Sunday Morning Political Shows Play-by-Play (Pt. 1)

I had trouble coming up with a headline here. I got up early to watch the Sunday morning political shows, something I've been doing less and less. And this blog post isn't exactly as they happen, since I live in the Pacific Time Zone, and several of these things air at exactly the same time here. This is just a list of the comments that flow into my head while watching whichever of the shows I get around to watch.

Now that that is clear as mud, here are some impressions:

- David Gregory of Meet the Press is no Tim Russert. He comes off as a veneer, a laminate, a very, very surfacy kind of guy. He isn't interested in digging too deeply, just re-hashing whatever the week's hottest controversies are, regardless of their merit. The whole "what did Nancy Pelosi know, and when did she know it?" issue is not of equal weight to "did the Bush Administration authorize illegal torture, but you wouldn't know that watching Gregory.

- Tim Kaine can run circles around Michael Steele intellectually, but pretty much just let Steele run his mouth. Steele is all over the place, trying to please all Republicans, the Rush Limbaugh faction and the shrinking Colin Powell faction. I don't think either side is buying it.

- Ugh. More Nancy Pelosi on MTP round table. As though Nancy Pelosi could have single-handedly changed Bush Era policies. If Nance is guilty, hang her by her thumbs. But doing so concedes that the Bush Administration and any other politicians involved are complicit too.

- Peggy Noonan, really? Why is this daffy pundit still relevant?

- John Meechum of Newsweek strikes me as a more thoughtful, informed pundit than most.

- FOX "News" Sunday is by far the weakest of the bunch, feeling heavily tilted in favor of a political ideology (guess which one). Chris Wallace seems--as ever--vaguely creepy, and comes off like a parody of a newsman with "gravitas."

- Over-focus again on the Notre Dame "controversy." As pointed out here, where were the protests of past presidents with divergences from Catholic ideology? This smacks of the barely hidden racism of the "tea bagger" protests. There must be some reason that there is a protest of this president. Occam's Razor would say to look at the most obvious reason.

- As usually happens with hot-button issues the whole "controversy" on this Notre Dame thing boils down to a "pro-life" vs. "pro-choice" argument, with that issue being hashed out for the billionth time for ten minutes. By priests. Ugh. F"N"S's Wallace does nothing to change that.

- More Pelosi vs. the CIA. With constipated turtle Mitch McConnell (R-Okefenokee Swamp). Gaahhhhh. Oh, and McConnell thinks that terrorists are going to be released from Guantanamo Bay, and put into our neighborhoods! BE AFRAID!!! Why did I get up for this?

- Wallace actually presses McConnell on hypocrisy between "up or down vote" and "filibuster" when it comes to Supreme Court nominees, when parties change. But he takes a non-answer from McConnell and lets the subject drop.

OK, time to cook up some ham. I may do part 2 when I'm done, but then again, I might not! This stuff is seriously no fun anymore. . .