Sunday Morning Comin' Down

In which my man David Gregory's intricate, "The Producers"-inspired plan

 

to weasel out of his NBC contract by deliberately tanking "Meet the Press" with the worst guests imaginable continues to unfold in all its awful splendor.

Hey, it's Peggy Noonan!

You know, I used to think that piss-drunk and lying

was no way to go through life, but lately I think I may have been completely wrong about that.

Because these days, Peggers' job has come down to tracing maudlin, rambling, wistful Reagan prose-doodles in the shallow puddle of gluey drinkslop that constitutes her professional existence.

And yet no matter how many times that  O' Debbil Reality kerboots her teeth down her throat

Peggers pops right back up again a day or two later, peddling her sodden wares on the pages of the Wall Street Journal or into the

"Meet the Press" cameras.

Like fellow grifter Newton Leroy Gingrich, she is -- for reasons that remain journalism's darkest open secret -- completely untouchable.  It literally does not matter how low she sinks or how repeatedly, embarrassingly, knee-walking wrong she is: Peggers is beyond the reach of mere cause and effect, mere merit and accountability.

Ironically, in a brief, fizzy moment of unintentional comedy, Peggers herself explains explicitly what will be required to scrape hacks like Peggers off our national windscreen:

NOONAN: And the only way it can stop is if, frankly, a price is paid, if people come forward and they have to tell who did it, why they did it, when it started.

And since the only master David Gregory serves is money, it will come as no surprise that nothing whatsoever will change until the day comes when it costs Greggers a whole lot more to keep putting bunco artists like Peggers on the air than not. 

La Noonan was joined on "Meet the Press" by  Mitch McConnell (tossing around wild, unsupported slanders), Donald Fucking Rumsfeld (offering career advice for the young war criminal who is just just starting out)
 
and the creaking, animatronic ruin of the Only Man Who Ever Shat Himself In Terror of Gene Sperling.

Meanwhile, down the dial we find further evidence that those who spent that long weekend getting freaky Standing with Senator Aquabuddha might want to head on down to the Free Clinic and get themselves checked out:

Sen. Rand Paul continued with his charges from earlier this week that former Sec. of State Hillary Clinton had "her fingerprints all over these talking points" on the Benghazi attack and claims that she never "really accepted culpability" because she failed to resign shortly after the tragedy. When CNN's Candy Crowley asked Paul if he was worried about appearing to politicize the controversy by making his remarks in Iowa and other presidential battleground states, Paul dismissed the notion that his remarks were based on politics.

And don't think CBS was dogging it either.  Bob Schieffer was right in their too, doing his bit for king and country (via Charlie Pierce):

...over on CBS, where former Khmer Empire beat man Bob Schieffer played host to a fine, multi-course meal of delicately seasoned innuendo from the overheated kitchens of the Republican congressional caucus. Bob himself played sous-chef with a light appetizer of slightly overripened paranoia, asking White House aide Dan Pfeiffer the following question:

You know, I-- I don't want to compare this in anyway to Watergate. I do not think this is Watergate by any stretch. But you weren't born then, I would guess, but I have to tell you that is exactly the approach that the Nixon administration took. They said these are all second-rate things. We don't have time for this. We have to devote our time to the people's business. You are taking exactly the same line that they did.    

Not that Bob is suggesting that this is in any way like Watergate. (Watergate! Watergate! Nixon! Watergate!) By this logic, of course, because of the use of knives, every chef at Benihana's is a member of the Manson family.

But the real delicacies came later, served up piping hot. First, there was John Cornyn, who would like you to know what he finds implausible.

Well, I just think it's implausible. It seems to be the answer of the administration whenever they're caught doing something they shouldn't be doing is I didn't know about it and it caused me to wonder whether they believe willful ignorance is a defense when it's your job to know. But given the trend line we're seeing here, Bob, in so many different instances, it's, unfortunately, a culture,  

Is this the same John Cornyn who once blamed "unaccountable" judges for a spate of courthouse shootings? Why, yes, it is. I find his continued presence in the U.S. Senate implausible -- and so, apparently, do the people on whose behalf he is currently serving up nonsense, the damned ingrates...