Sunday Morning Comin' Down

This week, the same Respected Professional Political Analyst who blocked me on Twitter for making mock of his relentless, buffoonish Both Siderism --

If you read Driftglass then you don't care much for the truth.

— Matthew Dowd (@matthewjdowd) June 23, 2017

-- is now trying really hard to sound just like me (from This Week with George Stephanopoulos)

DOWD: ...I think what you have to -- what has to be recognized now by Republicans and many conservatives who have resisted Donald Trump is that the Republican Party as they know it is gone. This is a party that would never nominate Lincoln again, would never nominate Teddy Roosevelt, and certainly wouldn't nominate Ronald Reagan in this. And that party is gone.

They might as well get H.G. Wells on the line, get back in a time machine, and find the party that they think still exists. It's gone.

And this week it a woman who has sunk low enough to be a professional apologist for a noted wingnut fink-tank, showed that she is also low enough to dismiss the rip tide of sexual harassment revelations in the media as the result of weak women and gold diggers who want to hop on the "gravy train" (from Meet the Press):

CHUCK TODD:  Back now with endgame. All right, you heard from those senators and I believe it was Senator Heitkamp who said, "It needs to be cultural change." Are we in a culture, is this a major moment in our culture? Dani?

DANIELLE PLETKA:  No. I have no doubt that sexual harassment is real and that many women suffer from it. But I have a strong suspicion that this is yet another one in a series of isms and complaints and grievances in our society that are used as wedged, that are used as bludgeons, that are part of, frankly, what many men feel is a war on men, certainly in universities.

So, you know, do we need a cultural change? If women want to stand up for themselves, women should stand up for themselves for equal treatment. And if that means that someone's going to harass them, they should stand up and call them out. This whole "Me, too, I want to get on the gravy train, Harvey Weinstein looked at me meanly too but I didn't have the guts, Gwyneth Paltrow, to stand up and do anything about it," I'm not really into that.

But it really doesn't matter what a shitbox she is does it?  Because Chuck Todd will have her back on next week, or the week after that and all will be forgiven and forgotten.

And speaking of malfunctioning skinjobs who are 25 years past their sell-by date but keep showing up on the teevee anyway, hey look, it's Tom Friedman!  Saying something so mildewed and hackneyed I assume he's working on puffing it up into a book.  Which every Sunday Show will promote and every CEO in America will buy and compel their cubicle serfs to read and then review at the mandatory company retreat because it's by Tom Fucking Friedman.  Circle of life, y'all.

Anyway..

TOM FRIEDMAN:   You know, Chuck, the biggest industry in America today is the anger industry. Because we have technologies now, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, that allow so many people to participate in arousing, and also videos and pictures. And the whole country is just out there arousing each other through video and pictures and what not. And I worry that we're really fighting this technology. It's just so easy to get a lot of people stirred up and you don't have to be president to do it.

Yes indeed.  So much arousing going on "out there" in the "whole country".   What with the videos.  And the pictures! And the Friendsters!  Libertine men!  Scarlet women!  Ragtime!

And don't forget the whatnots!

Finally, The New York Times continues to give bags of money to weirdos to poop out absurdist tone poems about the evils of Both Sides:

Political Guardrails Gone, a President’s Somber Duty Skids Into Spectacle

Blame it on these bitter political times.

The feud over President Trump’s call to the widow of a fallen soldier might never have escalated had Mr. Trump done what any of his predecessors almost certainly would have done: quickly apologize for words that failed to bring comfort.

Likewise, the nasty back-and-forth with Frederica S. Wilson, a Democratic congresswoman who is close to the soldier’s family, might have dissipated had she not repeatedly disparaged Mr. Trump’s intentions on national television, failing to extend him the benefit of the doubt that previous presidents had received...

In other words, status quo at the puppet show.