Sunday, September 07, 2014

Sunday Morning Comin' Down



So NBC replaced one 40-something, white, male Beltway Conventional Wisdom dispenser with two first names (David. Gregory,) with another 40-something, white, male Beltway Conventional Wisdom dispenser with two first names (Chuck.  Todd.)

Then they gave the new guy dead guy's house band and backup singers, loaded up the sheet music from the dead guy's cast album, bound him in the dead guy's winding cloth and in every other way clad him the dead guy's Beltway Conventional Wisdom raiment.

And they called it rock an roll (transcript not yet available.)

For all the hype, Mr. Todd's Wild Ride --



-- show no sign of being more than a slightly more uptempo version of the original Gregory flop:  the same tired trundle down the same Beltway track through the same tunnel full of fake peril, clatter, flashing lights and cardboard cutout characters from which you inexorably arrive at the same destination. I'm sure that the sheer novelty of a new clown at the Mouse Circus will mean that Important Publications as diverse as Presidential Optics Review, Retread Monthly and Politico will have Important Things to say about Mr. Todd's debut.  But from way up here in the cheap seats, the distinction between Spinal Tap and a Spinal Tap Tribute Band


was lost on me.

Scary Lawyer Guy has more here:
...
The panel discussed a segment of Todd's interview with President Obama, itself a bit of a joke, as Todd attempted to goad the President into acknowledging that we would need to invade Syria, as if that was accepted wisdom that had permeated the bloodstream of official Washington. The President, sober and expansive in his explanations, seemed a poor match for Todd's desire for simple solutions, but part of the reason "don't do stupid shit" is a smart, albeit pithy, encapsulation of Obama's foreign policy is that the types of decisions the President is wrestling with and people like Todd think have simple answers, do not.

Regardless, the panel discussion unfolded as one might expect. Mitchell tsk tsked the President for making Saudi Arabia "mad" at us for not toppling Assad last year (never mind the fact that the Saudis fund madrasses that teach precisely the type of radical Islamic ideology that we are fighting or that most of the 9/11 terrorists came from Saudi Arabia) and Henderson helpfully observed that when Congress returns on Monday (after a 38 day vacation, a whole other topic that might have merited discussion … alas) they will be looking to do "the bare minimum."

That this is accepted as fact and allowed to pass without comment speaks volumes about the cynicism Todd claims to deplore in D.C. yet accurately reflects the media's long-ago acceptance that lockstep opposition to Obama is a symptom of dysfunction in Washington, not in one political party...
Unsurprisingly, The New York Times has a very different view of the show which long ago devolved into little more than a safe, moist spot for pundits like David Brook's to unspool their Beltway ovipositors and lay a clutch of "Both Sider" eggs:
“Meet the Press” is one of the few remaining news programs for adults, delivered in plain English. Mr. Todd may still be the substitute teacher, but he looks like he could quickly master the class.
Meanwhile, down the dial, The Wrongest Man in America continues to be given a huge platform on actual, network teevee from which to spout his insanity (h/t Heather at Crooks and Liars);


Truly. one of the great mysteries of modern teevee is exactly why toxic, lying monsters like The Wrongest Man in America continues to be handed second chances by the media no matter how frequently they shit the bed.  And despite lots of speculation, we can only be certain of one thing:  if you watch it from now until Frashokereti, you will never learn the answer to that riddle -- or even hear that question raised --  on Meet the Press with Shuck Todd.


11 comments:

dinthebeast said...

Pig-Head Todd and the Monsters?

-Doug in Oakland

Kathleen said...

Shorter Chuckles the Toad to PBO: Why won't you put ISIS in FEMA camps in France?

Unknown said...

Have you listened to The Jimmy Dore show on podcast? It's like The Professional Left but with less science fiction and more jokes! I think that Dore has stolen your "both sides do it" jokes and he's even making a "both sides do it" satirical t-shirt.

Note, Dore has engaged Frank Coniff of Mystery Science Theater 3000 as a writer and cohort on the show.

Robt said...

Not watching MTP until my demands are met.
My demands are simple and singular.

Replace C. Todd with Tom Hartman...

Monster from the Id said...

"Truly, one of the great mysteries..."

Drifty, did you forget the snark tags?

Because it's no mystery at all.

The 1% who own the political system also own the Corporate Media. These gilded leeches think it serves their narrow self-interest for the USA to be a bloody-handed Empire, so they pay chickenhawk shills like Bloody Bill lots of blood money to promote war.

If these Malefactors Of Great Wealth thought peace served their narrow self-interest best, then Bloody Bill and his ilk would either convert to pacifism, or be banished to the boondocks of Reactionary Blogistan.

Selah.

driftglass said...

"Malefactors Of Great Wealth" is not an answer. It is an empty tautology, as meaningless as a teabagger complaining about "Big Gummint".

Anonymous said...

Money issued as usurious debt is indeed the root of the problem whereby wealth is related directly to malefaction.

Pinkamena said...

DG, he's got a mantra to chant and he doesn't care if it means anything or not.

Over at Hatewatch we have a name for folks like Revanchist Sisterfucker from the Id: Mantra-Spouts. When a white nationalist scumfuck comes along to bleat the phrases of their movement - usually the empty, dimwitted whine about anti-racist efforts being "code for anti-white", we call them a Mantra-Spout and leave it at that. They can't be deprogrammed, not over the Internet anyway, and trying to talk to them like they're anything other than meatsticks is fruitless. So we dismiss them out of hand and move on.

And yes, I'm drawing a pretty direct line between neo-Nazi fuckstains and a known racist revanchist Confederate Treasonist (like there wasn't a whole lot of those lines already drawn by now). If that bothers anyone, they can gum my root, and Mike Godwin wasn't talking about cases like this when he codified his eponymous law of Internet nature anyhow.

Monster from the Id said...

Very well, Drifty, if MOGW has passed its freshness date, what term would you suggest in its place?

Anonymous said...

The useless chucktodd interviewing the President of the USA why he hadn't mentioned Syria after Obama had mentioned them 4 separate times.
Just think - this week was the high mark of Hack Todd ' s tenure at MTP. It'll only get worse from here.
-MADVargr

marindenver said...

@Anon @ 8:19 PM: The President - "Syria, Syria, Syria, Syria" Chucktard - "Blah, blah, blah Chucktard! Blah, blah, blah, Chucktard!"