On last night's "Colbert Report", Stephen Colbert was joined by Washington Post blogger Ezra Klein to discuss the road ahead for the health care reform bill, and C-SPAN's plea to document the reconciliation process with cameras. Apparently, 87 percent of Fox News viewers would "watch as much of the health care negotiation process as possible" on C-SPAN, which, if true, would be very bad news for Roger Ailes.
On the matter of airing the reconciliation process, Klein said, "If you got to see the reconciliation, what you would be seeing is a Kabuki reconciliation... if you put the cameras there, just like you saw in the final debate in the health care bill, people just made speeches. There will be changes, but they're not going to dare have an honest discussion in front of the cameras. If we had a grown-up political culture, maybe they would. But we don't, so we won't."
That is undeniably true, by the way. Of course, to my mind, that's a better argument for the cameras, than it is against. People should see what glittering fools our legislators are. And then, I should be able to build slideshows, featuring their antics.
Klein also gave the bill the following ringing endorsement: "I think it's an OK bill." But what would make it the OKAYEST bill? Probably werewolf doctors!
The two were joined later in the segment by White House Communications Director Linda Douglass, who responded to previous guest Erick Erickson's contention that she referred to opponents of health care as "brownshirts," which, in turn, justified Erickson's reference to Douglas as "the Joseph Goebbels of the White House Health Care shop." Douglass disputed Erickson's contention as false.
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