It’s always heartening to see someone understand one of life’s eternal verities at such a tender age. Yes, Luke, you’re right: women are unable to understand reason, only emotion. I’m pretty sure this isn’t a fake feed, but sometimes I’m not sure:
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kd bart
If his last name wasn’t Russert, Luke might be managing a Verizon Wireless store by now if he were lucky.
ronin122
How cute, only a few years after he inherited the position and he’s already able to be an above-average hack. Good for him, maybe in 2016 he’ll be in the major leagues of our failed media establishment.
cathyx
The democratic party obviously isn’t the manly party.
f space that
Clinton is going to lay the smack down on the economics tonight. This guy is clearly a third rate intellect, oh wait, he fits right in.
dmsilev
“Michelle Obama occasionally excretes salty water from glands in proximity to her visual receptors. That makes her just like John Boehner.”
Coming soon: “Ted Kennedy no longer has a pulse. That makes him just like Mitt Romney.”
Anya
I hate that little dweeb with passion. His career is an indictment of the profession of teevee journalism. NBC should be ashamed for unleashing on the world that empty suite.
japa21
Interesting that he calls the GOP the party of the head, since all they have done since 1980 is play on the emotions, particularly fear, of the electorate.
I am sure that his dad, wherever he may be, is so proud of his son. But then again, maybe not.
Mark S.
Every time I see Luke on TV, I half-expect him to chug a beer and crush the can on his head.
red dog
Luke, like Mitt, was born on third and think they have the right to brag about their home run…or 3 hour marathon. Does this son Russert have a Cayman account too?
Belafon (formerly anonevent)
@japa21: Tim wasn’t above every trait of the current media, but I think he would have slapped his son over this stuff.
gnomedad
FTFY.
Joy
I’m old enough to remember serious journalists, when the news was actually the news and not a reality TV show. In those days, Luke Russert would have been canned (if given the job at all) and CNN would be ashamed to have Erick Erickson and Dana Loesch on their network. Fox would never have made it to the status of a major network. Ahhh, the good old days and I’m only 55 but it seems like a century ago.
Ann Rynd
Luke loves his mom. Misses watching football and writing numbers on a white board with his manly dad. Confused kid.
Patrick
What insight. Why doesn’t he have his own show yet, along Jonah Goldberg? It could called Nepoboys and would be filled with trenchant analysis such as this. He sees the big picture!
jrg
This imbecile does realize the S&P500 was at around 800, and we were shedding 800k jobs/month in late ’08, doesn’t he? Or was he still in middle school back then?
Culture of Truth
This has all be trite CW for years and years.
But for what it’s worth, being poor is hard economic reality.
Comrade Javamanphil
@kd bart: Managing?
Alex S.
They must have created him in a lab out of concentrated villager blood and kept him in an artificial environment for his whole life.
MattF
Not worth mocking.
Mudge
I wonder why Russert keeps alluding to the brain..given his performance in his job, and these posts, it is obvious he lacks a functional one. He is the Scarecrow without any hope of access to a Wizard.
Culture of Truth
He should not give up his day job
Elizabelle
@Joy:
I remember too, and it’s why we have Republicans who can lie and know they’ll get away with it, and an audience that would rather watch reality shows than intelligently presented information about something that truly matters to them.
Anyhoo, ignore the Russert twig. Some good programming on now:
C-Span now: National Journal round-up on House and Senate races, from Charlotte. Chris Van Hollen, John Dickerson of CBS News and Reid Wilson, editor of Hotline
streaming live on nationaljournal.com and atlantic.com
#dailybriefings
dr. bloor
“Fat, drunk and stupid is no way to go through life, son.”
Can’t wait to see Luke’s anatomically-themed noodlings after Clinton rips Romney a new asshole.
Elizabelle
@gnomedad:
True, that.
Elizabelle
@Anya:
NBC is the Nepotism Broadcasting Network.
The lesser Russert.
Jenna Bush Hager.
Chelsea Clinton.
Am sure I’m missing a few.
