Blog Credo

The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.

H.L. Mencken

Tuesday, April 3, 2012

Our Political Discourse Is So Stupid

That's Chuck Todd on the right.

Go here for video: http://www.c-span.org/Events/President-Obama-Speaks-on-Budget-at-Associated-Press-Luncheon/10737429590-1/

Obama gave a speech today in which he excoriated the odious Ryan/GOP budget.  It was apparently "one of those speeches" that he gives where you just stand back and say, "Damn."

In it, he described the GOP budget as "radical" and "Social Darwinism", which it is.

At the end, he wanted to tie the budget to the Etch-A-Sketch, and he mentioned that the Metamorphomitt had called it "marvelous".  He then made a joke about how "marvelous" isn't a "word you don't often hear when it comes to describing a budget.  It's a word you don't often hear generally."

So Chuck Todd - maintaining the high standards that have come to define a generation of political journalists - used a word search engine to search all of Obama's speech to find out if he ever used the word "marvelous".  Indeed, the President has used the word three times, Chuck Todd told us.

I suppose a discussion about whether the Ryan budget actually does cut billions of dollars in spending on popular programs, while further bloating the Pentagon's budget and showering tax cuts on the rich would be JUST TOO DARNED COMPLICATED for the fifteen second sound bites that typify the network news casts.

(On a side note, I used to take part in this Harris Polls and they would ask a question, "How many times have you watched a nightly news show in the last month?"  Presumably they intended this question to determine how plugged in I was to current events.  But I wonder if they slyly were asking whether or not you were a shut-in or somehow unable to control what channel was on at 6pm.  I think the fact that I AM well informed about current events is precisely because I DON'T watch the evening news with Brian Williams and his whole body melanoma.)

What was I saying....?

Ah, yes, Chuck Todd wasting precious seconds of prime news to speculate about how many times Obama used the word "marvelous".  This is so stupid, so banal, so beneath contempt that I seriously want to find Chuck Todd and slap him in the goatee.  I want to shake him and yell, "You used to be smart!  You used to try and figure things out!  Now you're engaged in the same stupid "character" nonsense and junior high sniggering that comes from spending too much time with Peggy Noonan and Maureen Dowd after they've gotten into the cooking sherry."

If Chuck Todd is going to be THIS stupid, what hope is there for Luke Russert?

To their credit, NBC left the discussion of Sarah Palin on the Today show to the godawful entertainment show that came on next.

I mean, that's just marvelous!

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