The Chattering Class

I was channel surfing yesterday and stayed on MSNBC for an insufferable fifteen minutes or so, watching some jackass with a British accent pontificate about the horrors of the Republican Party. Why is the media so infatuated with British accents? Do they think people with that accent sound intelligent? If you listen to what they are actually saying, they sound like blithering idiots.

Anyway, Martin Bashir introduced his “panel,” one of whom it turned out wasn’t actually there (The fallible miracle of Skype. Hello? Hello?), and introduced the topic by saying that, “On a day which is supposed to be above politics, why are the Republicans being so critical of Obama?” They then proceeded to spend the next quarter hour discussing just how horrible the Republicans are.

No one seemed to notice the irony of the opening statement, suggesting that they think that Republicans should be above politics on this day, or perhaps legislators should, but that they certainly should not.

What they were discussing was not, furthermore, what any legislator was doing, or any legislation which was being proposed or passed in Congress, but merely what various Republican legislators were saying about Obama. “Senator Schmuckbutt said that Obama is weak on flag waving, so let’s discuss. Why would he say something like that?”

The topic here is nothing more than name calling, words with no more depth than “Your mother is ugly.” Name calling is lazy rhetoric; what one resorts to when one has run out of legitimate arguments, either because no more exist or because one does not know what they are, and these idiots are spending a quarter hour of national air time chattering about it.

And we wonder why voters in this nation are ignorant.