What If Jon Stewart, Instead of John King, Interviewed Dick Cheney

I believe that in order to make fun of something you need to understand it (and understand it well). Jon Stewart is professional, persistent, and well-informed. I hope he never leaves The Daily Show but chooses to expand it to an hour-long program.
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Jon Stewart v. Cramer and Anybody Else

I watch too much television. Not as much as some people, granted, but too much. I've never seen an episode of "Dancing with the Stars", "Survivor", "Lost", or "American Idol"; instead I was news and politically-oriented programming. In all my televegetablism there's one thing I've learned, and here it is.

It seems that the only people who understand current events are comedians. Before you can make fun of something you have to understand it, and it appears that comedians understand more than those who sit in the Big Chairs on cable and network television and pretend to "deliver the news". What they "deliver", for the most part, are their opinions disguised as news. Makes sense, and here's why.

Commercial television (whether cable or network) exists as a function of advertising and ratings. It's a very straighforward popularity contest; if you don't draw ratings, you don't get advertisers, and you are unpopular. Successful commercial television is more pressureful than getting a date to the prom!

There was a great segment on Mourning Joe this week with Peggy Noonan, who (and I paraphrase here) smoothly pointed out that a lot of news "broadcasting" consists of simply whipping up a tempest in a teapot over the latest trivial bit of minutiae that blips on the radar screen in order to get viewership. She was elegant and poised, truthful yet tactful, and Mourning Joe and the Gang didn't dare lip off at her. In fact, they looked like a bunch of third graders being scolded for calling names on the playground at recess.

It was a beautiful thing.

The Issue of "Using a Crisis"

Okay. Here's some more crap up with which I will not silently put.

Dear Dumbass Repub1icans:

I'm tired of the "pundits" (aka infotainment personalities like Mourning Joe) berating Rahm Emmanuel and people in the Obama Administration for saying something to the effect of "Don't let a crisis go to waste". Oooo. That sounds sooooo evil. It, like, sounds like the Demoncrats are WANTING a crisis so they can, like, use all the evil tools stored in their clear plastic backpacks to TAKE OVER THIS COUNTRY.

Republicans, your dumbass is showing and here's why.

Point first, the idea of using a national crisis for personal gain and select-cronie-advancement was thoroughly exhausted by the 43rd president (see 9/11, KatRita, and the carefully fabricated "credit" situation).

THAT is exactly why point second occurred: the Demoncrats DID take over the country in 2006 and 2008 (see the elections respective to the forementioned years).

And finally, point third. For any idiot that doesn't know what "don't waste a crisis" means, let me school you.

Crises are opportunities for turning points (see Erik Erikson). Crises are learning opportunities (vis a vis identifying what went right versus what went wrong with said situation). Crises give you a chance to strip away everything that doesn't work and figure out how to make a thing better (see the American Revolution).

And just so you know, I did not misspell "crisis" - I used the plural. And I've never used vis a vis in a piece of writing before. I am heady with the experience.

I remain not yours and sincerely unrepentant,

TheRiverWanders

The Subject of Failure

Lush Rimbaugh has had a lot to say lately about President Obama. He stated, and repeated, that he hoped Obama and his policies will fail. Okay - this is a free country and he has the right to say that. I support his right to say that.

However, I do NOT support the intention of his comment, and here's why. If Obama and his policies fail, this nation fails. I don't want that. I love this country more than I dislike Republicans. And just for the record, I've not disliked Republicans until recently, when their vituperative hatred and insufferable "conservatism" seeks to be forced upon the whole of America like some noxious fog of so-called paternalistic righteousness. I grow weary of the blatant lies and misstatements of fact that are moving this country away from peace and prosperity.

Please know that this isn't about "liking" Obama. I don't care much whether anybody else "likes" him, and I don't feel compelled to persuade people to "like" him. I'd guess that he doesn't care much whether he is "liked" so much as he is effective. But how he feels about that is up to him; it's not my concern.

What is my concern is this bloodied rhetoric that is anti-the-success-of-America, or anti-American, for short. I was so glad that CNN ran Lush's speech at CPAC live the other day; it's important to see what he's saying on behalf of his fellow "conservatives" and to know exactly who those other cheering "conservatives" are. We need to know who they are and what they think, because knowledge is power.

As for failure, we have suffered through eight years of idiocy that has literally and figuratively bankrupted this nation. But I can honestly say this: I never once, ONCE, hoped that idiot would "fail". I hoped he was right. I hoped that they counted the ballots right in Florida. I hoped we'd find WMD. I hoped Guantanamo was keeping us safe from terrorists. I hoped shopping was the right thing to do after 9/11. I hoped that invading Iraq was going to do something beneficial for the Iraqi people. I hoped that he was correct when he said "Mission Accomplished". I hoped NCLB would be adequately funded. I hoped that FEMA would handle KatRita the right way. I hoped that he was telling the truth when he said we were not torturing prisoners of the war on terror. I hoped John Yoo wasn't high on the smell of his ass when he wrote his memorandas. I hoped that a DJIA at 14k was a good sign of economic growth. I hoped that a housing bubble was a good sign of economic health. I hoped and I hoped and I hoped some more.

So much for hope. That didn't get me very far. But I can say one thing very honestly: I never wished for that idiot, nor his policies, nor President Cheney's policies, to fail. Not once. NOT EVEN ONCE. I disagreed with certain things, I wanted different things, but I NEVER ONCE WISHED FAILURE ON HIM BECAUSE THAT WAS WISHING FAILURE UPON THIS NATION. I wanted this country to succeed, no matter who was at the helm.

The misguided era of cowboy politics is over. Suck on that, Lush, you anti-American, domestic-terrorist fat bastard.