Nobody There

Yet another disaster in the morning on the Today show. Why have I been watching this hackery lately?

First, we have Tom Brokaw telling us how terrible the influence of money is in politics, in light of Barack Obama raising $150 million in September. The logic, apparently, is that millions of small donations, averaging under $100 and capping out at $2300 per person, would make him responsive to the crazy ideas of the public at large, rather than being beholden to the small number of interest groups that provide almost limitless funds to the RNC (and, sometimes, the DNC, for that matter), which is funding the McCain campaign's (uncoordinated!) advertising.

Of course, Tom's comment does makes sense when you realize from where he gets his information. "I’m saying that history shows us where unlimited amounts of money are in political campaigns, it leads to scandal." That, of course, was John McCain, commenting yesterday on Obama's record fundraising. When logic fails, at least Tom has John's memos to guide him.

Then there's Anne Curry telling us about "Federal Chairman Ben Bernanke". Does that make him sidekick to Emperor Paulson? (Anne, it's either "Fed Chairman" or "Federal Reserve Chairman".)

Next the Today show forced us to watch Sarah Palin over and over again in her dreadfully pointless SNL "performance". Was it even funny? I've seen the clips about 5 times already - because they're on constantly - and I haven't really been entertained by it yet. That's as much an SNL critique as a Palin critique. And here's the Palin critique that we're not supposed to make because she picked on it herself in the show - specifically, that she can find the time to go on SNL, but cannot find the time to do an actual press conference. It's pretty sad that the media can revel in this nonsense and not express any frustration with the disrespect shown to them and the voters through Palin's refusal to submit to the most basic of interviews and press conferences, and lays to bare the dishonesty of her campaign's treatment of the public's right to know anything and the media's complicity in that failure.

Finally, there was a half-decent, if not that informative, interview of Barack Obama by Matt Lauer.

But, the balance of the first half hour was complete nonsense.

Again.