Breathtakingly Obvious

So, I just moved. Hence your lucky reprieve from my posts. As part of my move, I got cable in the new place. On the up side, that gives me Comedy Central . On the down side, I'd never really appreciated the full extent of the legions of people whose sole job it seems to be to wear moderately conservative attire and lie to news cameras. Jesus.

In a related comment, just as soon as I can figure out how to do it, I'm going to put together a PAC devoted entirely to abolishing the dueling operatives mock-debate that you find on TV news everywhere--not just on cable but also on network channels (including PBS). The dueling operative debate is that annoying segment of "issues" programming in which an anchor or correspondent sits an RNC lackey across the table from a DNC lackey and then asks questions as if they would answer them without more spin than automatic rims.

I'm baffled who actually thinks that having reps from the two political parties lie to a lazy, ignorant journalist interviewer somehow upholds the ideals of inquiry or objectivity. In particular, I think every TV news producer should absolutely forbid her journalists to ever include a current or former communications director, speechwriter, or campaign director from serving as a one of the participants these fake debates. Putting political hacks on TV to debate how the American public views the struggle over, say, social security or the Iraq war is tantamount to having a reporter dress print-outs of the DNC and RNC talking points in suits and then wave them at each other like really boring puppets.