Still A Little Loopy From The Meds

So I will assume that some of what I saw on MSNBC this morning was a side-effect of a bad drug interaction.  

Or perhaps it was a fragment of some fleck of extra-legal fun dislodging itself from the fatty tissue where had been hiding since the 80s and finally crossed the blood-brain barrier.

Or maybe an undigested bit of beef, a blot of mustard, a crumb of cheese, a fragment of underdone potato.

Because what I saw was Andrea Mitchell, Walter Isaacson and Jeffrey Goldberg -- apparently misunderstanding that they were at "Aspen Ideas Festival" and not the "AIPAC Ideas festival -- fawning all over each other while simultaneously trying to outflank each other by cutting each other off with passionate divination of what "[Ehud] Barack]" and "the Israeli government" really thinks/feels/knows/senses/suspects/aspires to/fears/wishes/hopes (as if the point hadn't been underscored deeply enough, Mrs. Alan Greenspan completes the circle of life by mentioned at one point that such-and-so was [Ehud] Barack's "direct answer" to "a question asked by Thomas Friedman.")

If they had been sporting Hunter Thompson lizard heads and copulating frantically in a pool of their own sick, I would have only been marginally more horrifically entertained and, may I add, that it is a triumph of the art of microminiaturization that you could barely see the tiny Likud Party ear-buds each of them apparently had jammed into their listening holes.

This was followed by Mike Allen [Politico] explaining that the "Aspen Ideas Festival" is really just Wally World for the same Beltway Idiots who screw up your news every other day of the year -- that every year they decamp from their rat-holes along the Potomac to go to Aspen to discuss, among other things, why the press is so fucked up. In fact, the subject of Mr. Allen's panel or trust-fall or sweat lodge was, loosely, "Why does the press get so much stuff so wrong?"

Apparently no one in the elite Beltway press corps has an answer to that question, but figuring it out involves giving up for one week the fast-paced, 24/7 navel-gazing they are forced to pass off as news the rest of the year,  stepping back, reassessing, and take a few, serious, deep-dives into the pool of their collective narcissism.  This searching moral inventory is taken between gourmet meals, hot oils massages and dividing up into "Liberal" and "Conservative" flag-teams so that David Brooks can ask them the few perfunctory "questions" he needs "answered" to pad out his latest "Both sides doin' it!" 800-word embarrassment.

(Wanna bet that that neither Marie Burns' wonderful vivisection of the Sulzberger family's peculiar hiring practices at the New York Times

Where the Buck Stops
...
Sulzberger hired Andrew Rosenthal, the paper’s current editorial page editor, to replace Collins, who went on book leave before returning as a columnist. Sulzberger’s glowing description of Rosenthal did not include mention of the fact that Andy’s father, A. M. Rosenthal, had worked for the Times for 56 years, including long stints as executive editor and op-ed writer. As a Gawker writer remarked contemporaneously, “We’d make some joke about how these kind of dynastic successions at the Times are almost never a good idea, but let’s be honest, it’s the editorial page, who gives a shit? Also, we’re pretty sure that David Brooks’ kids are writing his columns right now, so there’s plenty of precedent.”
...
In 2008, Sulzberger and Rosenthal made the disastrous decision, “after a long and thoughtful search,” to hire conservative Bill Kristol to write a weekly column for the Times. The relationship didn’t last any longer than Kristol’s one-year contract. Other less-than-stellar new hires to the op-ed page: Frank Bruni and Joe Nocera, who come respectively from the foods and business pages of the paper.
...

So there’s all that ...

nor Paul Krugman's latest hamming of the "Centrist dodge"

... If this sounds familiar, if it reminds you of the problem of partisanship in U.S. politics, it should. There are close parallels, as well there might be, since the trouble in macro is in effect a symptom of this wider political war. And there’s another parallel: many of those decrying the conflict within macro without facing up to the real sources of that conflict are playing the same unhelpful role being played by fanatical centrists within the punditocracy. (And no, “fanatical centrist” is not an oxymoron).

By now, the centrist dodge ought to be familiar. A Very Serious, chin-stroking pundit argues that what we really need is a political leader willing to concede that while the economy needs short-run stimulus, we also need to address long-term deficits, and that addressing those long-term deficits will require both spending cuts and revenue increases. And then the pundit asserts that both parties are to blame for the absence of such leaders. What he absolutely won’t do is endanger his centrist credentials by admitting that the position he’s just outlined is exactly, exact"ly, the position of Barack Obama.

made it onto Mr. Allen's the agenda?)

Mr. Allen concluded his presence on my teevee by excitedly explain -- completely without irony -- that later on he plans to go down to Woody Creek Tavern and "sit where Hunter Thompson once sat".

And I just sat there for a moment, feeling the dull aches of recent surgery playing a little symphony across my body and wondering just how big a trebuchet I would need to fling a Coupe de Ville packed with dog shit and napalm all the way to Aspen, Colorado.