We were never big fans of Rachel Maddow. To us she comes across as the Brady Bunch's housekeeper on Dexedrine. Opening each show with an off point 47-minute "tutorial" that she and her self-reverential staff treat as the most profound insights since Herodotus chose Persia as a topic.
What pushed us completely over the edge was her absolutely deliberate misrepresentation of Bernie Sanders' response to Trump's obscene "punishment for women" abortion comments. She went running back to Hillary Clinton for a comment faster than Ann B. Davis sharing the latest gossip with Sam The Butcher.
Yet even Maddow's didactic yammering is preferable to the cackling adulation with which she showers Brian "Pseudo-Pith" Williams. Williams, who is unqualified for any television work beyond extolling the virtues of Rodent Sheriff, truly loves him some him. He is to journalism what Edward R. Murrow was to the spit take. Watching Maddow match her facial expressions to whatever banal dreck cascades from Williams' gob is like watching the Huntley-Brinkley Report as done by Wayland Flowers and Madame.
Then there's Chris Matthews, who has never employed a thought for any other purpose than to get to the end of a sentence. Though the tip jar on his desk for contributions to the wife's campaign is certainly a novel touch. There's Mrs. Greenspan, stenographer to the liquid. There's the once great Chris Hayes, who, like something out of Kafka, awoke one day to discover he's Morton Kondracke.
And then... there's Mark Halperin and John Heilemann,
[shown here posing in a way no 50-year-old guys should ever be posing #surroundedbytheirviewers] the perpetually smug co-pilots of that Enola Gay of Beltway ennui "With All Due Respect". Pundits who have managed by sheer dullness of observation to obliterate the line between tragically hip and tragic.
As for guests, there's either Barney Frank or Howard Dean attempting to define quid pro quo on their off nights from the banking and insurance lobby. There's Joan Walsh, the odds on favorite for Secretary Of Umbrage in a Clinton administration. And there's the endless cavalcade of shills from Ed Rendell to Jonathan Capehart all eager to explain how Bernie has no path to the nomination while mute on Bill and Hillary's path to integrity.
But reading an entire library of Noam Chomsky will not prepare you for the abject, point missing idiocy of Joy Reid and the strip club. We have referred to male politicians as "corporate whores" since our first published word. If the Hillary defenders prefer "Goldman Sachs escort" that's fine by us. And while it might be nice for Miss Reid to at least note the Clintons' role in the systemic stripping away of social and economic justice as they grabbed millions of dollar bills with four fists, it's far easier to acknowledge that the only difference between MSNBC and Fox News is hemlines.
So revel in the Clinton worship all ye who click there. We got a Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives marathon on Food Network.