Seanly
Don’t watch anything with Lil’ Russert, but i know CNN’s Kyra Phillips is a huge idiot. She’s nothing but a pusher of the most hackneyed and incorrect political “wisdom”. She grudgingly admitted Michelle rocked the house and then wondered how Barack would be welcomed on Thursday since he’s not as popular as his wife. Kyra Phillips should just go back to fluffing the Republicans.
jrg
Loving the “RNC more debt focused” crap. I wonder where that debt clock was from 2000-2008. Oh, that’s right “deficits don’t matter”. Hard economic times, indeed.
What a child.
suzanne
@Mark S.:
I think that would display more skill and coordination and planning than this douchenozzle exhibits currently.
GOOD. LORD.
I take comfort in the fact that he’s in the minorityânone of the other pundits seem to think that the GOP gave us anything even in the same ZIP code as policy specifics or details of HOW THEY ACTUALLY PLAN TO DO THINGS.
Once again…. GOOD. LORD.
aimai
@Patrick:
Nepo-Man. The more you watch, the stupider you’d get.
aimai
Liz
Can I just say I’ve been at the same parties as this guy back when he was at Boston College, and he is an even bigger diuchewafgle in real life.
shortstop
Lukey could crunch the numbers of the Republican plan and discover that the Dems are the only ones taking on the “hard economic realities.” He could…if men weren’t so bad at math.
Kane
I saw that tweet about Boehner scroll across the screen on MSNBC immediately following Michelle Obama’s speech. The comment was crass, out of line and so detached. How someone could offer such a snide remark about a woman’s genuine tears in speaking about her children is beyond me.
Disco
Hard to blame him. He’s fallen deeply into the MSM culture. Don’t say anything at all resembling reality or analytical. Just make with the fluff.
Disco
Brokaw on Stewart last night was particularly disappointing. He had almost nothing substantive to say regarding Paul Ryan’s lies. Luckily Stewart sort of called him on it.
BGinCHI
@Mark S.: No way he’d work that hard.
different-church-lady
Ironic that he should be the one to note a switcheroo — for years the CW was that Dems lost elections because they went for the brain and the electorate only responded to the heart.
Elizabelle
@Disco:
Isn’t that why one books Tom Brokaw?
He ain’t no Edward R Murrow. Maybe Paul Harvey.
Kane
If the RNC was aiming towards the brain, they missed.
Comrade Mary
Fuck you, Luke Russert.
Paul
@Disco:
I think Brokaw is a Republican. He has said he listens to Rush Limbaugh. And based on how he acted after Chris Matthews criticized Priebus for making racist ads, it left little doubt in my mind which party he prefers, ie the party that loves to spend money (GOP).
FlipYrWhig
@Disco: Tom Brokaw has always been an idiot. It’s only in retrospect that he started to seem like an eminence grise. For that matter, in retrospect, Ted Koppel looks like a genius, while in real time he was a tabloidizing vacuity. But the media has been getting worse for generations, so, no matter when you first checked in, that was almost certainly the high point. But I’m not sure how much lower than Luke Russert it’s possible to go. He’s the drunk, grabby preppy every college-age woman knows to avoid.
Cacti
@Paul:
Rich white dude is R, go figure.
FlipYrWhig
@Paul: He’s an ill-informed multimillionaire with a fixation on a golden age of “values.” Of course he’s a Republican.
Villago Delenda Est
Luke Russert, poster boy for our current “meritocracy”.
Mr Stagger Lee
Luke Russert the Honey Boo Boo meets Small Town Security in the Village.
Dennis SGMM
@Joy:
I can remember when the evening news ended with
“Goodnight, David.”
“Goodnight, Chet.”
1badbaba3
‘Lil Luke hasn’t been the same since the skivvs-down over-the-knee buttspank he got from Martin Bashir a few months back. He is headed down that slippery slope away from rill journalism all the way to Pox Noise. After the bad Boner slag-off, looks like it will be sooner rather than later.
Redleg
The Republicans arguments appeal to the head? Ugghhh. Republican economic “theory” begins and ends with tax cuts for the wealthy and for corporations. If economic growth is strong- tax cuts; if economic growth is weak- more tax cuts. If we’re at war- tax cuts. If we have a giant deficit- more tax cuts. Lather, rinse, repeat.
