Why do the Sunday morning gabfests keep booking Liz Cheney? She can’t be good for ratings, she has no credibility, and other conservatives have compared her to McCarthy. This isn’t a complaint, per se, because the more the Cheney family is on television, the more the Republican brand suffers.
But why, seriously? She was Deputy Assistant Secretary of State, but she probably got that job because of her father, and anyway, there are plenty of higher ranking former members of the State Department they could go with.
I understand the constant John McCain stuff. The cadavers who watch these shows like that guy, they certainly voted for him.
Who is pushing Liz Cheney? Democrats hate her, Republican higher-ups surely don’t like having her on tv, she doesn’t have a big online following. Who is getting her booked on these shows and why?
Barry
The guys running those shows probably like Cheney. And he probably has lots of favors to call in (including keeping many, many secrets).
Scott
Because she’s a Villager, and Villagers love to talk to themselves.
Michael
Dick calls in favors on a routine basis, I suspect. It is all designed to keep his fat, wrinkly ass out of the dock at the Hague.
At minimum, I want to think that he no longer feels that he can no longer leave the country without fearing arrest. Liz and her “rehabilitate Daddy, my major love interest” campaign is all about staving off a sympathetic extradition.
Royce
“…the more the Cheney family is on television, the more the Republican brand suffers.”
But the more the fascist brand grows. The very fact there is no reason for her there is slowly becoming proof there doesn’t need to be one.
Despotic power needs no license from the People, and it seeks to have you learn that. The rich are corporate, our eternal citizen Betters.
There are young ones, after all, the children left behind. They will know nothing of your silly history, or silly democracy, except its forms.
Too gloomy? Ah well. Maybe they guys “running those shows” do love Cheney, and that’s all it is.
frankdawg
I believe the Sundays barftaculars are booked by people supporting the wingnut welfare circuit. They use these things to keep certain persons at the fore to increase their book sales and speaking fees.
Yes, I am becoming a conspiracy theorist! It’s Occams razor – the simplest explanation.
sukabi
but she
probablygot that job because of her fatherSeriously, you think there’s a “probably” associated with the SD position she got? Do you really think that if she weren’t Cheney’s spawn that she would have gotten within 100 miles of being appointed to that job? She is Cheney’s “continuation plan” and that’s why she keeps getting booked on those shows…
stevie314159
If you re-think of the Sunday talk shows as “Real Asswipes of Washington D.C.”, it all makes perfect sense.
Brien Jackson
@Scott:
This. She’s neighbors with one of them I believe. Gregory maybe?
Bill
Liz’s father’s eavesdropping between 2001 and 2009 probably produced many ‘stout crowbars’ with which to bend things in the direction(s) the Cheney family prefers things to be bent.
GregB
It’s a reality show.
The Warmongering Douchebags of Georgetown.
fucen tarmal
she fills the conservative quota, the white female quota, and with maddow kicking serious ass in the gulf this week, the emerging dyke-gap.
they can throw her on there, and months from now, whenever the latest show of diversity by numbers, rather than by opinion, positions taken, topics discussed etc…they can say they have filled the dyke-gap, the best way they know how, and no matter how uninterested the constituents of that group are in being filled in that way.
KG
Here’s the really scary thought… if only because I’ve heard this somewhere, and it was not snark:
Palin/Cheney 2012.
I honestly am not sure that the GOP could bring itself to nominate women for the top two spots on the ticket, but if you start thinking of Liz Cheney as the next Republican VP candidate, as many have started to think of Palin as the next Republican presidential candidate, then it makes some sense.
Bill E Pilgrim
I don’t understand those world wrestling shows. They have these belligerent, outrageously-costumed clowns on instead of legitimate wrestlers. No one thinks that these guys are serious athletes, they’re just showboating attention-grabbers. I wonder why they keep putting them on TV?
Just saying.
Jay C
Well, DougJ: your tag “Our Failed Media Experiment” pretty much says it all right there….
