Someday, I want to write a book about this election season. I'll call it "Whiplash '08: The Election of Cognitive Dissonance".
Every time I think I have people pegged this year, they go do something entirely unexpected.
Just this evening, on CNN's Anderson Cooper 360, Mark Halperin (who I have long assumed is a faithful McCain water-carrier) actually tried...wait for it...journalism?
There was an analysis segment with Cooper, Halperin and David Gergen.
Gergen had just finished talking about how "foolish" Barack Obama's "lipstick on a pig" comment was, in light of how he needed to get his message out.
I'd barely finished shaking my head in dismay at Gergen, who seems to tailor his commentary to favor whatever trade wind is blowing across the presidential campaign at any given time, when Cooper switched to Halperin. He proceeded to knock me right out of my desk chair.
What follows is a verbatim transcription of the recording from my DVR. I regret that I couldn't find the CNN transcript on their website. (All emphases mine.)
AC: ...Mark, you're shaking your head.
MH: Stop the madness. I mean, this is, I think, with all due respect to what the program's focus on this and to what David just said, I think this is the press just absolutely playing into the McCain campaign's crocodile tears. I wouldn't...
AC: Crocodile tears.
MH: Yeah...
AC: They know exactly what this is.
MH: ...they don't think this is sexist. They know exactly what he was saying. It's an expression. And this is a victory for the McCain campaign in the sense that every day they can make this a pig fight in the mud, it's good for them. Because it's reducing Barack Obama's message even more. But I think this is a low point in the day - and one of the low days - of our collective coverage of this campaign, to make, to spend even a minute...
AC: Right.
MH: ...on this expression, I think, is amazing and outrageous.
Then, Cooper began a discussion of Palin's "bridge to nowhere" lies on the campaign trail. Halperin, still drunk from his first deep swig of true journalism, promptly delivered the most scathing indictment of the press and the McCain campaign I've seen this year.
AC: Mark, has there ever been a vice presidential candidate who has yet to talk to the press at this point in the race?
MH: No. And it's another thing I get that I'm embarrassed about our profession for. She should be held more accountable for that. The "bridge to nowhere" thing is outrageous. And if you press them on that, they falter because they know they can't defend what they're saying. They're saying it on the stump, as a core part of their message. It's in their advertising. I'm not saying the press should be out to get John McCain and Sarah Palin. But if a core part of their message is something that every journalist...journalism organization in the country has looked at and says it's demonstrably false, again, we're not doing our jobs if we just treat this as one of many things that's happening.
AC: And yet, we're getting tons of e-mails from people saying that we're attacking Sarah Palin by looking at her record. So it's fascinating to see how polarized people are...
(muffled exchange where they both talk)
MH: ...the other three people who are on the national ticket have been scrutinized for months - and in some cases, years. We've got six - less - fewer than sixty days to do this. We'd better get about doing it. And if she doesn't cooperate in that more than she has, the public should be told that - clearly.
Pardon my French, but...HO-LEE SHIT. Was this the "Very Serious Mark Halperin" actually calling McCain and Palin out? On national TV? Highlighting their most recent acts of hypocrisy?
Have McCain's and Palin's duplicity become so brutally obvious to even the most casual of observers that even Halperin can't maintain the facade any longer? Reality truly does have a liberal bias.
Ladies and gentlemen, raise your glasses to the (at least for tonight!) new and improved Mark Halperin. Another media figure who has lost his seat at the next Sedona barbecue, as well as his lifetime pass to the McCain Museum of Mavericky Maverickness. May many more in the MSM follow.