Tom65
Seven years of college, down the drain!
catclub
Are you better off than 4 years ago? Hell yeah! George Bush was President then and Dick Cheney was VP.
Are you better off than 4 years ago? Ask Osama bin Laden.
Are you better off than 4 years ago? Let me see, then: losing 600,000 jobs every month, economy collapsing at 6%/yr rate. Now: gaining 150-200k jobs every month, economy growing,but slowly. Yes, actually.
Dennis SGMM
From reading this thread I have learned that Luke Russert is the spawn of the late news clown Tim Russert. I’m going to go out on a limb and assume that his his surname granted him some sort of position in news-clownery.
Is that correct?
jl
OK, stop the Luke bashing.
The GOP ‘facts’ and ‘arguments’ are real brain teasers. Sort of like ‘spot the fallacy’ problems on a test. In that sense, real appeals to the head.
Surely, that is what he meant. Surely. Must have been some coherent thought in there. There must have been. Otherwise he would not be a teevee pundit, right?
catclub
@Kane: Are you suggesting that Boehner does not feel as fondly for money and booze as Michelle does for her children? I think he does.
Howlin Wolfe
He’s a genius at sniffing out the Village narrative! He’s HACKTACULAR!
Hoodie
@FlipYrWhig: While I generally agree, broadcast news has always been pretty crappy with the exception of an aberrant period at CBS in the 60’s and early 70’s, and a brief interlude at CNN in the 80’s when Ted Turner ran the joint. Huntley and Brinkley were pretty mediocre. ABC had Howard K. Smith, who sucked big time. This Week with David Brinkley was marginally better than This Week with Sam Donaldson, which in turn was marginally better than This Week with George the Midget. They all sucked ass, however. Actually, I like Brian Williams better than Brokaw, who is an overrated pompous ass that was lightweight joke when he started on the Today Show. At least Williams has a self-deprecating sense of humor. Newspapers, however, have gone to seed.
Southern Beale
On CBS they were interviewing Chuck Schumer and tried to make a big deal about how the Democratic Party platform left out making Jerusalem the capital of Israel, first time ever the platform didn’t mention it? Anyone know what the fuck this is about? I mean, I know about the issue in general and implications for the whole Israel-Palestine thing but I had no idea it was in the platform before. Honestly I could give a fuck, why am I supposed to get my panties in a knot because the issue isn’t in the fucking platform? Or is this desperate grasping by Republicans, trying to peel away Jewish voters? Other than the real militant folks like Pam whatserface, who aren’t voting Dem anyway, I’m not sure most Jewish voters care? It certainly has never come up with my Jewish friends.
Culture of Truth
Are we better off than when the Germans bombed Pearl Harbor?!?!
jl
You won;’t be fools,
Follow these rules
And take these clues
On the media fools
When they talk about the Democrats
Groucho Marx, Whatever it is, I’m against it.
http://youtu.be/xHash5takWU
Sly
@Tom65:
Please keep Luke Russert away from the Peace Corps.
Judas Escargot, Acerbic Prophet of the Mighty Potato God
@Anya:
The Boston College campus is littered with entitled dweebs from wealthy Catholic families who still consider themselves, against all evidence, to be True Men of the People (another BC Alumnus: Scott Brown).
That said, notice how young Luke’s on the floor in Charlotte, while Mssrs. Klein and Hayes are onscreen giving analysis. There’s hope for NBC yet.
aimai
The republicans don’t seem to know that “eminence grise” doesn’t mean “grey haired dude.”
But aside from that what pisses me off as a woman is the bipolar attacks from the Republican team on women–one minute we are nothing but ambulatory, leaking, oozing, infected, incubators for more important fetuses. Then next they are assuring us that we care nothing for “social issues” but only want jobs, jobs, jobs. We’re feminazis who put work ahead of family values and we are hard headed realists who see past the Democratic attempts to whip up an imaginary “war on women” by, you know, alluding to actual Republican legislation which is a war on women.
