At first, I thought DoorMatt richly deserved the beat-down he’s getting for his appallingly bad turn as a moderator last night. But now I see him for what he really is: a big, fluffy Easter Bunny. Think about it: The Easter Bunny doesn’t lay the eggs pastel-clothed Christian children find in colorful baskets on their doorsteps each Easter morning. He’s just the delivery bunny.
Similarly, Lauer didn’t poop out the nuggets of insanity and inanity on display at last night’s forum; he just stood back and let the Orange Nightmare-sicle shit them all over the aircraft carrier deck. Is this a good thing? Well, not the part about a media figure allowing a braying jackass to lie on TV and spout absurdities unchallenged. That’s both problematic in itself and symbolic of a larger issue, as we’ve discussed ad nauseum.
But there’s an upside: Trump sure left a shitload of Easter eggs behind! Secretary Clinton wisely called attention to some of them this morning, e.g., the absurd proposal to “take the oil,” the fawning over Putin, the denigration of U.S. generals, the “dog ate my homework” babbling about his nonexistent ISIS plan, the weird “body language” bullshit about his security briefers, etc.
In addition to that, Trump left other nuggets behind for future exploration — stuff I missed upon first hearing but that reporters are even now starting to explore, like Trump’s bizarre assertion that his Mexico trip was all about bringing down that country’s finance minister, his brazen lies about opposing U.S. intervention in Iraq and Libya (which were finally being called straight-up lies on CNN last night) and other assorted WTFs.
Yes, our Beltway media sucks rancid capybara balls — we all know it. Whether through incompetence, malice or a combination of the two, they have sandbagged Clinton while utterly failing to properly vet a manifestly unfit racist, sexist, xenophobic demagogue who is applying for one of the most important jobs on the planet.
But there’s a cliché about giving a person enough rope to hang himself. Lauer, our timid little woodland creature, may have inadvertently done something akin to that last night, mutely standing by with a big old basket as Trump crapped out enough falsehoods and grotesqueries to generate weeks of headlines, analysis, attack ads — and debate questions.
Will more of our media urchins join the hunt and find those Easter eggs? That’s always been the question, and the smart money is usually on “no.” But today they’re ass-deep in them — anyone who watched last night’s forum is.
None of this excuses Lauer’s incompetence, of course, but I choose to see this as good news rather than bad. Take a spin through the mainstream media sites today. The “both sides” religion is still in evidence, but now the focus is on Trump, and not in a good way for him. Could the tide be turning? I think maybe it is.