Another factor, though, might be that despite virtually every other policy or program of theirs has been pretty much UTTER FAIL, the Republicans have had one outstanding success: in manipulation of the media to gain positive PR for themselves. Whether because of inherent conservatism in “MSM” management, or reflexive piss-shock at rote accusations of “liberal media bias”, MSM (and the Sunday-morning network gasfests are the mainstreamiest of the mainstream) feel obligated to showcase any and every rightwing/GOP hack – like Cheney fille – lest the well-organized bloviators to starboard grab them all for themselves. Their “message” (reeking BS as it may be) will still get out: but the rest of the Village will get shut out.
Pathetic.
Violet
The Republicans want her to run for President because she’s a good-looking (or so I hear), smart (again, hearsay), articulate (ditto) woman. The Palin/Cheney thing is not just make-believe. Among Republicans, this ticket would be the fantasy Dream Team.
Part of making her “legitimate” is getting her out there now so she’s a staple of talk shows. It’s akin to the Republican strategy of repeating something over and over until people believe you. The just keep putting her on talk shows until people take it for granted she’s got some sort of legitimacy as an expert and politician.
Jay C
@fucen tarmal:
Actually, Liz Cheney is straight, it’s her sister Mary who is the lesbian (and, apparently, the smartest one in the family, since she pretty much eschews the limelight).
cleek
she says outrageous things, which generates buzz, which draws people to watch clips of the show, which is free advertising for the show, which hopefully raises interest, blah blah blah.
Zipperupus
Because we are in hell. Reality split in 2000. The good elect went into the world where Gore won. The rest of us went through the other looking glass… Into the right tryptich of Bosch’s painting so to speak.
And now we watch as the worst of humanity takes control, destroys everything, and blames poor liberals for being mean to them.
Brian J
At least in the heads of the people who work on/for these shows, at least one of the things you have suggested–nobody likes her, she can’t be good for ratings, and so on–isn’t true.
Or perhaps she’s just always available. I don’t know of any way to prove this, but I wonder if the repetition of guests on the Sunday morning shows is due to the fact that some people just make themselves wide open to appearing more than others. It’s not an either/or thing, because there are enough people in Washington who like McCain enough to give him a platform no matter what he does, but if someone like, say, Gillibrand, who isn’t really a known quanitity, were to suddenly occupy a half Joe Lieberman, half Jonathon Turley role–always bashing Democrats while being deeply concerned–she’d probably find herself welcomed a lot more if she made herself available to appear at least three Sundays out of the month. If this is true, then the Democrats need to play the game a little better and get strong progressive voices on these shows, even if they have to surprise the hosts with what they say.
Ailuridae
Standard villager nonsense:
“Liberal critics have been outraged that the TV networks give the Cheneys so much on-air real estate for their crusade. Fox is a regular pulpit, of course, but Liz is also all over NBC, where she happens to be social friends with Meet the Press host David Gregory (whose wife worked with Liz ’s husband at the law firm Latham & Watkins), family friends with Justice Department reporter Pete Williams (Dick Cheney’s press aide when he was secretary of Defense), and neighborhood friends with Morning Joe co-host Mika Brzezinski, daughter of Carter-administration national-security adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski. When Mika criticized Dick Cheney on her show last year, the former vice-president sent her a box of chocolate cupcakes.
Cat Lady
@Zipperupus:
That really does explain everything, thanks. I need a hug.
Politically Lost
“Why do the Sunday morning gabfests keep booking Liz Cheney?”
“Democrats hate her.”
I think we have a winner.
Citizen Alan
@KG:
It’s conceivable. “The GOP” doesn’t get to choose the VP nominee. That power belongs to the Presidential nominee and recent history has shown that the party has virtually no power to overrule his choice, not even if the choice is the most disastrous one possible. If Palin gets the nomination and wants Liz Cheney, then Liz Cheney will be the VP nominee.
