Sunday Morning Comin' Down

 

I am currently working on an algorithm that will go through 18 years of my posts about Meet The Press and just swap in the name "Kristen Welker" for "Chuck Todd" and "David Gregory" and Iraq War-era "Tim Russert", and the post them as new.

Rep. Elise Stefanik: I have concerns about the January 6th hostages. We have concerns about oversight of our treatment of prisoners.

Kristen Welker on Meet The Press: (Silence)

This is journalistic malpractice. The insurrectionists who attacked the Capitol aren't hostages. pic.twitter.com/9bHOj94ZMr

— Sarah Reese Jones (@PoliticusSarah) January 7, 2024

It would save me all kinds of time and energy, and at this point it is so very clear that our political media does not give the tiniest shit about journalism and is completely immune to criticism -- and that Republican politicians know that and therefor feel free to lie with impunity -- that at this point all media criticism is doing is documenting the atrocities (as we used to say back in the day) for the benefit of some theoretical future historians who may be interested in how things in the United State in the here-and-now got so fuck up when everyone involved knew exactly what was broken and why, but those with the megaphones refused to speak that truth out loud.  

Today was also "Give a Lying Republican Sack of Shit Some Airtime" day at CNN as well, so...

Jake Tapper: "Do you think that Donald Trump engaged in insurrection?"

Mike Pence: "I never called what happened on January 6 an insurrection... it was a riot the way it broke out, and I've never seen it any other way." pic.twitter.com/lh80j3tPie

— Justin Baragona (@justinbaragona) January 7, 2024

Meanwhile, over on PBS on Friday, Mr. David Brooks of The New York Times was rooting for a 9-0 Supreme Court decision throwing out the Colorado 14th amendment case against Donald Trump.  

Mr. Brooks allowed as how he is "not a legal scholar" and therefore has no fucking idea about the merits of the case, but as a man with his finger firmly on the pulse of what the elite coastal .00003% of America who ride in the Acela Corridor quiet car with him whenever he has to commute to and from his wealthy suburban enclave, Mr. Brooks is certain of a few things:  

Brooks:  A lot of Americans have no faith in any of our systems. A lot of Americans have no faith in the other half of the country. And so we're in danger, in my view, of coming apart at the seams, of really entering a terrible era of violence even, political violence.

And so, in my view, if some lawyers took Donald Trump off the ballot, half the country would say, that's it. We're done here. This is a totally rotten system...

Yes, Brooks really is arguing that the traitors and morons of the Republican party -- who already overwhelmingly believe the lie that Joe Biden stole the 2020 election -- are in danger of losing faith in American democracy if the constitution under which American democracy operates were actually enforced.  

And so, as has been true of Brooks' advice for the past 30 years, whenever the sane, Democratic majority is confronted with the deranged demands of a violent, racist Republican minority, the only sensible thing for Democrats to do is...capitulate to the mob and give 'em whatever they want.

Brooks:  So I'm hoping the Supreme Court will not uphold Colorado, but let the voters decide. In my view, we have to let the voters handle this one...

And so how does the Supreme Court handle this? If it becomes a partisan decision, then their part — then their — the legitimacy of the Supreme Court is even more in trouble.

Notice that for Brooks, the only acceptable and legitimate non-partisan solution to this issue would be a unanimous or near-unanimous decision in favor of Donald Trump and the deranged GOP.  Not for, y'know' "legal" or "constitutionally supportable" reasons, but because only by giving the Trump and his mob what they want -- only by appeasing the fascists -- does Brooks believe the court's plummeting legitimacy can be checked. 

Brooks:  So I'm hoping and expecting that John Roberts is going to work super hard to make this 9-0 or 7-2 or something like that, and maybe, if not restore some legitimacy, at least not have a legitimacy freefall, which I think is what we're looking at.

The Alert Reader will note that Brooks never bothers to mention why the court's legitimacy is at an all-time low.  Nowhere is Clarence Thomas' open, two-fisted corruption mentioned.  Or Thomas' wife's chin-deep involvement in Trump's attempted coup.  Or the theft of the Garland seat from Obama.  Or the packing of the count with perjurous Federalist Society hacks by Trump and McConnell.  Or the overturning of Roe.   Or, or, or...

Republicans have been gut-shooting the legitimacy of the Supreme Court and the lower courts for decades, but Brooks couldn't navigate himself to this obvious fact with a team of Siri, a sextant and a dozen Sherpa guides. Instead, hacks like Brooks treat all Republican atrocities like miserable weather: it can't be stopped, no one is to blame, and the best we can do is accommodate ourselves to it.  

But the real daisy here was Jonathan Capehart, from whom I expect very little during these PSB puppet shows, and who always delivers exactly what I expect.  

Having watched the combo of "Brooks and..." off and on for decades now, the PBS in-house rules are clearly "No disagreeable disagreements" and "No calling David Brooks either stupid or a liar or a stupid liar", all of which gives Brooks an enormous amount of room in which to operate.  

And Carpehart, who obviously wants to keep this very respectable PBS gig, never crosses those lines.  And thanks to a bit of awkward stage management, the moderator carefully steered Capehart around the necessity of directly addressing any of the ridiculous bunkum that Brooks had just laid out by instead reading aloud from a statement from a Trump PR flak::

Amna Nawaz:  Well, I want to read to you part of a statement we have just gotten from the Trump campaign and, Jonathan, get your reaction to what David just said and to this.

They say in a statement from Steven Cheung, Mr. Trump's spokesman: "We welcome a fair hearing at the Supreme Court." They argue this is a bad faith election interfering, voter suppressing argument to remove him from the ballot. I'm paraphrasing here.people had said...

And Capehart stuck to that and only that and let Brooks' garbage scow of rationalizations float right past uncommented upon.

Huh.  Well I guess nothing Brooks said could be that objectionable or Carehart would have, y'know, objected, right?

And yet, just hours later at his other gig -- his MSNBC gig -- Capehart and congressman Jamie Raskin had all kinds of spicy stuff to say about the clarity of the plain test of the constitution, the severe credibility problems under which the Supreme Court operated thanks entirely to Republican perfidy, the ridiculousness of the arguments that Trump's attorneys were advancing, and so on.  

And yet, just hours earlier, under the glare of the PBS lights, Capehart could not summon a single syllable of his obviously well-formed opinions to object to Mr. David Brooks' flotilla of bullshit.

And why?

Because it's all just a show.  

Because of the ground rules of the two different puppet shows he appeared on just hours apart.

And because ... money.  Always money.

Burn The Lifeboats