If you can explain why Peggy Noonan, Harold Ford, and Sally Quinn suck so much, you can probably explain why the Sunday morning political talk shows suck so much. You can start with the problem that none of the people who host or appear on those shows have an unconventional thought in their head. About the only shortcoming these folks think our country might have is that we’re running a budget deficit. Half of what makes Bill Moyers’ programs so interesting is that his guests say things you would never hear in a million viewings of Face the Nation. Why is Frontline compelling? Because they expose big problems rather than paper them over. And even as nakedly partisan a program as The Rachel Maddow Show at least distinguishes itself by making a concerted effort to explain how our system works, or why it doesn’t.
The second, related, reason that the Sunday morning talk shows suck is that they are crushingly boring. They are boring because the guests are boring, the conversation is predictable, and there is a strange and strained conceit that they are critics of the system rather than integral parts of how the system maintains its blinkered existence.
Or, another way of looking at it is that the members of the White House Press Corp didn’t think Stephen Colbert’s performance at their Nerdprom was amusing, while the rest of America thought it was hilarious. They think they are doing God’s work, when they are really measuring each other’s peckers while people like Scooter Libby start phony wars based on faked intelligence right under their noses. And then they contribute to the Scooter Libby Defense Fund, because heaven forbid that any member of their extended club ever be held truly accountable for anything.
were for people who found Sunday Church too exciting…
The Sunday morning political talk shows are the new opiate of the masses.
The dumbing down of America starts right there, not in our schools.
Does anyone actually watch them? I find that difficult to conceptualize.
I much prefer sleeping in.
Booman does
Religiously.
More grist for his complaint mill.
Just more MSM bullshit for middle class, college-misedumacated voters.
But he doesn’t seem to get that.
The whole system is a farce.
Turn the shit off, Booman.
Get a life.
AG
Wrong again.
I haven’t watched Face the Nation more than once since I started this blog. I’ve watched the ABC show a few times, mostly when Amanpour was trying to make it about something. And I refuse to watch David Gregory, so I haven’t seen more than one or two Meet the Presses in the last couple of years. Sometimes I will watch a little of the CNN show, but never for more than a segment or two because CNN makes my skin crawl. I hate almost everyone who works there.
And I’m pretty bad about watching Chris and Melissa. Sometimes I’ll notice that they are on because of my Twitter feed and then maybe I will tune in for a while.
I admire what they are trying to do.
The rest of it is garbage.
And I refuse to watch David Gregory, so I haven’t seen more than one or two Meet the Presses in the last couple of years.
What’s funny is that the only Meet the Press I’ve seen in years upon years was the one Fluffyhead hosted when Potatohead(Russert) was on vacation in which the guests were Harold Ford, Jr., and Markos.
For someone who doesn’t pay attention to them, it seems as if there are regular posts complaining about how bad they are.
Not just the Sunday fools…the daily fools. TV, print and web. If they are paid by the mainstream media…and I include most everybody on MSNBC as well…then they are at the very least so innocuous and/or so preaching-to-one-or-another choir that they really have no effect whatsoever except to implement whatever fix is being aimed at the particular choir to which they preach.
May as well spend your time and effort complaining about the various inhabitants of the hundreds of thousands of insipid church pulpits that blowhard about other bullshit every Sunday of every week. I have sat through enough of those comedies in my job as a brass musician to see the similarities. Preacher and pundit, both w/no sense of the realities of the situation, both committed to pushing dreamtime bullshit on a cooperative and largely quiescent audience.
Why complain? They’re still gonna be there until the audience recognizes how empty the scam really is. Do something more creative with your time. Like…trying to wake said audiences the fuck up.
Over and out.
Gotta go make some real music.
Later…
AG
Rule #1 of organizing, AG: Understand what your target audience thinks they know, whether it’s true or not. That’s why monitoring corporate media is important. For that matter, that’s why monitoring the activities of politicized churches is also important.
Or, you can just sit on your ass all day complaining about how the game is fixed and nothing anybody can do will matter, thus excusing your complete apparent disinterest in doing anything to be part of any solution. Right?
My own “Rule #1?”
Do not in any way support politicians or political parties that are, have been or according to all available evidence will continue to part of the American system as it stands now…a system that is a media-controlled faux democracy, an entirely corporate-owned government that is guilty of massive domestic financial fraud and even more massive criminal acts abroad in its attempt to sustain the militarily-enforced economic imperialist position of the United States across the entire planet.
