Sunday Morning Came and Went: Chuck Todd is Darrin Stevens Edition

As some of you know, I have been running a regular feature called "Sunday Morning Comin' Down" off and on for the last 14 years. Virtually no one else back then was vivisecting the Sunday Gasbag Cavalcade and explaining what an toxic disaster they were for our national political discourse, so I figured that since I was already writing a bunch of stuff that was hugely unpopular and guaranteed to make me a media pariah, why not add one more?

See if this all sounds way too familiar.

From April, 2005:

Sunday Mornin' Coming Down...

I watched Sunday teevee and sipped coffee and typed a little bit of what I saw. Maybe I’ll do this more regularly. Anyway be apprised that I’m not a court recorder and this is not a transcript: All quotes are imperfect and not direct attributions but are, shall we say, impressionistically correct

Meme wars this morning!

Harry Reid going great guns on the Heaven’s Gate Republican “impeach and possibly waste all judges who oppose Tom DeLay’s Divine Will” nuttery on CBS this morning. This Mormon kid’s got some heat!

driftglass FYI: As of next week, 205 out of 214 judges from Bushville will have been confirmed. That’s 96%...a rate of blockage or 4%. During Clinton’s term, Republican Senators blocked 35% of President Clinton’s nominees. See 35 is MORE than 4! I know that some of my GOP friends will have to take off their shoes and socks to cipher numbers that high, but trust me, like Evolution, it’s really true!

And as a matter of historical interest, in the Clinton years, Republicans threatened to stop all confirmations or just obliterate judicial positions outright, demanding they were entitled to choose half of the judges themselves. And the only reason that Bush even has so many vacancies into which he can pack so much rancid Republican Peanut Butter is because the GOP blocked so many Clinton nominees in the first place...

...and every time you hit the lever for Republicans, you enable this kind of Anti-American bullshit to run unchecked.

Harry Reid catches the meme: “These are not "mainstream" Republicans; these are the extreme, hard Right.”

On the Bolton Nomination: "We're not going to allow someone who is an embarrassment to the country.”

“If this goes on, we'll just become an extension of the House of Representative.”

Bob Schieffer: “Is there some kind of compromise that is being worked on...”

Bob don’t get it, and I'll get to that in a longer piece on what I’ll call the “Tyranny of Artificial Bisection” at a future date...

And you know what?  I did write about the "Tyranny of Artificial Bisection” -- which later became "Both Sides Do It" -- at a future date.  Literally thousands of times.  And I wrote about the Sunday Gasbag Cavalcade week after week, year after year until, very gradually, I (mostly) stopped.

I (mostly) stopped because standing in the middle of nowhere shouting into the abyss while the media got exponentially worse wasn't changing anything and it wasn't improving my disposition.  See, I've been to this particular rodeo before.  Many times, under many guises.  I saw this same thing happen when I worked in the private sector.  At a college.  At non-profits.  For local government.  In each case there came a time when the actions of senior decision-makers were so fucking awful -- and were so plainly contrary to the organization's stated mission -- as to appear inexplicable.

And in short order the fallout from their intransigent damnfoolery became apparent.  Thanks to completely avoidable management malfeasance and incompetence,  two non-profits I worked for have virtually ceased to exist.  One insurance company is now survived only by a culinary school which one of the owners started as a lark.  One government department has had 80% of its mission taken away, and another has been wiped out of existence altogether.

It happens all the time.  Everywhere.

Back when I was a younger driftglass and found myself in such profoundly dysfunctional organizations, I took it upon myself  a few times to try to sleuth out some explanation for the destructive whims of senior management.  Just something.  A whiff.  A glimpse of some genius Master Plan in which the day-to-day insanity and stupidity which we could see all around us were just transient side-effects.  A crumb of elucidation, especially when those decisions were fucking over my division or team. I lost a couple of jobs and wrecked one career on futile fact-finding excursions like these before I learned to keep my head down and begin looking for an exit once it became clear that there was no genius Master Plan, just a mob of greedy idiots with too much power looking to grab as much as they could before the roof caved in.

Or, to misquote Blaise Pascal, a corporation has its reasons which reason does not know.

Because there is always a reason.  And usually those catastrophic decisions come down to the most basic human weaknesses.  Fear and greed.  Careerism or bribery.  Blackmail.  Toadyism.  Paying off sexual favors.  Entitled third-generation-inherited-wealth laziness and stupidity. Or simple, everyday cowardice -- the suffocating dread of being seen by those even higher up the food chain as having made a horrible decision ... and so doing absolutely nothing in the face of onrushing disaster.

