Good evening, cats & kittens. While our esteemed hostess is taking a wee bit of well-deserved away-from time, I have the honor of dropping a post or two in your laps. The only things I promised her was that A) my posting would be irregular and shot through with as many typos as kernels of corns in a state fair outhouse, and, B) that I would try to pick as many pointless, peevish fights with as many of my aggressively relentless blogging brother and sisters as possible as fast as possible.
So let it be done.
Today at the Gasbag Jamboree, all the usual wind-up toy people juggled all the usual shuck and humbug.
Alex Pareene at Salon surveys the wreckage:
Watching the Sunday shows so you don’t have to
Today, some centrist pundits and legislators solved the sequester by demanding “balance” and “leadership”
Here’s what I learned this morning on “the Sunday shows,” the three network news panel programs that define the parameters of the national debate for elite Washington: No one wants the sequester to happen, if the sequester happens it will be because Barack Obama failed to show leadership, what we need is a “balanced approach” to deficit reduction, the sequester should happen but in a smarter way, video games may not cause violence but they are gross, and “Zero Dark Thirty” is the best film of the year in part because John McCain disliked it.
I don’t watch the Sunday shows. Basically ever. I watch clips if something particularly stupid happened, but for the most part, you can get everything you need to know about what happens on these shows by readingthe brilliant liveblog by the Huffington Post’s Jason Linkins, America’s foremost Sunday show interpreter. While no oneshould pay attention to these shows, as long asmillions of Americans watch them under the mistaken impression that they’re seeing serious discussions of our most pressing issues with our wisest media observers and most influential political leaders, they should probably be monitored.
…
Not to worry, Alex: a handful of hardy blogger Rangers have been monitoring their transmissions for years.
We watch for the One.
We snark for the One (note the young Walter White, before he became a weaponized capitalist.)
Yes, the Sunday Mouse Circus really is just as bad as you imagine.
And yes, it really is getting worse with each iteration.
See you good people later.
Welcome to the monkey house, Drifty.
Drifty –
But Dame Noonington of the Brooklyn Nooningtons was in good form today. I think she finally got the worm in the Tequila bottle.
Regards,
Tengrain
I often imagine Hell to be endless repeats of the Sunday shows (interspersed, of course, with eating shit and being sodomized by Henry Kissinger for comic relief).
They were never that good (the only thing worth watching on Sunday morning was Charles Kuralt’s show), but they all made a serious swerve into the ditch after 9/11. Through all of the Zeroes, they were sort of a cross between the Three Amigos (Holy Joe, Grandpa Walnuts and Huckleberry) and State Terrorism `R Us.
Back around 1960, a group of Soviet academics was invited to the U.S. (part of a belated and belabored exchange program that resulted from Nixon’s debate with Khrushchev), and they were pretty much told, go where you like and see what you like. A few weeks later, they got together, compared notes, and expressed amazement with the United States. “With a free press, how do you obtain such conformity of opinion in the population?”
If anyone here had been honest with them, they would have replied, “the Sunday morning news shows, of course.”
Glad to see you here, Driftglass – I’m a fan.
Tommy
Like the world, the Internet just keeps getting smaller. 🙂
Montag, sounds like you’re describing one of the lesser circles…once you get to REAL hell, they cut out the shit-eating and Kissinger sodomizing…