It’s after 5 pm; do you know where my attention is?
Not with Chuck Todd and his panelists on MSNBC. I’ll tell you why — I have the time.
I think Chuck Todd is a ninny and certain of his panelists (does he choose them?) are still relentlessly selling the GOP, which, on Todd’s show, means crazy, petty slashing at Democrats because there is nothing left to sell about the GOP. So they attack, because they’ve got nothing else to do.
The few who aren’t slashing away — and who would on another set be intelligent and reasonable commentators — are so trapped by the Chief Ninny’s leading, misleading and inane questions, the only thing they can do is answer within his limited strictures and sound as inane as he does. (Ruth Marcus: don’t go on Chuck Todd if you have any interest in retaining my respect.)
My new regimen for watching MSNBC is:
4 pm. Nicolle Wallace, whom I’ve come to love and love her guests, too.
5 pm. Break from Todd. See above.
6 pm. Back for Ari Melber. He’s a lawyer, smart and witty, and has lots of lawyers on to remark in depth on the illegalities and investigations of the illegalities we’re suffering through. Best thing about Ari’s hour: so many desperate people, clinging to the hope we’ll de-Trump our country imminently because we can’t take any more of this, need to be reminded that legal processes initiated by a general sense of horror (“He can’t do this, can he?”) take much longer than, say, throwing up. Or screaming. (And a “president” who is running his crime business out of the White House can be indicted, by the way. It may be an indictment sealed until he’s booted out of office, but it’s an indictment.)
It’s good to listen to lawyers who know how it all works, especially when we get too much misinformation, wildly hopeful information, depressing rumors and what not from journalists who may be good journalists but don’t know law. It saves me from all the corrective muttering I do when a journalist opines on plea deals and cooperation deals and criminal liability but he’s wrong. If you were here, you’d hear me murmur, “No, that’s not what’s happening, that’s not the way it works.”
I’m not a lawyer but I’m usually right.
7 pm. OMG I have to get away from Chris Matthews who spits questions at guests, interrupts them as they open their mouths, answers his own questions, occasionally yammers dementedly. Can’t take it. But I have discovered that on some golden oldie channel, M.A.S.H. reruns start at 7, so off I go to Korea.
8 pm. Love Chris Hayes but sometimes wander off the reservation into MhZ, the streaming service which gives me thousands of hour of European TV crime shows, many of which are terrific, and even the ones that aren’t are.
9 pm. Rachel. Always Rachel. I do not feel I have a full and deep grasp of the major news stories without her.
10 pm. Love Lawrence O’Donnell but now I go back to European crime, in order to forget the real American crime show into which we have all been dragged as extras.
So. It’s now 5:47 pm and I’ve accounted for my hour. Thirteen more minutes to kill — probably on Twitter — until Ari.