That said, while I think Palin has a good chance of getting the nomination if she wants it (since the GOP is now an apocalyptic cult that venerates her like she was the Virgin Mary), I don’t think she really wants it. I think she’s basically a grifter, and being President is too little pay and too much chance of exposure. Also, if she did get it, I don’t think she’d choose Cheney or any other woman as her running mate. Honestly, I can’t imagine who she’d pick as her VP. Someone who she thinks would have no chance to upstage her in any way, so probably a Quayle-esque unknown.
El Cid
@Politically Lost: Exactly. In other words, she pisses off and insults liberals, therefore, a worthy guest. And one who’s higher profile than Urk Urkson.
Brian J
@fucen tarmal:
I’m pretty sure you are thinking of the wrong Cheney. Liz is the happily married lawyer/soccer mom who protects the nation from terrorists in between down-to-earth trips in the minivan. Mary Cheney is the one who wears the tool belt and listens to the Indigo Girls.
fucen tarmal
@Jay C:
my bad, didn’t know there was more than one cheney daughter.then there really is no reason for her to be on.
Cat Lady
@Citizen Alan:
The GOP wouldn’t let McCain pick Lieberman who he wanted to pick very very badly, so there goes that theory.
sukabi
@fucen tarmal: she’s not Cheney’s lesbian daughter, she’s the war-mongering one.
maya
It stands to reason that the recipient egg of the most awesome sperm from The Most Powerful Vice President in the Recorded History of Civilization, Eva is always spongeworthy.
Bill H
I think there is a point in the “because she is available” bit. Do you ever see anyone on these shows other than the ongoing circle jerk? Of course not. No one with any actual intelligence is going to go on those shows an subject themselves to the inane “questioning” of the mindless idiots who host those shows.
CaseyL
@Zipperupus:
This is scarily plausible, and I’m not sure one even needs to believe in “Hell.” Just karma, on a national as well as personal level.
Joining a Buddhist nunnery is starting to look awfully good as a lifestyle choice…
(Though I wonder what all those drowning polar bears in the Arctic, and the brown pelicans, turtles, etc., in the Gulf did to deserve being here.)
Tattoosydney
@maya:
Oh my god, I just threw up in my mouth. Thanks.
o kanis
She is reliable on Israel. Period.
Showcase her reliability, then watch the campaign moola roll in once she gets going.
No mystery.
Her father proved ultra reliable to the zionist cause, re Iraq, performed valuable services, so…why not the daughter.
Those willfully immune to political reality, will, of course, be puzzled why the media/Village is giving her a leg up.
The rest is political frou frou.
Brachiator
David Letterman and other talk shows would book Tony Randle when a guest cancelled or looked to be a total boring stiff in pre-show interviews. They knew that with Randle they would get a reliable, well-known face who could tell a couple of jokes and stories and painlessly fill the hour.
All the pundit shows have a rolodex of Reliables: people who look reasonably personable, know how to play to the camera, and who can gab about practically any topic. If they can also provide a little friction or controversy, so much the better.
You could have in your hand a cure for cancer and a quick and failsafe way of plugging the Gulf Oil spill, but if you have hard to cover visual flaws, even a mild stutter or a ghastly tv presence, you ain’t getting on the air. Ever.
By the way, the same applies as well on talk radio. I have listened to a host cut a caller off who was plodding but making a damned good and subtle point about Iraq and Afghanistan because the guy was boring.
My ideal world would be a pundit show that had neither a permanent host, nor a permanent roundtable of commentators (yeah, I’m talking ’bout you George Will and Cokie Roberts and all your variants), but would assemble a panel based on expertise as well as their ability to deliver snappy patter.
It ain’t gonna happen because ultimately it’s all about entertainment.
Citizen Alan
@Ailuridae:
Well, I was going to suggest that David Gregory always needs a two-sided argument so that he can sit in the middle and pretend to be impartial, and Liz Cheney is the only person willing to go on TV and argue in favor of torture, but your explanation is probably more accurate. Liz Cheney is on Meet the Press because D.C. is an incestuous Peyton Place.
