Sunday Morning Comin' Down

"Throat Warbler Mangrove" edition.

The Sunday Shows were horrid.*

Here is a reminder why:

So excited to have @ananavarro & Bill Kristol join our outstanding @ABC political team. Both brilliant, original thinkers #ThisWeek
— Jonathan Greenberger (@greenbergerj) February 2, 2014

Son instead I would like to congratulate all the nominees in the "Politics / News" category of the 10th Annual Podcast Awards --

majority report [url] [rss]
no agenda w adam curry [url] [rss]
common sense [url] [rss]
congressional dish [url] [rss]
Bob & Chez Show [url] [rss]
Slate Political Gabfest [url] [rss]
best of the left [url] [rss]
Cognitive Dissonance [url] [rss]
Democracy NOW! [url] [rss]
the Rachel Maddow Show [url] [rss]

-- and wish the kids at the "Bob and Chez Show" the very best of luck.

I would also like to tip my hat to Hillary Clinton for cleverly following the Mad Men and Breaking Bad,  Zeno's Paradox strategy of dividing her announcement into two parts -- half now , with a cliff hanger, and half in January.

And finally, a shout out to The Guardian for sensing that the global supply of fawning David Brooks paeans was running dangerously low, and rushing buckets and buckets of fawn into print.

[David Brooks'] point is not simply that we’re too focused on money, fame or possessions. Even someone committed to doing good – working for good causes, raising children well, helping the community – can too easily end up skipping the internal work of confronting our weaknesses, our inherent “brokenness”, required to achieve the richest inner life. ...

...if anything, Brooks has a surfeit of self-awareness: more than any similarly high-profile columnist, he has used his public writing to wrangle with his own doubts, ambivalence and self-reproach.

...

Brooks’s willingness to try out ideas in public, then change his mind later, may be admirable when he’s waxing philosophical – but it’s another thing when the topic is, say, the Iraq war, which he strongly backed before reversing course.

 “I just find talking to politicians less interesting than I used to,” he says. “I used to find it fascinating, what all the little subterfuges going on in the construction of the immigration bill were. But I just can’t get my interest up any more. There’s a lot more action sociologically, psychologically, morally than politically, these days.”

Indeed, Mr. Brooks' problem has always been that he just Cares.  Too.  Damn.  Much.

Also I personally find it hilarious that the sudden onset of Mr. Brooks electile dysfunction -- "I just can’t get my interest up any more" -- corresponds exactly with emergence into the open of the GOP's overtly crazy, bigoted, seditionist base -- a goon horde which Liberals like me have always said were at the heart of the Republican Party; a goon horde which Mr. Brooks has built his career both creating and pretending does not exist.

Also, if Mr. Brooks has ever "reversed course" on Iraq other than tossing a mumbling sentence or two during a softball interview, it's news to me.

Unless, of course, "reversing course" is one of those quaint, British expressions which is spelled "r-e-v-e-r-s-i-n-g c-o-u-r-s-e" --


-- but is pronounced "lying about his own positions on the war when asked uncomfortable, direct questions about them...and then going silent on the subject and confining himself to venues where no one asks him uncomfortable, direct questions."

*Really, they were. And all reruns of the same soul-killing dreck which I have been depth-sounding for longer than my last full-time job lasted.