Poking around all the likely spots on the Information Highway this morning, I came across this spot. Looks like MSNBC is taking Trump’s propaganda arm to the woodshed in the all-important blood sport known as “the ratings game” for the first time in 17 years.
That dull thud you just heard was Trump’s nuclear-powered clicker bouncing off Sarah Sanders’ granite forehead.
I’m guessing right about now Bill Shine is cowering in some dark, leaky, undisclosed location in the White House basement inhaling cobwebs and playing with Stephen Miller’s pet anacondas. Shine, of course, is the White House Communications Director by way of Fox-TV where he was paid the handsome sum of $15 million to go away this summer and harass Republican women on the inside of the administration. Total access right there …
Seemed like a match made in heaven, Trump and Shine, but even our present day Goebbels is having a helluva time spinning positive his boss’s nonstop brand of shock and awful. I mean what’s a guy to do with dying kids, a flagging economy, Mueller, the exodus of the three or four semi-competent, non-traitors left in the administration, Mueller, mass-shootings, midterm drubbings, government shutdowns, Mueller, and on, and on … Things are so bad on the Right right now, Sean Hannity was seen being wheeled into Rush Limbaugh’s pharmacy in a shopping cart.
And wait’ll you see all the bright-blue sparks fly when Boss Pelosi starts taking them to school next week. Why without Paul Ryan around to breastfeed Trump every three hours or so, anything could happen.
But back to this ratings spike, for which I am perfectly willing to accept full credit. You see, I’m the guy who never watched cable news. OK, “never” might be a stretch, but I am a haughty, lifelong newspaper guy who likes my news delivered slowly but with deadly accuracy. All the hollering and drama on the tube made my stomach do back-flips and warped what little common sense and faith in humanity I had left.
Until I went full-blown partisan approximately 20 months ago …
That’s not to say I wasn’t a snowflake liberal before Trump, but it is to say that I’d concede a point or two emanating from the other side of the political divide every now and again. While mostly morally bankrupt, the GOP did occasionally make a deposit on the right — correct — side of the world’s ledger.
Donald Trump has done us the horrible favor of exposing the GOP for what they really are inside their cold, tiny little hearts. When Trump recruited Putin’s help in plain sight and started destroying this country from the inside out, I was naive enough to think the Republicans would step in and put the brakes on these anti-America madmen. We now know they did just opposite.
Led by Mitch McConnell’s three chins, the GOP leaped into the fray with all the gusto and glee of Newt Gingrich at an all-inclusive nightclub for ditzy, 18-year-old, right-swinging platinum blondes in hula skirts and bright-red MAGA hats. There was water to pollute and animals to kill. There were thousands of rich to reward and minorities to screw. There was healthcare to savage and an NRA to fondle. There was treason to hide and American protocol to batter into submission. Women were to be seen and not heard, especially if they’d gotten on the wrong side of the backhand of an up-and-coming judge. Sure, maybe a few of them knew what they were doing was wrong — I’m looking at you Jeff Flake and Susan Collins — but when you are truly dead inside and serve only yourself, you have long ago learned to live with horrible indigestion.
It was all worse than I thought it would be, and I was fully confident it was going to be pretty awful. It was so bad, I just couldn’t watch it anymore objectively. I was miserable and needed company. I started peaking at Rachel and Lawrence and Chris and Ari and Katy … They weren’t paid to look at Trump and the GOP’s obscenities objectively, they were paid to just look at them for how they were and provide context and commentary.
As poll after poll has showed us and the Midterms proved, MSNBC is seeing things through the very eyes of a vast majority of the American electorate and the world. They are verifying our fear and terror and providing the comfort of knowing we aren’t the only ones who are shivering through it.
I have come to see through these dark times that they are providing a service by keeping the spotlight on what is really happening right in front of our eyes. I am not at all interested in both sides these days when I know for sure one side is right and the other dreadfully, dreadfully wrong.
I will always work the newspapers into my daily lineup because nobody does it better, but these ratings MSNBC is getting is reflective of where we stand as a nation and for that, I take great heart. The Resistance is winning and if we stay with it will carry this day and the many days ahead as we battle our way back towards what is truly good and right about this country.
I am certain this is not an optimal long-term outlook. We will always be better for it when both political parties are looking out for the well being of our nation instead of the demented, dark whims of one ignorant, raging narcissist. For now, though, we must believe what is right in front of our eyes, and hard as it is to look at, I thank top-rated MSNBC for showing it.