Hell, read Catch-22.  It explains everything.

So when I see people with real bylines in respectable publications going after Chuck Todd hammer and tongs --

Vox:  Chuck Todd’s Trump interview, and the backlash to it, explained

The NBC anchor wasn’t prepared, and Trump took advantage.


Salon:  Trump's Chuck Todd interview: Right and wrong have come permanently unstuck in America


Splinter: Do Not Waste Your Brain Cells Watching Chuck Todd Interview Donald Trump

Chuck Todd's terrible interview with our fabricator-in-chief snapped the tether: From here on out there's no truth

WaPo: Trump’s lies need to be exposed in real time

-- I am delighted. After all, it gets very lonely out here in the middle of nowhere, year after year. shouting into the abyss all by oneself.

However, a word of caution: trying to hold mopes like Chuck Todd to the standards of what used to be called "journalism" is inevitably doomed to failure because Chuck Todd not a journalist.  

Chuck Todd is Darrin Stevens.

He is a performer who has been hired by a media corporation to play a very specific role on their teevee show.

Funny how no one seems to remember that Chuck Todd has always been this awful.

And one day the part he plays on Comcast/NBC teevee will be taken away from him and handed off to someone else who is just as bad or worse, just as it was taken away from the wretched David Gregory and handed off to Chuck Todd.

Funny how no one seems to remember David Gregory --

-- or how truly awful he was in exactly the same way Chuck Todd is awful:

...But this year, with Newt’s infamous "Obama is a Kenyan anti-colonial..." and "Muslim=Nazi" comments, he very publicly belly-flopped into the Conservative racist cesspit once again, paddled to the bottom and started digging into its gooey shitbed to see if he couldn't get just a little bit lower.

Over in the Better Universe this would have ended Newt's public career in a blaze of Al Campanis/Jimmy-the-Greek celebrity-suicide-by-monstrously-ugly-remark-to-the-third-power shame: when added to Newt's already long history of saying hideously despicable things, Gingrich would have been lucky to spend the rest of his days not having poo thrown at him by respectable citizens every time he stuck his head into the sun.

But of course this is not the Better Universe: this is the universe where, rather than risk committing an act of actual journalism by asking Newt a single question about his grotesque behavior, Greggers instead used his stewardship of the biggest tent at the Mouse Circus to obediently let that clown back out of the box one more time in an appearance that Gingrich now highlights on his own site.

Your Emmy awaits, Mr. Gregory.

And no one seems to learn the vital lesson that "David Gregory" + "Chuck Todd" teaches us.  That for its own, corrupt reasons, Comcast/NBC wants a craven, Republican-enabling stooge in that chair and will keep a craven, Republican-enabling stooge in that chair no matter how many of shout otherwise into the abyss, because Comcast/NBC does not give the tiniest damn what they are doing to our democracy.

Which is why, one fine day Chuck will be out for a long drive in the country, on top of the world, calculating how much of a tongue bath to give Mitch McConnell the next time he sees him.  Then he will get a call from someone at Comcast/NBC telling him that he has been replaced with Hugh Hewitt or a hologram of David Broder or an animated dog.  Doesn't really matter as long as they stick to the fucking script.

Chuck will then start his own podcast which will last for 10 episodes and which no one will listen to.  He will write a book about his spiritual journey which no one will read.  Finally, when his non-compete clause expires, he will show up on some CNN panel along with 15 other talking heads all trying to speak at once.

And Hugh Hewitt or a hologram of David Broder or an animated dog will pick up right where Chuck left off.

Thus we arrive at our own Catch-22:  For our democracy to survive, the media must do the very thing which corporations are designed not to do -- point the camera at itself -- and reward the behaviors it has always punished.

Unfortunately, our American democracy is not like a college or a non-profit or a private company or a government department.  Now that it's clear that the agenda of our corporate media is destroying our democracy, keeping our heads down, updating our resumes and looking for the exits is not an option.

So while I appreciate all my new friends out here in middle of nowhere, shouting into the Sunday Gasbag Cavalcade abyss with me, it will all come to nothing if those with much more staff and money and access than me don't use their power to take the next step and pry open the decision-making machinery of the corporate media and expose the fear and greed, careerism and bribery, toadyism, blackmail, nepotism or simple, everyday cowardice that keeps clowns like Chuck Todd gainfully employed.

Behold, a Tip Jar!