A few weeks ago I wrote a diary titled
What is Different About This Time. I wrote:
What with Jim Brady and Ann Althouse and other theoretically not stupid folks wondering what hit them in the Left Blogosphere it got me to thinking -- do these people think we just out of the blue got angry and strident about the Bush Administration and Republicans? Have they ever thought about what has happened to our country since November 2000?
. . . Is it only blogs that have reacted strongly to this Administration? Consider Paul Krugman. If you only went by Andrew Sullivan, Bill O'Reilly and the Wingnuts, you would think that Paul Krugman arrived on the Op-Ed page of the New York Times after serving a long stint at the Comintern . . . But Paul Krugman has always been a highly distinguished economist, at or near the top of his field.
Do these folks wonder what happened to Krugman to make him "The Shrill One"?
Do they wonder at all? Can the last five years of lies, failures, incompetence, illegalities, warmongering, McCarthyism, and just plain stupidity not register at all to these folks?
Do they wonder why we distrust the Media? After watching its performance during the Clinton Administration and now watching it during the worst, most mendacious Administration since Nixon?
When is "shrillness" and "stridency" ever justified to them? What should our reactions be in their minds?
Crooks and Liars linked to Larry King giving the complete fucking idiot's version of this tired song. Here's a snippet:
KING: So, in a sense you're happy over this [Cheney shooting that guy].
STEWART: No.
KING: This gives you fodder.
STEWART: Yes, I prefer not the fodder. I'm not -- we're not the guys at the craps table betting against the line. I would -- we'd make fun of something else. If public life, if government suddenly became inspiring and moved towards people's better nature and began to solve problems in a rational way rather than just a way that involved political dividends, we would be the happiest people in the world to turn our attention to idiots like, you know, media people, no offense.
KING: So, you don't want it to be bad?
STEWART: Did you really just ask me if I want it to be bad?
KING: Yes because you...
STEWART: What are you -- I have kids what do you think? Yes, I don't want them to have any kind of a -- I want things to corrode to the point where we're all living in huts.
More of the sheer idiocy that is Larry King, and the Media, and the Establishment in Washington, on the flip.
I call Larry King a "representative idiot" because indeed he is emblematic of the Media and the Establishment when it comes to Bush. Another representative idiot, Tweety,
can't believe the American People don't like George Bush. This is all of a piece.
But, in all things idiotic, Larry King is the, er, king:
KING: Who in this administration fascinates you the most?
STEWART: The American people for their just utter patience. And everybody, it just seems like I just don't know what it's going to take. What else, you know, there is this whole -- my mind has been blown just so consistently by this administration's insistence on their own competence without ever sort of delivering kind of any sort of evidence to that. I think at this point everybody just kind of rolls their eyes like, ah, those guys are at it again.
. . . STEWART: Hosting a basic cable show. That is what is left for me, sitting every day and getting to rub my eyes and make stupid faces on videotape. That is all that is left for me. That is the catharsis that I live for.
. . . KING: You don't want Medicare to fail?
STEWART: Are you insane?
KING: No.
STEWART: You're literally asking me if I would prefer -- yes, Larry, what I'm saying to you as a comedian I want old people to suffer, old and poor people to suffer. That is -- that is -- what we want is -- what seems absurd to me is the length that Washington just seems out of touch with the desires of Americans to be spoken to as though they are adults.
I mean when you listen to Bush's speeches, and I'm leaving the Democrats out because I honestly don't feel that they make an impact. They have 49 percent of the vote and three percent of the power. At a certain point you go "Guys, pick up your game."
But Bush, you know the other day when he had the speech about us being addicted to oil, he says those things as though, you know, he just thought of it and we're disagreeing with him, like everybody's been saying that. Jimmy Carter said it I think in 1978.
And he comes out, "What people don't realize is we're addicted to foreign oil" and he's saying it like you're going "Get out of here." We're addicted. You don't get it people. You know he was the guy on the stump a few years ago making fun of hybrid cars because it wasn't manly.
. . . KING: We've declined as a society right?
Larry, the moment people began to think you were someone to listen to, the whole shithouse went up in flames.