This position cannot be sustained forever, and if it crashes before the citizenry of the U.S. wakes the fuck up the results will make the Great Depression of the ’30s look like a kiddie ride.
You are essentially saying that if I am not part of the solution then I am part of the problem, and I am saying that the interests for which you work as an “organizer” (or whatever…a blogger, etc) are part of the problem.
The kinder, gentler part.
The good cop in the seemingly endless good cop/bad cop farce that has become political business as usual in the United States since the assassinations of the ’60s and ’70s.
I do not believe that “nothing anybody can do will matter,” Geov. I believe that the truth matters.
I do not believe that “justice” is what is taking place in the political life of this country, and further I do believe that MLK Jr.’s long “arc of the moral universe” is eventually going to come down on this system and come down on it hard. So I have my say on the net and I work all of my waking hours on any level I can access trying to tell the truth. Trying to get people to recognize justice and injustice, trying to get people to take their media blinders the fuck off. I do this musically…my “real” job…I do it personally and I do it by writing on the web. My so-called ” complete apparent disinterest in doing anything to be part of any solution?’ Bullshit. I am completely uninterested in supporting the murderous Permanent Government as it kills hundreds of thousands every year and ruins the lives of millions more in the name of “democracy.” In the name of profits, actually. If this scam were stopped in its tracks, would the American way of life be radically altered? Yes. We would join the rest of the world on a lower financial level. But right now…ever since the end of the Depression, actually…we are living in a financial bubble at the expense of most of the rest of humanity. That bubble has been leaking a little bit over the last decade or so and the political boobirds are presently making great noises about it, but compared to what will happen if it really bursts under the pressure of that long…and bent on justice, bet on it…arc of the moral universe? We ain’t seen nothin’ yet.
So go on about your business of supporting barack O’Bomber and his owners, and your further business of being condescending towards people who are not in agreement with you. I think that wht you are doing is morally wrong, and I fully agree with MLK Jr.’s take on the matter.
Which was, once again:
The wars that we have been waging are not just, and neither are the electoral process or the government that is created by it. I find your own “complete apparent disinterest” in doing anything to be part of any real solution to be nothing short of abhorrent, myself. But what do I know?
I know this:
And this:
And you support this:
Q: What’s your excuse?
A#1: There is none. It is morally inexcusable.
A#2: “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.”
A#3: What form will that justice take when it finally lands?
Like dis, maybe?
Let us pray that wen them chickens do come home to roost they have a moral fiber that is superior to that which has been plentifully evident in the actions of the U.S. over the past 50 years or so.
Y’all have a nice day, now.
Later…
AG
Harold Ford and Artur Davis. Not Republican and Not Democrat. Oreo’s with an ingrained sense of entitlement equal to, if not exceeding that of Mitt Romney.
man, I love what you just wrote
About the only shortcoming these folks think our country might have is that we’re running a budget deficit.
Spot on.
they are really measuring each other’s peckers while people like Scooter Libby start phony wars based on faked intelligence right under their noses.
Preach it, brother BooMan!
You know, as a nerd, I object to you calling it a nerdprom. The problem is these guys think they’re actually cool (if not as cool as the politicians). A nerd usually has a better grasp of their position.
That’s why I usually watch Up w/Chris Hayes (if I’m actually up that early) and MHP on Saturday and Sunday morning. At least they talk about real issues and bring on real guests that try to inform. Instead of having the same debate around the same table every week like the network Sunday shows do.
Spot on. UP with Chris Hayes is head and shoulders better than anything else. After Chris, GPS with Fareed is also great. Rest is trash.
They’re explaining the current Partei line to the proles, did you think they were doing something else? Sure, there’s some back and forth, but dialectic is part of the propaganda.
By “Partei”, it’s not the “D’s” or the “R’s”, it’s the “Money Partei”.
A related problem is that the hosts and guests are crushingly homogenous, and grossly unrepresentative of America as a whole. FAIR, among others, has documented this countless times. Guests are overwhelmingly white, male, (so far as we know) straight, and economically and educationally privileged. They don’t address or care about the problems facing most ordinary Americans (unemployment, health care, etc.) – except as partisan cudgels – because they’ve never experienced them, and they don’t know anyone else who’s ever experienced them.
There’s also the problem that they feature the same guests, over and over and over, whether or not they have any insight or expertise on a given topic. John McCain and Lindsay Graham must have permanent cots in the green rooms.
