He just wanted to see if anybody was still paying attention. I understand the hits so far on today's column is "1."

Rich's column's in the paper. Hit counts for dead tree don't exist.

If you're going to make an argument, make an intelligent one, not just an arrogant accusation against a Senior Fellow.

I will say, though, that this bit from Rich's column struck me as oddly accurate for an insider's review of the media coverage:

At the Democratic convention, as during primary season, almost every oversold plotline was wrong. Those Hillary dead-enders — played on TV by a fringe posse of women roaming Denver in search of camera time — would re-enact Chicago 1968. With Hillary’s tacit approval, the roll call would devolve into a classic Democratic civil war. Sulky Bill would wreak havoc once center stage.

On TV, each of these hot-air balloons was inflated nonstop right up to the moment they were punctured by reality, at which point the assembled bloviators once more expressed shock, shock at the unexpected denouement. They hadn’t been so surprised since they discovered that Obama was not too black to get white votes, not too white to win black votes, and not too inexperienced to thwart the inevitable triumph of the incomparably well-organized and well-financed Clinton machine.

Meanwhile, the candidate known as “No Drama Obama” because of his personal cool was stealthily hatching a drama of his own. As the various commentators pronounced the convention flat last week — too few McCain attacks on opening night, too “minimalist” a Hillary endorsement on Tuesday, and so forth — Obama held his cards to his chest backstage and built slowly, step by step, to his Thursday night climax. The dramatic arc was as meticulously calibrated as every Obama political strategy.

Rich gives the appearance of saying the TV hype got it wrong, right down the line, to this reader's eye.

And that's something I can agree with. The Mighty Wurlitzer splattered the nation with its inanities, inaccuracies, and off-point overdramatizing for MONTHS.
In the end, though, the "wise old guys" in the anchor chairs -- as well as the FOX bombshells -- looked like they didn't know what they were talking about.

Was it ever thus, then?

Has all news analysis since Marconi been unadulterated crap?

The answer, if you look at the Howler, is a resounding yes.

Maybe the readers / listeners / viewers ought to take that to heart.

So who exactly is to blame for the inane? The participants?

Apparently some in the Village are upset that they have to commment on the manufactured narrative that THEY THEMSELVES MANUFACTURED!

My god, the cognitive dissonance, it just burns.

It is a special happy bonus that Rich shows he is the Tony Soprano/Moe of the Three Stooges NY Times king malaproper, suede-intellectual.

For all the crap they gave HST for "not being a real journalist" he never pulled dumb boners like that. You would think he (Frank)/they would be embarrassed, but you would be wrong.

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Around these parts we call cucumber slices circle bites

Just last week

Frank Rich said the following:

"What Obama also should have learned by now is that the press is not his friend."

Wait, I have to hold my head so it doesn't spin completely off my body.

And for "manufacturing drama", who could forget his memorable line also from that column last week?

"So while Obama can continue to try to reassure resistant Clinton loyalists in Appalachia that he’s not a bogeyman from Madrassaland..."

Followed up with:

"Most Americans, unlike the press, are not obsessed by race."

Thanks Lambert, for the following line, "Hon, reach me that bucket".

-----------------------------

Around these parts we call cucumber slices circle bites

Obviously, Rich was referring to the traditions of greek drama, and the role that the gods play in Greek drama. Rich didn't say it was the Greek language, he said "that's Greek too" after referring to another signifier of Greek culture -- the "Acropolis columns". /snark

...for your reading enjoyment:

http://whiskeyfire.typepad.com/whiskey_f...

August 31, 2008
Remains a Mystery
by Molly Ivors

I'm not going to parse what must have been the highly interesting contents of Maureen's stomach when she wrote today's imaginary chick flick starring the scrappy-yet-terrifyingly-unqualified Sarah Palin. But this line caught my attention, partly because it seems to have been delivered largely without self-awareness of any kind.

(Why do men only pick women as running mates when they need a Hail Mary pass? It’s a little insulting.)

This from Dowd, who has spent, conservatively, the better part of the last year explaining to us why a competent woman is a dominatrix wielding a whip, why women only succeed because they've been wronged by men, why women who continue fighting primaries when they're garnering votes are "emasculating" and "suffocating."

If women have been delegitimized as political figures in their own rights, Mo, look in the fucking mirror and your own archives.