Reasonable Things Andrew Sullivan Says -- UPDATE II

You know how I hate it when I agree with Mr. Sullivan.

However:

...

Again, note the refusal to use the word torture. That would be awkward because [David] Gregory is a social friend of Liz Cheney (Gregory’s wife worked with Cheney’s husband at the law firm Latham + Watkins). Who wants to call their social friend a war criminal? Notice also this classic Washington discussion by Gregory on torture. It’s entirely about process. There is no substantive position on something even as profound as war crimes. The toughest sentence: “This is a debate that’s going to continue.” Gregory is obviously pro-torture, hides behind neutrality, and beats up opponents with one-sided questions.

It just hasn’t occurred to him that the only place for Dick Cheney right now is jail.

But an actual journalist, Glenn Greenwald, not part of the Village, who has made more news this past fortnight than the entire coterie Gregory lives among and for? The gloves are off. I’m not going to attack Gregory for asking a sharp question of another journalist, however odd? I am merely going to note that he has been far tougher on this journalist for doing his job than on Dick Cheney for abdicating his.

At some point the entire career structure of Washington journalism – the kind of thing that makes David Gregory this prominent – needs to be scrapped and started over. And then you realize that it already has.

And the change is accelerating.

I have a strong suspicion that Mr. Sullivan would like to scrape the current structure of Beltway journotainment palsy-walsy talking heads so that it can be replaced with Mr. Sullivan's own cadre of journotainment palsy-walsy talking heads.  I also have a strong suspicion that under Mr. Sullivan's regime we would see a whole lot more Conservative revisionist twaddle and eugenic crap passed off as serious thought than are dreamt of in your philosophy.

If "the gloves are off", then let them come all the way off.

That being said, as any longtime reader of this blog know, I completely agree that Mr. Gregory is everything that is wrong with journalism.   

Which is why anything that results in him look fair-minded to his audience by comparison is not helpful.

UPDATE:

For the record, Mr. Sullivan has had almost nothing to say about Mr. Gregory over the past many years.  Before his shocked epiphany yesterday that Mr. Gregory is, in fact, (as one wag puts it) an establishmentarian testicle cozy, this was the most Mr. Sullivan ever had to say on subject:

Gregory For MTP

DEC 2 2008 @ 12:41PM

I might as well say, at the risk of sounding like a massive suck-up, that David is a great choice, to my mind. It’s great because he has shown a lingering resistance to the Higher Washington Blather that bloviates outward in portentous puffs of Broder and Halperin and Cokie...

For the record, as Mr. Sullivan was writing his lil' mash note to David Gregory back in  December, 2008, here is what I was writing about David Gregory back in December, 2008

Sunday Morning Comin' Down 

December 7, 2008

...
[Tom] Brokaw: …everyone is paying attention now, in a way I can’t wemembew since waaay back in Nineteen and Sixty-Eight. We are in vewy, vewy difficult times and people want to participate in their own destiny. And of course when I say “participate”, I mean sit back passively and watch as we here in the Stenographic Division of the corporate media give hot rock massages to our fellow employees over in the Politics Division. And so it makes Sunday Morning across all these networks – and especially here on “Meet the Press” – ah, ah, critically important time in American life , isn’t that right teevee’s David Gregory?

Gregory then gives one of the finest Sarah Palin, Pageant-Word-Salad responses I’ve heard in, well, at least several hours:

I think the country is in such a difficult place right now, such a challenging place, people are so engaged… And we just saw it, and what an important interview with the President-elect of the United States on Sunday Morning in a way, on this program, uniquely, can provide insights and answers and ask tough question. To explore the nature of leadership. In Washington and the country and the world. And to hold leaders accountable. As Tim always said to me, as you’ve said to me…

Brokaw: …this show is especially important beyond the Potomac, beyond the Hudson Rover in New York City. uhhhh, across the country. I have been very struck by how important this broadcast is to people as a regular appointment to them.

Gregory then sledgehammers home how indispensably vital the Mouse Circus is to “the people” by presenting difficult issues so that “they can understand it, they can digest it, and they can make it part of their own decision-making and opinion-making in their own lives.”

Translation:

To: Mr. Jeffrey Immelt, Chairman of the Board and CEO, General Electric

Dear Mr. Immelt,

Despite what you may have heard from certain Dirty Fucking Hippies quadrants, the poor benighted savages of “Nebraska”, “Colo-Radoh”, “Funk’s Grove”, “Six Flags” and the rest of the largely-unexplored interior of the American continent who buy GE light-bulbs, microwaves and electricity still think we’re relevant, and still believe the thought-pudding we trowel into their heads are actually their own ideas and opinions.

Please don’t fire us!

UR doin it rite!

Love,

Dave and Tom

But ain’t that also just the sad fucking truth?

*Damn, I said it again*

A long time ago, my blogfather and hero -- the late Steve Gilliard -- asked me why I was wasting my fucking time spending my time and talent vivisecting the Mouse Circus. And the simple truth of it was and is that millions of perfectly nice people really go to do their week's political opinion shopping at the Mouse Circus.

That those opinions were more and more turning out to be lethally toxic formulations concocted by Karl Rove in some Neocon Chiba City lab at the behest of his Tessier-Ashpool plutocrat paymasters that were, years after maddening year, going entirely unchallenged by any of Sunday Morning’s overpaid haircuts.

That what I wrote three years ago is as true now as ever:

Left Blogylvania tracks the Sunday Mouse Circus like the mineshaft canary that it is. This puppet show where trial balloons are floated and talking points run around the track is now almost immediately sighted for range and distance by giants like Crooks + Liars and then shelled to dust. This beetle-riddled tree where hacks like McCain and Lieberman nest and preen and regurgitate their smirky horseshit is now routinely used for target practice...

Which is why, even under Mr. Sullivan's enlightened journotainment palsy-walsy talking head utopia, I think I would have a hard time getting my phone calls returned.

UPDATE II:

Why do I think Mr. Greenwald -- who otherwise acquitted himself just fine on Meet the Press -- made a stupid, unforced error by immediately leaping on Twitter to bitch about what an awful douchebag David Gregory is while the show was still on the air?

Because this permitted the odious Mr. Gregory to make Mr. Greenwald's bitter, snarky Tweet -- and Mr. Gregory's own, faux-innocent "Moi?!?" editorializing -- part of the story he was weaving for his immense audience.

Where did I get the crazy idea that David Gregory did this?

From reading the Meet the Press transcript (with emphasis added):

GREGORY: You know, part of the tactics of this and part of the debate is frankly around journalism. And Glenn Greenwald referenced it when I asked him a question about whether he should or will face charges, which has been raised. And, you know, I want to acknowledge there is a-- a debate on Twitter that goes on online about this even as we are speaking and here’s what Greenwald has tweeted after this appearance this morning, “Who needs the government to try to criminalize journalism when you have David Gregory to do it?” And I want to directly take that on because this is the problem with somebody who claims that he is a journalist, would object to a journalist raising questions which is not actually embracing any particular point of view. And that’s part of the tactics of the debate here when, in fact, lawmakers have questioned him. There is a question about his role in this, The Guardian’s role in all of this. It is actually part of the debate rather than going after the questioner, he could take on the issues and he had an opportunity to do that here on-- on MEET THE PRESS.