How We Do Things

Have you watched "the Sunday shows" lately?  Meet The Press and Face The Nation et al?   Does anybody watch that junk anymore?  I mean anybody who doesn't live and work in DC, or anybody who has any kind of actual life outside of politicking and/or keeping an eye out for the general douchebaggery that politiciking almost always leads to.

I was just wondering because of a piece by Charles Pierce:

But, as they say around the cool kidz table, people like Ms. Dowd set the agenda, and because the whole Susan Rice episode involves intimately the sacramentalized oozing of The Sunday Shows, there was a whole lot of Benghazi-ing goin' on, beginning on Face The Nation where former Prince Henry The Navigator foreign-correspondent Bob Schieffer somehow managed to pry the reclusive Senator McCain out of hiding to appear on the program. McCain promptly proved he is as shallow and muddleheaded as Maureen Dowd.

That little snippet makes it seem to me that David Gregory and Bob Schieffer are somehow considered important not so much as journalist watchdogs, but almost as another forum within government;  or maybe it's just that The Sunday Shows have become the Public Information Office for Capitol Hill.

I don't watch these shows anymore - haven't for quite a while now.  Partly because it's always the same people saying the same things, but mostly it got to where I tho't I was listening to a conversation that had nothing to do with me.  Like I'm just the guy serving the coffee at the Hangover-Recovery Brunch the morning after the usual Hearty Party for all these High Holy Pashas.

But what really cemented it for me was the advertising.

Boeing
General Dynamics
Lockheed Martin

Really?  How am I the target demographic for the F-22?  Am I supposed to rush right over to my local Amphibious Landing Craft dealer for...what exactly?  A test invasion across the neighbor's farm pond?  Whiskey Tango Foxtrot, over.

I think there's gotta be something else going on.  I guess it could be as simple as Power Talking To Power in a closed feedback loop that's so self-reinforcing that's it's almost impossible to break into it - or out of it - all I know is that it feels like I might as well be listening to Baghdad Bob.