It’s like playing an entire game of football between the 15 and 20 yard lines (at the conservative end of the field). People wouldn’t watch that for very long, either.
posted on kos
http://www.collegehumor.com/video/6830834/mitt-romney-style-gangnam-style-parody
There is something about Sunday morning that wants something special, but you wont get there via politics, largely because of all the demented people with demented views that are treated as deep thinkers by the shallow thinkers that run the shows.
I get there via Johann Sebastian Bach, and wouldn’t dream of turning on that teevee junk on a Sunday morning.
All week long I play Bach’s piano pieces while working, the Glenn Gould versions, which nicely focus one’s thinking. But for Sunday morning, it’s Arthur Grumiaux’s wondrous violin recordings, along with a little thundering from Leopold Stokowski.
That’s Sunday Morning Special, without the need for a bath afterwards.
Not counting of course, Chris Hayes’ Up show, which happens so early it almost seems like Saturday night, and illustrates that the concept can be made to work. Maybe the other shows will become so envious that … naah.
Also, Dmitry Sitkovetsky’s Goldberg Variations for strings.
Bach will get you through times of no tv-politics better than tv-politics will get you through times of no Bach.
Look away.
You be bettah off.
Bet on it.
AG
I’ve come up with an investment strategy: when you see more ads on the Sunday shows for banks/investment advisors than for defense contractors, it’s time to sell.
given the lack of anyone, anywhere, anytime being prosecuted, let alone punished, or in any serious manner being held accountable…w/ the libby exception…[although he never served a day in jail]; l would posit that that strategy has been extremely effective.
not to mention the lucrative sinecures provided by the reichwing welfare system.
From Boo’s linked article, this said it so well:
Yup. And these producers aren’t stupid people. They’re building an entertainment product for a specific demographic. I don’t watch them much anymore for all of the reasons Booman and the linked piece gave.
But when I do watch, I make sure to watch who their national advertisers are. That can tell you who the entertainment product is being aimed at. Their advertisers tend to be very large corporations feeding at the trough of government through contracts and subsidies (defense contractors, big agribusiness, etc.), those trying to lobby the powerful for less regulation (Coal, Oil, Natural Gas, etc.) and those trying to build their brand with the very well-heeled executive type (accounting and consultancy firms, financial institutions, etc.) This “powerful, influential person” demographic is small but very valuable to the advertisers trying to reach them and they will pay enormous sums to get these people tuned in and conditioned to receive their PR or sales message. If others catch the show, that’s fine too, but they aren’t the ones whose eyeballs are being bought and sold.
Note that this target audience likes to be told that we really are a “Center-Right” nation, so they think others see things the same way they do – that they aren’t really greedy bastards. These shows, like all shows, are designed to tell its target demographic what they want to hear.
So these shows really aren’t aimed at average people or political junkies, though some of us watch them to see what new ridiculousness will come out of them. The audience they’re programming for is those who the advertisers are paying them to draw.
Contrast that with Chris Hayes and Melissa Harris-Perry’s shows. Ads for mainstream products and services that the masses might be interested in. And those shows cover (Center-Left) topics that will draw the demographic being sought by those advertisers.
I should note that part of what makes the DC Press even more out of touch is that they are making the mistake of smoking what they’re dealing – so much so that they think this artificial fantasy entertainment product being produced around them, which they are just actors in, is reality. If they did real journalism, uncovering scandal, they’d be fired because the producers of these entertainment products don’t want to report that the powerful (this highly sought-after demographic that they produce entertainment for) are really a bunch of crooks. That’s not what the target audience of their shows wants to hear.
Before regulations were changed in the 70’s and 80’s, removing the “wall” that used to have to exist between News and Entertainment shows (and the ad sales teams,) the News better reflected what was really going on. “Journalist” was a job that paid a middle-class salary, not a 6, 7 or 8 figure salary. They reported what they saw and they investigated what they thought real people (like them – they were not just actors) would find interesting. To uncover a scandal would make you famous and win you awards and keep you employed. The News Divisions of Networks usually lost money but they were required by regulation to inform, not entertain, the general public, not targeted demographics. (See the movie Network for more on that.)
Very well thought out insights. thanks
From the linked piece, one of my favorite obnoxious characters from the cast…
Whenever I see Peggy Noonan, I find her much more entertaining when I visualize a nearly-empty pitcher and glass of Mai Tai’s in front of her. Puts it all into better perspective. That’s her role in the play. If they make it into a movie, I’d cast Shirley MacLaine for the role.