I wonder if Gregory and Cheney are having an affair. Even if they aren’t I wonder if I’ll go to hell if I start spreading that rumor.
Violet
@Citizen Alan:
Agreed. But don’t discount the appeal of the “title” (to use Palin’s own word) of President of the United States. There are few “titles” that come with as much power. And Palin likes to have power. I think her lazy, grifter side will be at war with her power and fame hungry side and she will be torn on whether or not to run.
But if she does run, I think it’s not as likely that she picks Liz Cheney as her VP because Liz is attractive and smart and Mean Girls don’t generally like to have others like them in direct competition. I think she might pick an old white guy to give her ticket “gravitas” (Obama sort of went with this option). The man might be a “grandma’s heartthrob” a la Biden, or ugly so as to confer even more seriousness.
The other option would be to go with someone like Bachmann so they can seriously double down on the crazy. Bachmann has been an elected Congresswoman, so would bring a slightly different background to the ticket.
Ultimately she’d end up being an even worse version of W. as President. She’d be just a figurehead while her advisers ran the show. It would be a very scary time.
Citizen Alan
@Cat Lady:
Okay, wow, forgot all about that. Damn, there were people at the highest levels of the GOP who had enough pull to veto Lieberman but they approved of Palin? The GOP leadership is in more trouble than I thought.
Zipperupus
Cat Lady:
Sending hugs your way. Believe me, when Nader dies I’ll piss on his grave.
Citizen Alan
@CaseyL:
Perhaps it’s only the evil polar bears, pelicans and turtles. All those adorable polar bears who frolicked around Christmas trees in sweaters and toboggans while drinking Coca-Cola all went to the happy Al Gore universe.
Someone tell Stephen Hawking about this. Maybe quantum mechanics can save us from the Republicans.
JGabriel
John Cole @ Top:
Somebody that Daddy Cheney has pull with. The orders to put Baby Cheney on are probably coming from the CEO or Board of Directors.
.
Citizen Alan
@Citizen Alan:
Out of curiosity, can someone tell me what triggered the mod filter in the post I’m replying to (assuming it’s not so scandalous that it never gets approved).
Nellcote
@Citizen Alan:
She’d go rogue and pick Todd aka First Dude.
Edwin
@Bill E Pilgrim:
You have my vote for best answer. It really is just a form of professional wrestling. I used to watch this stuff back when I was, like, 13.
Jennifer
Well, it could be worse. She’ll be on the This Weak roundtable – with Markos and Arianna Huffington. Odds are good that the extremetly uncivil point that Liz’s dad is the one individual most responsible for the disaster in the Gulf will be raised.
I had noted about a week ago at my joint that the catastrophe had so far had one silver lining – that being the absence of all things Cheney from our discourse. I’m surprised to see one of them poking their heads out from their undisclosed locations while that whole mess is still growing. I think after it’s all done, she and her handlers may decide it wasn’t the best idea to be “available” for this one.
LikeableInMyOwnWay
Couple things.
They book her because she can do the job, which is representing the opposition to Obama on foreign policy. She sells a certain brand of propaganda and has the famous name.
I think that we should never underestimate the shallowness of these media operations. These are the same people who keep paying Pat Buchanan to show up at 5 am to represent the morons on Morning Joe all the time.
Also, I am pretty sure that the Noise Machine(tm) works the producers of these shows and pimps her to them constantly.
I have recently been exposed to some realtime effects of that noise machine, and without getting into a long TMI story … that machine is big, it is prolific, it is organized, and it is relentless. I don’t think that the Dem world has anything like it, and I don’t think that the media world can resist it.
Citizen Alan
@Nellcote:
No. I thought about that, but the Toddster keeps a very low profile. I think Sarah’s the face while Todd’s the leg-breaker. I’m undecided on which of them is really the ringleader.
