Aphrodisiac of power

Bernie Goldberg is a tool. He has found a profitable niche that keeps him in face-puffing booze, paid for by wingnut welfare, and he's going to hammer it without regard for fairness. He and Ann Coulter have the same job, just different shticks.

Was Chris Matthews a lunatic for saying that Obama's speech made a thrill go up his leg? Damn straight. That blithering chatterer has issues, man. Alcohol seems to be one of his, but his propensity for man-crushes didn't start with Obama.

At many times before, Matthews has swooned over the manliness of Republicans - Duhbya (nice package, eh Chris!), Rudy Giuliani (so manly he looks good in a dress!), and of course John McCain (cut of his jib? Chris would sail him). If you look too closely at this, it's enough to make you say, "Eeeew!" This is a guy who'd want a date, not with George Clooney or Brad Pitt, but with Henry Kissinger. Barf.

Goldberg will never tell you this, though. He'll pretend that Matthews is a straight (heh) party-line liberal Democrat who only has man-crushes on Democrats. This is bullshit, the wingnut pundit's stock in trade.

Covering the coverage

Since the media is only interesting in self-examination to the extent that Howard Kurtz practices it, which is to say in the prurient and titillated way that frat boys are interested in breast self-examination, most modern coverage of politics is more about covering us in bullshit than in uncovering us from bullshit.

Celebrity journalists defend themselves and their cohorts from any accountability, at least by going along with the bullshit, often by generating more. If they didn't, they wouldn't get admitted to the fraternal order of the vacuous that leads to ever more visible televised inanity.

Eric Boehlert, along with stalwarts Eric Alterman and Bob Somerby, has been diverting rivers into the fetid barns of the media for some time. I've echoed the themes of all three from time to time, for example here, here, and here.

In the last several years, all three have written important posts (and books). Yesterday's post from Boehlert is one of them. It's a deft encapsulation of the insane consequences for our politics of irresponsibility in journalism.

Visionary

Everything you've heard about David Broder is true - everything facile, ass-kissing, and committed to inside-the-Beltway elitism, that is. Here he sucks up to Newt Gingrich for his ideas, nevermind that Newtie is the original hyper-partisan, bomb-throwing, divisive Republican who couldn't give a shit about Broder's usual graven idol, bipartisanship.

Fidel Castro had ideas. Benito Mussolini must've had at least one idea.

But it's obvious that Broder's one idea is smooches to power, not any sort of meaningful bipartisan compromise. What a useless gasbag!

Update: Eric Alterman on Newtie.