if you will - as to how easily the Conservative argument could be burst asunder if journalists would do what they were supposed to. My hopes raised, I flipped over to This Week. Literally 60-90 seconds of George Will was all I could stand. I had to turn off the TV and leave the house.
And Monday, Feb 20th comin' down.
Seven years on.
Res Ipsa...
...No More.
.
And in a related pundit item--Robert Samuelson types a whole column about the myths of campaign finance laws without once mentioning Citizens United. Unbelievable.
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