I’m watching John’s show here — CBS Sunday Morning — and they’re talking to Chris Hitchens and Jon Meacham. Is nothing sacred?
Reader Interactions
33Comments
Comments are closed.
Come for the politics, stay for the snark.
Some judge needs to shut this circus down soon.
Usually wrong but never in doubt
The party of Reagan has become the party of Putin.
Republicans don’t want a speaker to lead them; they want a hostage.
Whoever he was, that guy was nuts.
Schmidt just says fuck it, opens a tea shop.
The willow is too close to the house.
Putting aside our relentless self-interest because the moral imperative is crystal clear.
Presidents are not kings, and Plaintiff is not President.
A snarling mass of vitriolic jackals
I know this must be bad for Joe Biden, I just don’t know how.
The next time the wall wtreet journal editorial board speaks the truth will be the first.
Impressively dumb. Congratulations.
You can’t love your country only when you win.
Whatever happens next week, the fight doesn’t end.
Come for the politics, stay for the snark.
Republican obstruction dressed up as bipartisanship. Again.
Being the leader of the world means to be the leader of peace.
Proof that we need a blogger ethics panel.
Is it negotiation when the other party actually wants to shoot the hostage?
Republicans do not pay their debts.
This really is a full service blog.
The republican caucus is already covering themselves with something, and it’s not glory.
Let us savor the impending downfall of lawless scoundrels who richly deserve the trouble barreling their way.
Comrade Jake
I can’t help but like Hitch a lot, even if I disagree with most everything he says.
As for Meacham, meh.
demkat620
Hitchens is somtimes cogent but Meacham is just a sanctimonious prick.
asiangrrlMN
Bleah. Stupid Sunday morning bobbleheads.
asiangrrlMN
Ack. My comment disappeared. I just wanted to pooh-pooh the Sunday morning bobbleheads!
geg6
But Doug, they actually had something to say worth listening to. Because it wasn’t political punditry. Meacham actually is a very good historian and a good writer of popular history. So his perspective is pretty valid on the subject of what does a “pivotal year” mean. And much as Hitchens is a misogynistic, racist, violent drunk, he really is a great writer and very smart. And he, too, is worth listening to in this context. Hitchens is who he is, so I don’t fault him for his craziness. I think he’s a very damaged person, so I have empathy fopr him. Meacham is a tougher case for me. I respect his work on history and biography, but his abilities in this area, absent the character flaws so evident in Hitchens, makes me see him as a complete hack in his day job. I don’t believe anyone with his historical perspective is really as big an idiot as he always is on Morning Joe and in Newsweek.
DougJ
Meacham had nothing interesting to say. I’ll grant you Hitch wasn’t bad. I liked that they filmed him having a drink before he sat down.
geg6
DougJ @5: Well, perhaps not. But I thought he made good points a general audience should hear. I thought the whole segment was good in that it was a subtle reminder to keep things in perspective and remember that history is chosen for us and it behooves us all to think about the framing devices we use.
SiubhanDuinne
Hitchens and Meacham (and others) were talking about “hinge years” in history. Interesting topic and I enjoyed the segment. I also liked the segment that just finished, about individuals who do something to make their communities better places. IMHO, CBS Sunday Morning is in an entirely different category from meetthepressfacethenationcnnabcfoxetc. I don’t necessarily love every feature they’ve ever done, but almost every week I come away from the program feeling a bit happier, more curious, better informed than I was an hour earlier. Like 60 Minutes at its best, CBS Sunday Morning reminds me why CBS was known as the “Tiffany Network” for so long. The other networks and cable channels simply have nothing that can compete, week after week, year after year.
DougJ
thought the whole segment was good in that it was a subtle reminder to keep things in perspective and remember that history is chosen for us and it behooves us all to think about the framing devices we use.
The segment was fine, but it would have been better without Hitch and Meacham .
meh
who amongst us hasn’t started a drunken brawl in a foreign country…glass houses people.
burnspbesq
“I know you’re no good for me, but free of you I’ll never be” seems an apt description of the Sunday morning bobbleheads.
