Kudos to Meet The Press and guests Newt Gingrich and Democratic presidential candidate Chris Dodd for the most civil dialogue about damn near anything broadcast on TV since about 1972. Anyone familiar with The Mclaughlin Report (10 pm Fri WSEC Channel 8 Springfield) or Jerry Springer (you think I’d know when this Barnum broadcasts? HA!) knows that civil discourse on any broadcast medium is going the way of the snail darter, the giant condor and the moderate Repubublican), so I am compelled, once more to say KUDOS’ y’all!
Given Ging’s record in private life away from the cameras, this is strange talk coming from me for sure, ya know. We know how he behaves when discarding wives in hospital beds like a used latex prophylactic, so there’s no need to replay that icky tableau here. Besides, as we all know, the Republicans were so kind to Bill Clinton during his private indescretions while married to the woman who remains his wife today, that it’s only fair we give Newt the same consideration; right? What makes it easier is that Newt, like the former president, is so compellingly RIGHT some of the time, and speaks with such clarity and erudition, it’s hard as blazes sometimes, not to like the son . . . . for a few minutes. Besides his former wife is dead now; right? So she’s out of the picture. “But that was yesterday, and yesterday’s gone.” (Thank you Peter and Gordon).
For the record, I really like Chris Dodd (D – CT). And saying that makes it hard to say this: What the fring-frang are we paying so much attention to presidential candidates so frikking early in the bleeding game? The media attention in this early going seems like keeping track of “The Brickyard” at Indianapolis in January before the start of the Memorial Day classic 500 mile race! Or the first five minutes of any basket ball game. As far as the antics of the Republican 9 and Democratic 10 are concerned (or is it Democratic 8?) who CARES? Friends, Romulans and countrypersons, the race, the game means next to nothing! Unless . . . .
Unless you’re in Iowa, New Hampshire, Qaleefornia or Las Vegas (Odds makers have to eat, ya know.) The media seem to be hot on the trail of the early gamers for the same reason cameras will cover every meter of the Indy 500: they want film when someone says “Macaca.” and goes into the wall on turn three of the eigth lap. That may be fine, but what the hey does Dennis Kucinich (youngest mayor in the history of Cleveland, Ohoho, you may recoil) have to do with the future of the free world? The media are vamping, filling our ears with a catchy rhythm riff before the real music begins. Tim Russert’s going to have another presidential hopeful on Meet the Press next Sunday (Channel 17, NBC, 9 ayem) and you can be sure that during the first 20 minutes of that show, I am going to be making my kitchen the most spotless it has been since Russert talked to some Ron Reagan historians during the second half of this Sunday’s show. And I like Tim Russert. It’s just that the less my ears are fouled with Saccharin platitudes about the malevolent, lying, plastic stature of red-blooded American faux-virtue, the happier man I am.
Another media duet sung with DC is the immigration legislation heralded as though Pelosi and what’s his name returned from the mountain top with a tablet inscribed from Yaweh/Allah/HeavenlyFather. They say it will cure our immigration ills, but as fast as they praise it, they say “with certain amendments, of course.” They’re equivocating LEFT. They’re equivocating RIGHT. They do the Hokey Pokey and they turn themselves about. That’s what it’s all about. That bull — make it that BILL — is prematurely DOA, muchachos y muchachas. If you think Congress is actually going to swallow that pill, you need to know Dorothy and Toto were made up, like a dream, like a fiction, like aversion. So don’t even ask me about the Tooth Fairy.
“Send in the clowns. Send in the clowns. Don’t bother. They’re here.”
Live long . . . and proper.