What the fuck? Between my hysteria and my hard headed realism I don’t know which way is up or down. Women! Can’t live with ’em, can’t honor kill ’em for gettin’ “raped” or suing for custody or having an abortion–unless you are in a fully Republican state.
aimai
Culture of Truth
I kind of like B. Williams too, but he definitely said he listens to Rush every day, not sure about Brokaw, who can be tolerable politically. For me, Rush is evil and it’s kind of a deal breaker.
Napoleon
OT, but what was Kal Penn’s possible BJ shout out last night?
FlipYrWhig
@Judas Escargot, Acerbic Prophet of the Mighty Potato God: IIRC Scott Brown isn’t from a wealthy family, but, unfortunately, that doesn’t stop him from being a proud-of-himself dickface.
CardinalRed
The anti-education party is the party of the head eh? Unbelievable. They are so lost in Newspeak, you just have to assume the exact opposite of everything they say.
FlipYrWhig
@Napoleon: Is this it? He said something about how to get involved with the campaign you could just go to a website, so “you don’t even have to wear pants.”
jl
What bugs me about the last Luke tweet is, what was the most famous instance of Boehner getting teary eyed over ‘oppotuntiies’ for children?
That was a rather tawdry display in the scramble to CYA after the cover up of the perv, weren’t it?
Or is there something more recent I am not aware of?
jl
@Napoleon: No pants OK.
Napoleon
@FlipYrWhig:
I guess it could but to be honest if that is what someone was refering to in a thread from last night I do not see it as a possible shout out to the site.
FlipYrWhig
@CardinalRed: Given that the preponderance of Republicans are Republicans because they resent having their hard-earned money going to support Negroes and illegals, and the rest are Republicans because they think Democrats like to kill babies, I don’t think there’s an awful lot of appeal to the cerebrum there.
FlipYrWhig
@jl: The most famous incident was in a 60 Minutes interview.
@Napoleon: Me neither.
jl
@FlipYrWhig: OK, thanks. I will look for it and see what Boehner was up to.
Just Some Fuckhead
Christ, what a complete fucking retard.
FlipYrWhig
@Culture of Truth: Brian Williams is terribly misplaced in The News. On the other hand, I think he would be a solid character actor in comedies, cast as the lead’s best friend or co-worker. He’s likeable as a human being but sucks at his actual job, IMHO.
slag
@Napoleon: The whole pantsless thing is a well-known trope in our shared view of slacker culture. I wouldn’t put too much stock in it.
pseudonymous in nc
As I said yesterday, Potato Head Tim’s death has given us Dave Gregory out of his depth at MtP, Chuck Todd out of his depth as WH correspondent, and Li’l Luke out of his depth working in journalism.
DonkeyKong
Yes, the RNC was aiming for the brain in a Lee Harvey Oswald sorta way. See I can be tasteless and crass too. Can I haz a plum network jerb now?
Violet
@pseudonymous in nc: Yeah, it’s three for the price of one.
Judas Escargot, Acerbic Prophet of the Mighty Potato God
@FlipYrWhig:
Scott Brown’s been pushing sob stories about his childhood for this election, but he grew up in Wakefield (median income today: $85,000) and spent summers in Newburyport, where his father was on the city council for nearly two decades. (None of the childhood poverty stuff was on wikipedia until a couple of months ago). OK, his parents got divorced, and a camp counselor abused him, which is terrible– but he grew up solid middle class.
As someone who really did grow up on food stamps in the city, I can assure you that Scott Brown is completely full of shit.
Like GWB, even the accent is fake. Sorry, Scotty, middle-class boys from the North Shore don’t end up with that Townie accent you put on for show.
FlipYrWhig
@jl: IIRC it was a Leslie Stahl interview, not that long after taking over as Speaker, and he was blubbering — lips quivering, face all shaky — about how it was so “important” to let kids have a shot at a better life. He kept using the word “important.”
