Sunday Morning Comin' Down

In case you hadn't read the Sunday Show pre-game ("In the Lair of the Hair") I wrote about Jake Tapper's journey to the bottom of the barrel yesterday in the relentless search for new viewers ("A-B-C. A-Always, B-Be, C-Closing. Always be closing! Always be closing!")

Today was one of those unnerving days when Reality overtook Appalled Snark on the clubhouse turn.

At 6:14 Sunday morning, gagging on the way the godawful-and-still-sinking "Up with Steve Kornacki" has abandoned any pretense of covering actual issues in favor of  grinding everything into a tepid, trivial slurry of poll-reading and horse-race argle-bargle, I tweeted this:

#uppers Next up: Which adverbs the HRC campaign used and what that means, followed by our Powerhouse Punctuation Panel! #makeitstop

— driftglass (@Mr_Electrico) June 14, 2015

Then, literally 10 minutes later, the godawful-and-still-sinking "Up with Steve Kornacki" launched into this dissection of -- no kidding -- the history of the exclamation point (and money because money) in presidential politics:




Please make it stop.

Meanwhile, down at the corner of Apocalypse Boulevard and Ragnarok Way, Senator Lindsey Graham (R - Howling Fantod) continues to hold his doomed presidential ambitions aloft with the fizzy lifting drink of completely made-up Murrican history (emphasis added):

GRAHAM: Well, the surge did work...

We're in a bad position against all the threats we face, because Barack Obama has been a weak and indecisive commander in chief. And she would be the third term of a failed presidency...

And teevee's John Dickerson proves he can snivel with the Big Boys:

GRAHAM: Excuse me. Iraq and al Qaeda had been defeated. They were on their knees. And his decision to withdraw completely from Iraq, and not help the Free Syrian Army three years ago, when we could, has led to what you see here today. And I said it then, not just now.

DICKERSON: And I apologize for jumping on you there.

Also this exchange about Hillary Clinton's poor standing in Imaginary Polls That Some Guy Apparently Told John Dickerson About During The Anne Romney/Mark Halperin Spin Class was kinda hilarious:

DICKERSON: Here's the question that -- when I talk to Democratic strategist, people even are anxious for her to be president. They say she can list a lot of things. The biggest problem for her is trust. The voters in the polls have shown this. Voters do not trust her. How does she overcome that?

MOOK: Well, first of all, there -- no poll shows that voters don't trust Hillary Clinton.

DICKERSON: They don't find her honest and trustworthy.

MOOK: Well, no poll says that.

And then they roll out the dessert cart which CBS has spared no expense to stock with only the very finest in moldering Beltway zombie blather:

I want to turn now to our reporter roundtable.

Peggy Noonan is a columnist for "The Wall Street Journal" and a CBS News contributor.

Robert Costa reports for "The Washington Post."

We're also joined by "Washington Post" columnist Ruth Marcus and Mark Halperin of Bloomberg Politics.

Oh joy.

Rapture.

MARK HALPERIN, BLOOMBERG TV HOST: Well, in the Clinton family, they used to say the era of big government is over. That speech was about a lot of new big government...

RUTH MARCUS, "THE WASHINGTON POST": Well, a couple of things, first, I actually -- I rarely disagree with Mark...

And that's why they let you on teevee, Ruth.  Then Peggers floated in on a gossamer cloud of Gray Goose fumes and melancholy sighs to tell Murrica...

PEGGY NOONAN, "THE WALL STREET JOURNAL": ... As the lady on the floral print couch in the room with important lighting, saying, I want to be your champion and I'm going to listen to you and I'm going to nod. This was a listening tour. That was a campaign speech. That sort of conceded, oh, I guess I got to go out. I guess I got to hit the Hustings. Guess I got to make the points...

Moments later La Noonan builds a bleary cul-de-sac and then wanders down it...

NOONAN: Let me just pick up on something that you said, Ruth.

One of the -- I agree with everything you said and I'd only add man, this part about meeting with the press, it's been, I think, very difficult for her and a loss to her and she ought to be meeting -- should have met with them yesterday, I think.

I'm sorry; I lost your question.

Truer words were never rambled.

And this is how America's televised public policy dialogue is going to be from now until it is burned to the ground and rebuilt:  a thin gruel and meaningless poll numbers, process gobbledygook and breathy opining by people from whom I would not trust to tell me how to get a jelly jar open,  And always in the service of the same goal: to keep the banter well within established corporate guard rails and never, ever mentions that the reason this country is so horribly fucked up is because one of our two major political parties has lost its mind.


UPDATE:  I'm taking a vacation from publishing pedantic "Yeah, but both parties are...blah blah blah.., Dinocrats!" comments.  If you have all the energy in the world to sit in comment sections all day, every day swatting at every thought with "Everything is fucked and we're all screwed anyway", then you have plenty of energy to set up your own place.  Blogger and WordPress are free, and you have an unfettered right to peddle nihilism to your heart's content elsewhere, so go exercise it.