Forgive me if I choose to watch Tranmere and Wolves in the FA Cup.
BTW, Leeds took out ManU.
geg6
DougJ @8: Well, they probably wouldn’t be who I’d choose to lead this discussion, but my choices wouldn’t necessarily be known to the general public. But they certainly could could have chosen worse. At least Hitch and Meacham can talk about it in the realm of some sort of reality and perspective. They could have chosen Jim DeMint or Glenn Beck or Sarah Palin or John McCain. And FSM knows what craziness would ensue.
Jim
I don’t believe anyone with his historical perspective is really as big an idiot as he always is on Morning Joe and in Newsweek.
Al Franken used to talk about his brief stint as a Newsweek columnist, during which time a “very conservative editor” was, to put it mildly, not a fan. It always seemed to me he was talking about the Good Parson. I don’t know if Meacham is a full-on, young-earth Biblical literalist, but I get the hunch he’s what would have been considered a hard-right conservative thirty or so years ago, church-going, country-club Reaganite type.
asiangrrlMN
OT: Rick Warren’s begging gets him $2.4M. Welfare at its finest!
SiubhanDuinne
@geg6: I too might have chosen other commentators if I were the segment producer, but I really don’t think that CBS Sunday Morning would have even considered asking the DeMints or Palins or Becks to do that segment — nor indeed any other. That’s not what the program does. It’s not what it’s about.
That’s also why I have to disagree in this instance with asiangrrlMN #3 and burnspbesq #10: CBSSM isn’t your typical Sunday morning “bobblehead” show. The only thing it has in common is the time slot, and I’m sorry that it so often gets lumped in with the Village punditry programs, because it’s anything but.
Selective Memory
From Daily Kos – “Remember Naught”
Don’t forget the naughts, because this decade, no matter what anyone on the right might say, was conservatism on trial. You want less taxes? You got less taxes. You want less regulation? You got less regulation. Open markets? Wide open. An illusuion of security in place of rights? Hey, presto. You want unlimited power given to military contractors so they can kick butt and take names? Man, we handed out boots and pencils by the thousands. Everything, everything, that ever showed up on a drooled-over right wing wish list got implemented — with a side order of Freedom Fries.
They will try to disown it, and God knows if I was responsible for this mess I’d be disowning it, too. But the truth is that the conservatives got everything they wanted in the decade just past, everything that they’ve claimed for forty years would make America “great again”. They didn’t fart around with any “red dog Republicans.” They rolled over their moderates and implemented a conservative dream.
What did we get for it? We got an economy in ruins, a government in massive debt, unending war, and the repudiation of the world. There’s no doubt that Republicans want you to forget the last decade, because if you remember… if you remember when you went down to the water hole and were jumped by every lunacy that ever emerged from the wet dreams of Grover Norquist and Dick Cheney, well, it’s not likely that you’d give them a chance to do it again.
Because they will. Given half a chance — less than half — they’ll do it again, only worse. Because that’s the way conservatism works. Remember when the only answer to every economic problem was “cut taxes?” We have a surplus. Good, let’s cut taxes. We have a deficit. Hey, cut taxes even more! That little motto was unchanging even when was clear that the tax cuts were increasing the burden on everyone but a wealthy few. That’s just a subset of the great conservative battle whine which is now and forever “we didn’t go far enough.” If deregulation led to a crash, it’s because we didn’t deregulate enough. If the wars aren’t won, it’s because we haven’t started enough wars. If there are people still clinging to their rights, it’s because we haven’t done enough to make them afraid.
Forget the naughts, and you’ll forget that conservatives had another chance to prove all their ideas, and that their ideas utterly and completely failed. Again.
The point of remembering bad events is to stop them from repeating. So remember, and remind others if they start to forget. Because really, this is one trip to the water hole we can’t afford to repeat.
asiangrrlMN
@SiubhanDuinne: I should retract my statement because I don’t watch any of the Sunday morning shows. Consider it retracted.
Michael D.
