Letting Mueller play himself at the hearing was a terrible idea. George Clooney would have been a much better Robert Mueller. It’s all about the optics. Imagine Watergate without Robert Redford and Dustin Hoffman. WoodStein as WoodStein? Seriously? Nixon would still be President.
Tag Archives: MSNBC
How to succeed in journalism without really reporting
Those MSNBC and CNN political journalists and analysts are still on the air? I would have fired most of them last week. What a bunch of fuck ups. Blind, deaf and lazy. Not one saw the Trumpslide coming yet even the rumbling was there, the polling data was there, and it would have taken very little work to have seen it coming. Instead, aside from (I hate to say) Joe Scarborough, who is not even a trained journalist, not one of the reporters, commentators or analysts who wasn’t a surrogate on MSNBC or CNN claimed to have had a clue this was coming. They just stared dumbfounded into the camera and hoped we wouldn’t notice.
If they can’t fire them all–they can’t, they have contracts and fan clubs and groupies–at the very least network executives need to stamp out the celebrity journalist TV culture that values preening on panels (and laughing at each others jokes, incestuously popping up on each others shows, egomaniacal self-assurance and hours spent following each others tweets) over genuine reporting.
The lack of issues reporting and the complete inability to see trends among the working class in the very battle ground states these people had been reporting from since the conventions is completely the fault of lazy, self aggrandizing, piss poor journalism. Fire ’em all and hire new. Or cancel a couple shows, anyway, just to show them there is a price to be paid for such astonishing incompetence. Otherwise, you just reward stupidity.
So has political journalism hit the skids or what? Has it ever had a lower moment? You have to wonder how many viewers are taking these guys seriously anymore. I know I am having trouble, a bunch of crazies in the White House and we’re stuck with journalists who may or may not have a clue as to what is going on. It’s like feeling sick and having idiots for doctors. Well, not quite. You can sue your doctors. Reporters just get their own shows.
Trump surrogates
The Last Word with Lawrence O’Donnell tends to slip into a left wing Fox News vibe with he a wimpy Bill O’Riley. Uncool. That being said, Trump needs to come up with better surrogates. I mean wow, these guys are losers. A minister raving about greed and why it is a good thing, hence Trump is a good thing. Lawrence gets to be morally superior by asserting that greed is not a good thing hence Trump is not a good thing. Like I said, Bill O’Riley level stuff. But where did they get this idiot Trump surrogate? I mean is it really that bad? Probably, but still. Perhaps MSNBC could pay somebody to play the devil’s advocate. Jack Nicholson maybe. Is he working now? That restaurant scene from Five Easy Pieces would work anywhere, I think. You can hold that between your knees, Rachel.
I remember when there was an infinite supply of empty blondes to sing Trump’s praises. Not a lot of guys, just all these blondes. Not much upstairs, maybe, but lots of leg. Perhaps The Donald is a leg man. Now he seems to be a whoever will show up man. I think there were more Trump surrogates before it was discovered that his campaign didn’t even have enough cash on hand to fill a shopping cart at Whole Foods. Maybe they could fill one at Smart and Final, despite the name. Or Votes 4 Less. Or Ralph’s, being that is what Lance Priebus is doing nightly, then smiling weakly, hoping no one asks him why Trump’s Make America Great Again hats were made in China. I tried and tried to find someone in America who could make hats, Trump said, but I couldn’t. Sheesh, Hillary has a guy who looks up hat makers for her. Bernie had hippies who knitted their own. Yet here the Donald is googling hat makers, American. It’s enough to make his blonde surrogate on CNN cry again. But then that was long ago, during a Republican debate, when Marco Rubio was saying mean things about Trump’s penis and Keyleigh’s eyes welled up with tears.
Brick's Politics 