Zipperupus
CaseyL:
The victims of high tragedy are nearly always the innocent. When the audience watches Hamlet, they don’t realize that it is them, the symbolic citizens, who will starve and go to war because Hamlet dithered.
It should be our job in a democracy to participate, support, and vote en masse for the best among us. Because when we fail at our job, the worst and most devious take power, live out their neuroses, and punish the world with their petty madness.
The polar bears are collateral damage in our inability to keep the nation from becoming an empire of petty tyrants and well-meaning sellouts.
60th Street
Liz will go where her father won’t in order to reinforce the Cheney brand, that’s why.
I know the cliche is a little overused, but it’s very Sith of them. e.g. Dark Lord/Apprentice.
I’m glad Kos is going to be on the panel, too (first time?) and I trust he’ll do his share of smacking her down. between him and Arianna, I’m sure they’ll make short work of the Fifth Deferment.
Nellcote
@Citizen Alan:
It was interesting when her dad said that Sarah wasn’t really the decision maker. Typically, no follow up Q by the media.
Cathie from Canada
In addition to all of the above, Cheney is a good-looking blonde. Never underestimate the importance of eye candy to the American media, who think it is newsworthy to report that Kagan doesn’t wear pretty clothes, who “sit up” when Palin winks, who are interested in Michelle’s cleavage.
Violet
@Citizen Alan:
Don’t know, but guessing it could be the word ‘in cest uous.’
Quiddity
They book Liz Cheney because they can’t get Sarah Palin.
Sasha
The more any Cheney is in the spotlight, the more difficult it becomes to arrest, try, or extradite Dick Cheney (the more the Cheneys are in the spotlight and critiquing the current administration and its policies, the more they and their pals can claim that any legitimate action against Biggus Dickus is actually a political move to silence Obama’s critics).
Cathie from Canada
@Cathie from Canada:
And here’s another example:
http://rawstory.com/rs/2010/0604/rightwingnews-ranks-important-pundit-hotness/
SIA
@ Zipperupus:
“Because we are in hell. Reality split in 2000. The good elect went into the world where Gore won. The rest of us went through the other looking glass… Into the right tryptich of Bosch’s painting so to speak. And now we watch as the worst of humanity takes control, destroys everything, and blames poor liberals for being mean to them.”
And Liz is the one in the painting coming out of Dick’s ass.
JGabriel
@Violet:
Definitely an old white guy. Palin won’t pick another woman to run with her if she gets the Pres. nomination, for the same reason Obama didn’t pick Clinton: when your own campaign is a first, you don’t double down on firsts with your VP nom.
My bet is on Gingrich, should it come to that. Palin is a GOPAC girl from way back. Alternately, some old campaign adviser pulls a Cheney, nominates himself, and Palin goes along with that.
.
JGabriel
@SIA:
That really explains quite a lot.
.
ruemara
Everyone’s scared of being locked in the man-sized safe.
Will
They always book her because she always says something “controversial”. This generates “news”, which then generates “buzz” for the show. I think that’s all there is to it.
Citizen Alan
@JGabriel:
Oh my God that would be so AWESOME. Gingrich, the “intellectual titan” of the modern GOP, would have to demean himself utterly by voluntarily becoming second fiddle to the dumbest candidate in living memory. And then they would jointly suffer a humiliating, crushing defeat. And then, they would spend the rest of their lives blaming each other for the loss and perpetually tearing the GOP apart with their rivalry.
Probably won’t happy, but it’s nice to contemplate.
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
@Brachiator:
My ideal world would be a pundit show where the pundits are kidnapped at gunpoint out of their Georgetown homes in the middle of the night and the following morning delivered wearing nothing but a cowbell and equiped with nothing but a rubber chicken onto a small tropical island infested with hungry velociraptors, with cameras positioned everywhere to record the ensuing carnage. Each pundit would be assigned a designated charity and the one to survive the longest before being eaten would have some of the proceeds donated to his/her charity.
It would entertaining as all hell and make a boatload of money on payperview, but the technology still needs a little work.
