Sunday Morning Comin' Down

This last Sunday morning I unexpectedly found myself with an hour or so to kill this, so I thought I'd take a peek at what's happening back at my old stomping grounds.  The Sunday Shows.  

As most of you know, I spent a fair fraction of the past 20 years on this blog deconstructing them every week, and watching as they only got worse.

So, this Sunday, I tuned in just in time to find the host of the mortal remain of Meet the Press, Kristin Welker staring into the camera, wide-eyed, as if she were well into Day Three of a staring contest with the moon.  

Enter Republican Senator James Langford and, after the ritual exchange of insincere pleasantries, Welker began zipping down a list of prepared question  hurriedly and cursorily. Like she desperately need to go to the bathroom, or perhaps like a postal worker, late for lunch, rushing through the "Is this the right address?" and "Are you mailing any nuclear material" questionnaire.  

It was all so fucking perfunctory.  She asked...something... and Senator James Langfraud lied about it.  

Example:  What's going on in L.A. is entirely California's own fault.  Trump is trying to de-escalate things you silly woman!

A quick "But what about...?" from Welker, in imitation of a genuine follow-up question, then another question, another series of lies.  

Example:  Something something everybody know tax increases always cause revenues to go down!  Yes, the 1,000th retread of that long debunked bullshit, told with all the confidence of a man who knows he's lying to a corporate shill who would never dare call him out on it.  

And then, oops!  That's all we have time for.

Exit James Langfraud, smirking.

Enter Democratic Senator Cory Booker, and Welker started down the same list of questions, zipping through in the same order.  And since it was Booker, mentally I began a slow count, waiting for him to arrive where I knew all along he was going to end up.  

Initially he did fine.  Called Trump a naughty bad man.  Mentioned that "...a lot of these peaceful protests are being generated because the president of the United States is sowing chaos and confusion by arresting people who are showing up for their immigration hearings, who are trying to abide by the law."

Cool, but I'm still counting. 

Touched on Abrego Garcia and the "over 250 people that Donald Trump has sent there, 50 of whom, who entered our country legally who did not get a day in court..."

Still counting.

And then, as predictable as the sunrise:

Booker: Let me just tell you, we're stuck in this right-left divide right now. 

And:

Booker: This is not about right or left, it's about right or wrong. 

And

Booker: There's a trust problem for Republicans and Democrats. 

And:

Booker: Most Americans voted against both of the presidential candidates in the last election.

And now I'm not listening anymore.

But wait!  Next up... OMG!  It's NBC's own stable of gossipy wine-moms! Olivia Munn, Leigh Ann Caldwell, Sara Fagen, Symone Sanders Townsend, Melanie Zanona! Swapping the hot goss about the big Trump/Musk breakup -- or is it a fake-up?

And then I quit watching and remembered why I've nearly stopped doing the Sunday Morning Comin' Down feature.  Because the Sunday Shows are just a mindless journalistic corpse, exhausted,  shambling along on nothing but inertia, long overdue for the grave.

But since you've come all this way, just for laughs, here's a Sunday Morning Comin' Down from the Before Time of September, 2008.  The names have changed.  Everything else has gotten orders of magnitude more awful, but the awfulness tracks along exactly the same trajectory that the GOP and the media were on in 2008... and 2004... and 1998... and 1988... and so on.  

We pick up the post about 1/3rd of the way in:

...Rove is a sociopath, Ghouliana is a carnage-pimp and Fiorina sees John McSame as her political 401K (at least until he sent her back to Failed CEO Coventry for going hilariously off-message.) The GOP is owned and operated by degenerates and monsters, and this whole drama had absolutely nothing to do with raising the standards of the debate.

Nothing.

The Republican strategy for the Fall was, is, and will continue to be to contaminate the public discourse with so many lies, bluster, faux outrage and irrelevant jetsam that the sheer avalanche of it will overwhelm the swing voters (on whom this election turns) and crush the media.

It is remarkably similar to a phenomenon dubbed “thrashing” in the Big Iron days of I.T; a state in which (according to my own, very loose and civilian-friendly definition) a CPU becomes overloaded with so many simultaneous and conflicting demands for system resources that the computer loses its ability to process information, priorities and instructions altogether and basically gives up and starts flailing around randomly.

When an ignorant or inattentive public perceives that the entire system is broken, they will punish everyone; the guilty and the (relatively) innocent alike: a cultural reflex that always redounds to the benefit of the most despicable. So, while survey after survey finds the public furious and frustrated by a do-nothing Congress, ask any ten outraged citizens and I guarantee you that eight of them have absolutely no idea that the reason Congress is deadlocked is that Republicans have spent the last two years using parliamentary napalm to carpet bomb every single fucking thing.

That the same party that screamed "Up Or Down Vote!" in the headlines every time Democrats even considered blocking a vote when they were in the Majority...has now broken all records for killing votes.

This is what happens when the majority of the citizens in a democracy have no fucking idea how their government works.

Which is why, far from being a sudden freak moment of honesty from Don Karleone, this Sunday was instead a careful experiment in finding the precise GOP mendacity price-point.

Finding the exact volume and intensity at which Rovian lies and smears will cause ignorant swing voters to "thrash" and shut down, but not so much that they will start to notice that both sides are NOT equally to blame, causing backlash against the GOP.

And while we are on the subject of Conservatives appearing to spontaneously regrow a shred of conscience, as regards David Brooks’ most recent “What’s that Poo Smell?” epiphany that his Party is a bloated corpse being towed like a reeking Easter Parade balloon through the empty rituals of politics by rich fascists to the cheers of poor imbeciles...so sorry, Bobo, but the last chopper took off from roof of the Goldwater GOP years ago, with Bill Buckley and John Dean clinging to the runners.

Just ahead of the hordes of bigots, barbarians and Christopaths who have run your Party ever since.

The Party for whom you have carried water your whole career and the President with whom you have so eagerly spooned these last seven, horrifying years did not come out of nowhere. The groundwork had been laid for them, quite openly, brick-by-brick, for the last 30 years, while people like you, Bobo, got paid a small fortune to mix the mortar.

And now, with the coming of the McSame/Palin ticker, you have the unmitigated nerve to come over all shocked and disappointed, when in reality they are really nothing more than the final, utterly predictable chapter of the Modern Conservatism you have stoutly defended year after year.

A ticket that perfectly highlights the two, remaining halves of the GOP: a doddering survivor of a bygone political age desperately pawing through his underwear drawer to find one last shred of honor to pawn to win an election on behalf of a Party that long ago evicted anyone with a conscience or a soul paired up with a glittering, ferocious, softcore little Falwell-in-bunny-boots who doesn’t know a fucking thing about the world except what she’s read on the deck of "Neocon Hegemony, Jebus and You" flash cards her handlers have been drilling her on for the last three weeks... 

I Am The Liberal Media