Suffern ACE
@Redleg: Exactly. yet they have ambitions once again of turning every country that looks at us funny into a pile of rubble…which will be magically transformed into a small town democracy if we only keep our boots on the ground for a few generation. That shit ain’t cheap, but in imaginary land, we can pretend that it’s free and therefore those loans we take out to do it don’t exist. Must be your social security check that’s the problem.
shortstop
@aimai:
Nothing to add. It was just such a pretty little graf I thought it needed to be slapped up again.
Birthmarker
I honestly read it as RNC Giving Head. No lie.
Would someone with Nexis Lexis please dig up Kudloe talking about how deficits don’t matter on CNBC I think probably mid 2000’s??
Suffern ACE
@FlipYrWhig: I don’t know. Reading the Howler’s description of Williams’ biography, it appears that Williams may be a master of writing a self serving narrative. I believe in this day an age, that’s part of each TV personality’s job.
jl
@FlipYrWhig:
Thanks. I am obviously biased. But after it got out some years ago that the GOP covered for a GOP Congressman who was perving on teenage pages, it was Boehner who ran and hid behind some school kids, while tearing up mightily for the camera, wasn’t it?
Maybe bad timing, and a sad coincidence but that episode defined Boehner, at least for me.
Catsy
@japa21:
This.
As a pundit, Luke Russert is a worthless vestigial appendage.
Jewish Steel
He gets paid probably more than anyone commenting or blogging here. Think about that.
Paul
@Southern Beale:
Southern Beale Says:
I think it is great news that the “news” pundits talk about that instead of the economy. Nobody cares about this issue. Seriously!
It reminds me of 2008 when Charlie Gibson and George Stephanoapolus (or whatever his name is) spent the first 45 minutes of a debate asking Obama about Reverend Wright and Ayers and just about anything that the voters didn’t care about.
The current folks at CBS, ABC etc are so blatantly out of touch that is not even funny anymore.
aimai
All joking aside, and thanks for that Shortstop, this whole thing is mind boggling to me. Its like we feminists used to say “The Personal Is the Political?” We didn’t say it because we meant that politics was gossip, but that our personal lives are shaped by the political, and you can’t separate what happens to the individual from the political trajectory of their group. Getting pregnant when you don’t want to be and/or can’t afford it is the crushing tragedy of women’s lives. Having a baby who needs more than you can give it–whether because of a change in your own financial situation or a special needs child–is the fork in the road for many American families.
In the old “Game of Life” that fork in the road used to be quite explicit but it was usually “go to college” or “don’t go to college.” Well, its still there, that fork–teenage pregnancy derails entire families. Pregnancy in your twenties before stable income derails entire families. Pregnancy with a special needs child whatever your income level derails entire families.
Contraception, prenatal care, abortion services–all of these are economic issues for women. I just totally don’t get how and why Republican talking heads can pretend they aren’t. I mean–I see why they have to pretend they aren’t but actual living and breathing women of reproductive age know this is bullshit.
aimai
Culture of Truth
@Sly: Might be the first fragging in its history
jl
@Suffern ACE:
” which will be magically transformed into a small town democracy if we only keep our boots on the ground for
a few generationever. ”Anything else would be a betrayal of our principles and our brave warriors who fight for democracy and self determination all over the world.
McCain has told me so, repeatedly.
slag
There’s really something disturbing about the fact of Luke Russert and those like him. The statement, “Success isn’t about how much money you make, it’s about the difference you make in people’s lives,” is very much about people just like him. But being the failure that he is, it’s no wonder that such a statement will never enter his consciousness as something to actually think about. It’s just too hard. And the world that we’ve created thus far will never ever compel him to do something hard.
geg6
@FlipYrWhig:
THIS. I cannot believe this cypher has a network spot. Well, knowing our MSM, I can believe it. But what I can’t believe is why people like Jonathan Alter and Gene Robinson don’t club him over the head when he opens that stupid fratboy piehole and says the most idiotic crap, as he does every time he’s on the air. I know that if I was either of them, I surely would.
PurpleGirl
@Napoleon: He said something about voting with pants. Obviously a reference to our host who forgot to pack pants for the trip.
Roger Moore
@aimai:
“I ain’t going to be no Nepo Man, no way!”
