More Of The Same

The Morning Joe Rebuttal for March 9th, 2010


Observations:


1) If anything, we are lucky there were features today because of the lack of real news. I’m not a fan of features, but this was necessary today a) to explain away the unbelievable goings on in the Massa case and b) to be honest about the level of catatonic effect the news cycle can bring you.


Think about what the show didn’t talk about today. All that optimism stuff from yesterday: Pakistan, Iran, Afghanistan, Iraq…. It’s like it disappeared. Goldman Sachs, financial reform? It’s like it didn’t exist.


When those subjects are optional, it’s a statement that Morning Joe, the most powerful news show on television currently also feels powerless in the face of Washington reality.


When it is strikingly obvious that reform as Elizabeth Warren would have it is as likely as a Kucinich presidency, and the reform we are getting is double speak empowering the architects of our financial doom, we laugh catatonically.


It doesn’t matter that the laughter was in reference to locker room antics, it’s that we can only laugh at that, and cannot directly confront the less hopeful stuff except by hysterical proxy.


2) New drinking game: we’re so big we are on the television of the person we’re talking about or the place we’re referring to right now. Code name: closed circuit. It might be true, and that watershed moment when Axelrod couldn’t take it anymore last December is a chief proof of that theory, but it’s still the definition of ostentatious.


I know it’s a lot to ask, but try a little more of a glancing strategy than the “Mr. President, I’m Talkin’ To You” histrionics, and watch the effect grow. What you do when you go the closed circuit way, is you become the blogger you're taught to ignore. You become the parasitic attention grabber you’re meant to be superior to on the food chain.


Glancing strategy can be fun. Here’s a thing you could do in a glancing environment that’s equally confrontational and equally educational. Role playing. Ok, Sam Stein, you be the President, Chuck Todd, you be Rahm, Mika, Axelrod, Joe, McConnell, Pat, Boehner, even Willie, Gibbs, and you’ve got yourself a fun introspective analysis without the self serving holiness.


Take on a few subjects, hey, why not start with financial reform? You missed it today.


3) Is it a surprise to anyone that Liz Cheney played herself out? Or that Rahm is at death’s door? We are all so led on this stuff that we are weakest when we think we’ve got it figured out. That’s the nature of a strategy that corrects. Go get in the game, and even if it is not going that well, remember you still get to correct and it’s the post correction strategy that you close with.


Your opponent can only react, or guess.


We are at that spot right now, as the Obama people are absolutely redefining what works and what doesn’t, while the Republicans, as evidenced in John Boehner’s statement today, are really boxed into a more of the same strategy.


I don’t know what the administration or the Pelosi/Reid legislature are going to do to close, but all the prognostication in the last 30 days and going forward seems to me to be grasping at straws, and that includes McConnell, Boehner and Steele.


That’s all for today, see you tomorrow.