FlipYrWhig
@Cathie from Canada:
Really? She looks like Dick Cheney without the glasses. She even talks out of the side of her mouth like he does. I don’t see it. Unless “blonde” overwhelms all other criteria for good-looking-ness, she ain’t.
patrick II
“but why seriously?”
You’re missing the whole point of elitism. That is hard to believe considering what this country has been through the last ten years. Why did gwb become president? (do you think that would have happened if his name was smith?) Why do bankers walk away with tens of millions in pay after they companies they ran lose billions? Why did 27 coal miners die so that profits might be a little higher for the mine owners? why is Tony Hayward telling fisherman its just food poisoning that makes them sick when they try and and clean up his chemical stew?
Because they can.
You had best learn who your betters are boy.
shortstop
OT, I was on a 12-hour flight last week with Liz Cheney’s good (or perhaps even eviler) twin sitting across the aisle from me. I didn’t sleep a wink and I kept a close eye on my iPod.
Zuzu's Petals
That’s the understatement of the year.
Consider the (hugely oversimplified) State Department flow chart:
Cheney was one of numerous Deputies who reported to one of numerous Principal Deputies who report to one of eight Assistant Secs who report to one of six Under Secs who report to the Deputy Sec who reports to the Secretary.
Professionally speaking, she was a speck on a dot on a freckle on the nose of the State Department. But she had a title!
Zuzu's Petals
@60th Street:
I think the powers behind her also know that the more exposure she gets, the more recognizable her name and face, the better her chances when (not if) she runs for office.
No such thing as bad publicity and all that.
tomvox1
Liz Cheney. Hmmmm… I’m thinking of a word that rhymes with “punt” but starts with a different letter.
Mike G
The same people who pushed the dumbass smirking chimp Bush. Their experience with foisting willfully-ignorant, easily-manipulated mediocrity all the way to the White House has encouraged them to try again.
It’s like when you convince your baby sister that mud is delicious chocolate, she eats it, and actually smiles and thanks you; you can’t believe your luck. Drunk with arrogance and amazed at what shallow packaged crap with a name brand Repigs will actually buy, they’re daring each other to sell someone even worse and will keep lowering the bar until they actually fail.
Redshirt
I’ve been saying we’re in Hell for years! I think the split goes further back than 2000, however. I think Nancy Reagan’s psychic caused it, in 1984.
gwangung
@Mike G: Yeah, but Liz Cheney has some smarts. How it fell apart with Bush was that he was such a total nincompoop that even the rubes couldn’t fail to notice.
mclaren
The people who are bankrolling the astroturf Tea Partiers (the Koch family, the Scaifes, the Mellons, et al.) want to position Liz Cheney as a credible public figure so when it comes time to bankroll her run for high office, she’ll be seen as a Very Serious Person.
The Democrats could learn a lot from this. It’s how you create the illusion of a credible public figure from an ignorant incompetent putz. The supreme example, of course, remains the very old very ignorant crackpot Ronald Reagan, who at the end of more than a decade of this kind of media massaging, emerged as Someone To Be Taken Seriously, rather than a kook formerly in charge of the Hollywood blacklist who was given to gibbering about End Times.
As to why the media play along…the media runs on cash. They get their marching orders from the billionaires who hold large blocks of stock. It’s not as crude as phoning up the producer of Meet the Press and telling him to book Liz Cheney — instead, the Scaifes and Kochs make sure to hire as producer someone who already considers Liz Cheney and Dick Armey and Newt Gingrich and John McCain to be Very Serious People worth of interviewing on national TV.
Paul in KY
@Zipperupus: I have wondered about that myself. I swear I felt something ‘otherwordly’ back then at end of 2000.
Mrs. Tarquin Biscuitbarrel
After the one time that Liz Cheney tried to fix pancakes for the kids, and they pushed them around on their plates and said that the nanny makes MUCH better ones… well, ever since then, Liz will do ANYTHING to get out of the house on Sunday mornings.