“It’s too late. You already are.”
bemused
@Mark S.:
Hilarious.
g
Gosh, there’s Lukie showing his fine journalistic principles of impartiality isn’t he? How sad to be so young and so entitled.
Roger Moore
@Kane:
In fairness, the Republican brain is a very small target, so their poor aim is understandable. Not that the Republican heart is an easy target, either. If you’re going after Republicans, you’re best off aiming for the gut or the adrenal glands.
Catsy
@Jewish Steel: Why waste more than a moment’s thought on it? Plenty of people get paid far more than they’re worth for doing far less than they ought. It has no significance other than as yet another data point demonstrating that the game is rigged.
bemused
I think privileged child Lukie should be parachute dropped into a rabid rightwing, racist, homophobic, anti-women, gun nut, economically challenged community and not be able to leave for at least 6 months. Then if he survives that, he can come back and report how the community votes Republican because the party’s debt focus appeals to their brains while chugging a beer and crushing the can on his head.
slag
@Roger Moore:
Gall bladder?
Steeplejack
@Napoleon:
Cole’s tweet was a joke:
Then it was taken up here as “obviously” being a shout-out to Balloon Juice.
Fucking humor, how does it work?
LAC
Doesn’t he have a frat party crowd to body surf through? I liked Tim Russert but that doesn’t translate to having his talking keg of beer son in my line of vision.
Xecky Gilchrist
That first tweet isn’t even original – it’s a contraction of the quote (mis?)attributed to Churchill that if you’re not a liberal when you’re 20, you don’t have a heart; if you’re not a conservative when you’re 40, you don’t have a head.
shortstop
@Catsy: JS was making a little yolk, imitating what a Republican would say.
@aimai: Yes, you’ve written eloquently on this several times. I would really like to see our team tie the issue of reproductive freedom more tightly to family economics. I think there’s a certain fear that we’ll be branded as the sluts who kill our children because they’re too expensive (and isn’t that just like a Democrat not to be able to manage money?), but really, there’s no need to go there — this is mostly about contraception, which isn’t controversial except to the modern Republican base. Normal people understand that the ability to control whether, when and how extensively to have children is the one on which everything else in a childbearing-age woman’s life hangs. Everything. We need to say this, because it’s not a secret, and it’s not a shameful message.
Odie Hugh Manatee
I told my wife about this blather from the Little Potato and she said that she would smack him upside his head if she was his mother. I would give him a swift kick in the ass and tell him to grow up already if I was his father.
Of course, his father would have just patted him on the head and said “Good job son”.
Mandalay
@Southern Beale:
Perhaps they concluded that endorsing Israel’s illegal occupation should not receive any support from the Democratic Party. And maybe they have crunched the numbers and decided that it is not a vote loser to drop an irrational policy towards a nation that is illegally implementing apartheid on a daily basis.
Or maybe it is just payback to Netenyahu for this:
http://www.israeltoday.co.il/NewsItem/tabid/178/nid/22801/language/en-US/Default.aspx
Either way it is a wonderful thing, and a step in the right direction. The irony is that the policy of Jerusalem being the capital of Israel has never been the policy of the US government, even under Dubya, with good reason.
Davo
RNC=Head? Fuck you, Luke. Seriously. Just fuck you.
JustRuss
@Paul:
Paul, if you’re not sure where Brokaw stands, check out the debate he moderated between Obama and McCain, or one of his Obama interviews from 2008. He didn’t even try to hide his disdain for Obama.
Triassic Sands
Since Luke Russert has nothing to say, Twitter gives him about 140 characters more than he needs to express his ideas.
Bob In Portland
If the RNC appeals to the brain why don’t they read Krugman?
Paul
@JustRuss:
I know. I think he was decent news anchor. But he is really soiling his reputation with his gigs as a political pundit.
feckless
Does this homonculus even have a mother?
Jamey
@catclub: The last four years have been better for SOME (Lukey, included)
Jamey
@Culture of Truth: I dunno, I kinda liked “Tom Sawyer” and “New Age Man”…