@asiangrrlMN:
Every single church in the country asks its congregation for money. Warren has a massive church and asked for money and he got it.
Not sure how this is any more “welfare” than a small 100-person church that gets $50,000 in donations.
I’m not a Warren fan by ANY stretch of the imagination, obviously. But to be fair, while he does a lot of crappy things, he also feeds a LOT of people and helps a LOT of homeless people.
asiangrrlMN
@Michael D.: It’s welfare by the same notion that 70% of Americans would be willing to support a public option but that is sockulism.
And, quite frankly, I think asshats like him do more harm than good.
SiubhanDuinne
@Michael D.
I think with the Warren thing it’s just that for the last few days of 2009 there was so much MSM-fueled “end of days” hype around the money appeal. Most churches and their fundraising efforts don’t qualify as national news stories (not that I think Saddleback should either, but that’s the story the media decided to carry).
@asiangrrlMN: I know you don’t watch Sunday morning tv. Just like I don’t watch any sports programs. I suspect both of us occasionally miss out on great experiences because we’ve made those choices, but so what? I’m cool with it and I’m guessing you are too. (As long as there are black kittehs in the world, right?)
AhabTRuler
Chomsky would argue that it is almost impossible to learn anything that isn’t conventional wisdom from a television show.
mcd410x
@burnspbesq: Ha, funny! Thank goodness I don’t have Setanta so I can’t see Arsenal’s 8th-choice side lose to West Ham. Can haz troophy?
Proly not.
gbear
@asiangrrlMN:
Has anyone heard from asiangrrlMN yet this morning?
I wanted to tell her that it’s still frickin’ COLD in MN this morning.
valdivia
Not to be inappropriate or anything but whenever I see Hitch I think of his adventures in personal grooming in the best known waxing salon in the city (takes months to get an appt). So I have to echo DougJ, is nothing sacred?
Brian Griffin
watching Face the Nation now… I like the way this show has just their own team talking, and isn’t bringing in coasters like Cokie Roberts or propagandists like George Will. it’s a very different dynamic.
SiubhanDuinne
@valdivia: The waxing story always made me laugh. And also, IIRC (too lazy to look it up, sue me) didn’t Hitch volunteer to be waterboarded and concluded that yeah, it’s torture?
burnspbesq
@mcd410x:
Leeds is facing a real dilemma right now.
Jermaine Beckford will never command a higher transfer fee than he will right now. And they can probably get promoted without him – my boy Mike Grella has shown that he can score consistently against League One defenses.
But they may not flourish in the Championship without Beckford.
So the question is, what’s more important to the club’s future, the player or the 10 million pounds.
Tough call.
valdivia
@SiubhanDuinne:
yes. One is tempted to make some sort of extrapolation but I better refrain. ;-) (J Sisters are well known to be very firm with their clients)
AhabTRuler
There was a little drink-soaked, ex-Trotskyïst popinjay,
who had a little curl, right in the middle of his forehead.
When he was good, he was very, very good,
but when he was bad he was horrid.
SiubhanDuinne
LOL, valdivia :-)
blahblahblah
I angrily turned off David Gregory with the double Michaels: “heck-of-a-job” Chertoff and Hayden repeatedly screaming “Fuck you!” to the television. Their lies were palpable and never ending. I despise having to unravel the presuppositions that hide their propaganda. And I especially despise the fact that they go so fast one must rewind and analyze every utterance before determining just how wildly off the mark were their lies.
The bullshit about whether Cheney’s vile statements attacking the administration’s response to the underpants bomber took the cake. He was willing to repeat the criticism – while claiming it was not his critique – while at the same time refusing to admit the double standard in play during the prior administration’s response to the shoe bomber and others.
Just turn the bullshit off.
Thank God I canceled cable television. MOFOs deserve to go out of business over this bullshit.
valdivia
@SiubhanDuinne:
I must need some coffee, I am getting started too early on the mischief :-)
mcd410x
@burnspbesq: I either saw someone yesterday saying Liverpool is taking a look or suggesting they take a look at him. Can’t remember which. It was yesterday after all.