Sunday Morning Comin' Down

Today on Meet the Press,  Paul "Zombie=Eyed Granny Starver" Ryan, Bibi "Willie Pete" Netanyahu,  Charles "Chuck (D)" Schumer , Ted "I'll help you catch him, Clarice" Cruz, Judy "NPR House Mother" Woodruff,  David "Fucking" Brooks, Nia-Malika "Would you like a side of utterly two-dimensional conventional wisdom with that?" Henderson, Ruth "David Brooks with Lady Parts" Marcus, Kevin "Mr. Tibbles!" Tibbles gathered together to sit shiva for David Gregory's career.

Now some picky imaginary scholars have pointed out that you need ten warm bodies for a proper Beltway minyan, and "Meet the Press" only fielded nine (actually, opinions differ, but for the sake of argument just go with it.)  However those persnickety imaginary scholars forget that corporations are people my friend and, as has been true at "Meet the Gregory" since forever, Boeing sat right at the head of the table, proudly beaming at all of his children and footing the bill for the entire affair.

So no worries there.

Another group of equally imaginary but more careful and learned scholars have pointed out that the law technically requires Gregory's career to have been buried the same day it died. "His body shall not remain all night", the Book says (Deuteronomy 21:23).  However, while it has been technically dead for years, the dancing corpse of Mr. Gregory's career 

has been singularly unquiet for a freakishly long time and very hard to land a shovel of dirt on.

Thank goodness God forgives necessity.

Anyway, it was a lovely ceremony, with David Brooks on hand to say the traditional Centrist Prayer of Petulant Whining About the Extremes on Both Sides --

DAVID BROOKS:

I used to think the problem was Washington, I now think the problem is the country. The country is polarized. The people actually in the states have become more polarized. But also, it's a different attitude. Politics is a competition between half truths, usually both side of a piece of the truth. Take this immigration debate. You have these kids flowing across the border.

We've got to do two things at once. Give them humanitarian refuge, some of them, and also readjust this law that induces them to come over. So you've got to do two things. The Republicans want to readjust the law. The Democrats want to give them refuge. Somehow you can't say, "Okay, they're both kind of right. Let's just jam it into a bill." We don't have the mentality that allows each side to say, "You're both kind of right."

-- after which they all repaired to Denny's for a light lunch.

Also anyone wagered heavily in favor of the Conservative David Brooks being very confused about the actual, stark, life-destroying difference between something being "going to jail illegal" and something being "legal but frowned upon at Andrea Mitchell's cocktail parties" -- or the actual differences between heroin and pot and getting drunk at a titty bar -- please step to the betting window to collect your winnings:

DAVID BROOKS:

“The country is getting more libertarian on a lot of these issues. It’s ‘everyone should do what they want.’ But we’re part of a community, we’re part of a culture, we’re affected by each others’ views, each others’ values. To me, there’s some role of government in playing some role in restraining some individual choice, just to create a culture of health for teenagers.”

... 

DAVID GREGORY:

...Now to this week's big question, should marijuana be legal in the United States, the big questions I think could be a big debate this week. We talked about the merits of it, David, but your prediction-wise, do you think it's moving in that direction?

DAVID BROOKS:

Everybody says that. But if you look over history, the regulation of things like opiates, smoking, public drunkenness, it's really ebbed and flowed quite a while. And so it's not always just allowed more and more freedom. Sometimes there are just restrictions. You can't smoke the way you used to, you can't use opiates the way you used to, public drunkenness, much less acceptable.

Longtime observers of the Gregory Fiasco Experience know that Greggers is a perfect, passive delivery system for Conservative talking points: notable for never asking Republicans substantive followup questions no matter how much the situation begs for it, and reliably blunting any unpleasant intrusion of GOP perfidy and treason into his happy circle jerk with a "But Both Sides" roundhouse.

The other, less-well-known tool in Gregger's toolbox is his ability to obediently shift from Conservative messenger boy to full-on, Bill O'Reilly ambush goon without once coming within a mile of doing actual journalism. (h/t Raw Story and David at Crooks and Liars):

...
"The Israeli government has released videotape within the past hour, it was posted on YouTube, NBC News hasn't independently verified," Gregory explained to Gunness. "The Israelis say -- and I realize that you cannot see this video, our audience can, and I'm going to describe it to you -- that purports to show rockets being fired from a UN school."

As the host spoke, NBC played fuzzy black and white video of rockets being fired from buildings at an unknown location.

"Is this accurate?" Gregory asked. "Could this be happening without the UN's knowledge, that would only bolster the prime minister's point that, in fact, Hamas is using civilians, using the United Nations even in a kind of propaganda war."

Gunness found the notion that he was being made to respond to a unconfirmed video that he couldn't even see so ridiculous that he could barely contain laughter.

"Look, to be fair to me, to bring me on a live program and expect me to comment live on air on pictures I haven't actually seen, I think anyone looking at this program would agree that's really unfair," Gunness insisted. "I mean, if I can see it, I'll happily comment on it."

At the conclusion of the program, Gregory said that the United Nations had "confirmed that the video does not show rockets being fired from a UN-administrated school in Gaza."

Gregory moonwalked away from his latest, humiliating failure with this pathetic "correction" at the end of his nationally syndicated broadcast:

So this is a back and forth that we are not able to settle at this point.

Such an dutiful little helper.

Somebody give that boy a cookie.