Sunday Morning Comin' Down

So "Meet the Press" was not pre-empted by a sporting event this week.

Unless you consider watching David Gregory administer soothing reacharounds to Conservatives to be a sport, in which case,

welcome, racing fans, to the most exciting 40 minutes of Republican Handjob Action on Earth.

The biggest story was, of course, how Barack Obama Lost Iraq after that nice Mr. Bush worked so hard to put it all together for him in a nice gift basket wrapped in a big, festive bow.  Or at least that was the gist from  two-time loser fatcat Mittens O'Reilly:

But at the same time, the United States of America has long had the capacity to shape events and to influence events. But what you've seen from this administration, whether from Hillary Clinton with the reset button to Russia, which by the way, I think should've been called the repeat button. I mean, this administration from Secretary Clinton to President Obama, has repeatedly underestimated the threats that are faced by America.

Once upon a time this kind of patently absurd, partisan horseshit that would have made a nice, fat, juicy target for journalists , but NBC obviously doesn't shower Mr. Gregory with gold for his skills as a "journalist" who asks what used to be called "follow up questions", so instead of pushing back on the wingnut poll tested claptrap which two-time loser Mitch Raimey is waving right in his face, Mr. Gregory moved on to the next thing:

Let me talk a couple of minutes about politics and the big story this week about Eric Cantor losing, majority leader of the House and his primary fight in Virginia...

Harold Fraud Junior was his usual awful self, obediently hitting his marks and delivering his "Both Sides Do It" line of the day, just as he has done on every teevee show he has ever been on since the dawn of time:

DAVID GREGORY:

As you wrote this week. How do you guys see it, Harold Ford? What's your view on what's happening in the party?

HAROLD FORD:

Look, I think both parties, I tend to agree with both Ruth and Steve. And no doubt there's an out-of-touchedness that people, regular folks still believe with politicians...

For the right price, Harold will come to your kid's bar mitzvah to explain how Pharaoh and Moses had valid points and could have solved Egypt's slavery problem if it weren't for The Extremes on Both Sides.  For a few dollars more, he'll show up at the next a mass shooting to explain how the NRA and school children could solve this problem if it weren't for the Partisanship on the Left and the Right.

It's a sliding scale.

Ken Cuccinelli was allotted time on national teevee to bring further shame to the entire Cuccinelli family once again, but truly, the flag on the pinnacle of contempt for the public was, hands down, putting Paul Wolfowitz on the air in any venue that does not involve pitting him against Sandor Clegane; some place where the only "question" from anyone is, "I understand that if any more words come pouring out your c*nt mouth, I going to have to eat every fucking chicken in this room."

But of course, being Meet the Press, instead of a journalist on the job, we get David Gregory, who hauled one of the chief architects of Operation Endless Clusterfuck out of semi-obscurity and put him back on the national stage to answer the following Two!Count!!'Em!Two burning questions:

Question One:  Do you think you and others underestimated the amount of sectarian horror that your lies and fuckups would unleash?

Answer:  Oh fuck no.  See, it's all very complicated and we had nothing to do with it.

Questions Two is, believe it or not, just reaction shot: What do you think of what Peter King just said?

Answer:  Our puppet gummint failed so obviously we need better puppets,  Also too, this is somehow Obama's fault.

And that's it.  Not a single substantive question.  No followups.  Just more running room for one more bloody Neoconservative war criminals to butt-scoot his lies across a national stage unimpeded one more time (h/t John Amato at Crooks and Liars):

Of course, since rehabilitating the public image of monsters is pretty must David Gregory's entire business model, the fact that he would hand a giant spotlight over to a contemptible worm like Wolfowitz is so unsurprising that, outside of the liberal blogosphere, it barely rated a mention.

(Also Fathers Day somehow just doesn't feel like the right time to have someone Paul Wolfowitz on "Meet the Press" considering how many fathers he helped shovel into an early grave in Iraq.  It's a shame that Gregory would not have waited for a more appropriate time like, say, Treason Day.  Or PTSD Day. Or Orphans Day.)

No, the only thing worth noting about it was how...weird it was.  How utterly superfluous and tacked-on it felt.

See, despite being allowed to pitch his Neocon tent on the "Meet the Press" stage, Wolfowitz did not get the full, Gingrich Rules treatment.  Instead, Greggers put him on as a seat-filler -- an extra to whom a clearly bored Greggers tossed two completely perfunctory questions and then bye-bye.

So why bother?

Well, since you asked, if I had to speculate irresponsibly, I'd guess that Greggers -- whose career as the Madame of the "Meet the Press" whorehouse appears to dying right before his eyes -- is deliberately trolling his colleague Rachael Maddow.

Dr. Maddow is a walking, talking exemplar of every professional virtue that Greggers jettisoned long ago to get to the top of the Elite Media Shitpile:  integrity, honesty, genuine curiosity, relentlessness and thoroughness.  She is a daily, public rebuke to everything David Gregory stands for.

Also, as you may recall, Dr. Maddow reserves special contempt for Paul "Always wrong about everything" Wolfowitz, and super-special televised contempt for those who keep handing him a national megaphone:

In this video Dr. Maddow makes her position on the subject of Paul Wolfowitz 100% clear:

"Please Jesus, can there be some accountability in American politics?  Can there be a penalty for being wrong about the biggest things in the world tp be wrong about.  If you were an architect of the Iraq war, you don't ever get to talk about what a good idea is when it comes to war ever again"

And now her colleague David Gregory has just gone out of his way to pick the longest, pointiest Neocon stick he could find and poked her right in eye with it for no damn good reason whatsoever.

I wonder what will happen next?

And speaking of Iraq War shills who would be hiding in South America under assumed names if we lived in a sane country,  Bill Kristol continues to be inexplicably and gainfully employed by ABC News


thanks to the bold leadership of the 12-year-old who is inexplicably and gainfully employed by ABC to make these decisions:

KRISTOL: It is a disaster. Donna's right. It's a disaster unfortunately made possible, or certainly made more likely, by our ridiculous and total withdrawal from Iraq in 2011.

While on Mourning Joe, someone thought it would be a great idea to put America's only living ex-Pasha -- L. Paul Bremmer III -- on teevee to talk about how Barack Obama has screwed up Iraq:



You might remember that L. Paul Bremmer's last memorable public act was creating almost the entire Iraq insurgency from scratch

after which he left that sweet gig to collect his Medal 'O Freedom, hit the lecture circuit and write forgettable books about how everything was everyone else's fault.

Weird how no one ever heard a single peep from any of these patriots while George W. Bush was bankrupting the country, breaking the army and pissing away America's reputation around the world.

I guess they were saving up their righteous rage for something really important.

Like Birth Certificates and the IRS and suchlike.