CSotD: Turn on your TV now!
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We usually associate Jack Davis with TV Guide, but Steve Brodner is taking on the role this morning, because the January 6 Hearings will be starting at roughly 9 AM Eastern, or about the time I file. So if you haven’t got your TV on, flip it on now and start watching.
I’m assuming that they’ll go on through most of the day, BTW, and I’m also assuming NPR will carry them as well.
But, in case you haven’t found enough things to be depressed about lately, CNN’s Reliable Sources Newsletter reports that the people who most need to see the testimony may not:
The rest of that newsletter is well-worth a click and read, but don’t expect to come away feeling good about things, though it does feature a link to a story about small newspapers being bought away from the stockswappers by local owners who care about serving their communities instead of their investors, so that’s something.
I’d also point out that the major networks swapped coverage of the Senate Watergate Hearings, so that, at any moment, viewers who wanted to keep their heads in the sand could switch over to soap operas, quiz shows or the Dialing for Dollars Movie.
And, as in any trial and any hearing, there was a lot of scene-setting and procedural stuff and so I had the hearings on while I did housework and wrangled a small child, only focusing in enough to be aware when something marvelous was happening.
Which means that you could probably get by later with whatever the reporters pick up on, though (A) you’ll be missing a lot of nuance and (B) you’ll need to trust your source, which gets us back to Fox and OAN and Newsmax, certainly, but also to the general fallibility even of people who are trying.
And, of course, the summaries on the ethical networks will likely be awash in “on the one hand/on the other” coverage, the kind where, if someone says it’s sunny out, producers scramble, in the name of fairness, to find someone who says it’s raining.
No problem! Lalo Alcaraz suggests that GOP leadership will be trotting out same-old-same-old smears against witnesses.
You should put on the coverage, even if you just keep it in the background and wait for the John Dean stretches of intense relevance, the Alexander Butterfield bombshells, and the random moments when a Tony Ulasewicz tells of carrying a bus operator’s coin dispenser for making calls from pay phones.
I wish I felt these hearings would convert anyone, but I’m inclined to go along with Jack Ohman‘s suspicion that the only way the GOP would bother with them would be if the tables had been turned, at which point they’d have the importance of Benghazi and the same power to stir people up as her e-mails (which were sent on routers!).
But, then, I didn’t think the Watergate charges would stick until they did, so there ya go.
Either way, as said here yesterday, I just want to see if anyone beyond the foot-soldiers ends up charged with anything.
Stay tuned. Literally.
At the other end of my optimism/pessimism scale, Kevin Siers expresses a wish that Joe Biden would be more adamant in trying to shut down the filibuster.
I’ve said several times that I think a lot of people are mistaking Biden’s calm approach for a lack of action, much like that thing about the duck looking very placid on the water while his little feet are paddling like hell underneath.
But I’d also point out that, while sticking flowers in gun barrels at the Pentagon Protest didn’t end the war, peaceful protests eventually did.
And drove LBJ from office.
And set the table for the 26th Amendment.
And that 39 people were arrested for protesting at Kyrsten Sinema’s office in Phoenix yesterday while marchers protested the filibuster in several other cities.
Keep on paddlin’
And then there’s the sad story of Baby Tuckoo, seen here as drawn by Tom Tomorrow.
Poor Baby Tuckoo was in a store the other day when someone came up to him and quietly called him “the worst human being known to mankind.” (Let me remind you, BTW, that truth is an affirmative defense to libel.)
The conservative whineosphere went nuts, particularly since it happened in front of Baby Tuckoo’s son, who was nowhere in earshot and, besides, is in his middle 20s and serves as communications director for conservative Rep. Jim Banks (R-Ind).
(This article says Banks didn’t know who the kid was when he hired him. Probably didn’t know he’d hired the son of a Focus on the Family VP, either.)
But here’s the major point: Tucker Carlson does not have to be a public figure.
Nobody does, but he doesn’t need a job at all. He’s heir to the Swanson’s Frozen TV Dinner fortune, which seems oddly appropriate, given his audience.
He could still have a job, though, and simply be privately obnoxious in splendid solitude.
Years ago, I interviewed Hal Kennedy, longtime, much-beloved anchor at KKTV, the CBS affiliate in Colorado Springs. He told me he enjoyed his hometown fame, but admitted it came with a price tag, giving as an example a recent weekend when he was repairing his hot water heater and needed a part.
He had to shower and change to go to the hardware store, he said, because otherwise someone would say, “I saw Hal Kennedy the other day. I think he’d been drinking.”
Much later, when I was a columnist for the Press-Republican in Plattsburgh, my fairly-new GF and I needed something from the grocery store, and I said I’d have to change, repeating Hal’s story. She laughed at my ego, but, after we’d been together a little longer, she brought it up again, saying, “You weren’t kidding! Everybody knows who you are!”
And I wasn’t even close to being Hal Kennedy, much less Tucker Carlson.
Nor had I gained what small morsel of fame I had by — as Ed Hall demonstrates — spreading hypocritical disinformation that endangers both the nation’s principles and people’s lives.
You want privacy, snowflake? Go private. I won’t stop you.
Otherwise, wipe your eyes and get over yourself.
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