Chuckles the Toddler

I think we’ve clearly seen enough of the new Meet the Press host to make most of us wish that Jon Stewart had taken NBC’s offer.

Chuck Todd: “I wish we didn’t focus on the individual personalities of journalists”

Scott Porch, Salon

Saturday, Nov 29, 2014 02:00 PM EST

Isn’t it a little icky that corporate media companies are polling on how much viewers like you?

Let me say this: I don’t like it when journalists become part of a story. We have a culture in social media that wants to make journalists as big a part of the story as politicians themselves. That’s not good. People say, “Oh, you’re trying to insert yourself into a story.” I’m not. I’m trying to be a conduit, to be a challenge or a devil’s advocate for the public. I wish there wasn’t as much focus on the individual personalities of journalists. The people we cover should be the focus.

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The journalists shouldn’t be the focal point. Whenever I have moderated a debate, it’s just like a football game. If people are talking about the officiating at the end of a game, that’s not good. You want people to talk about the game. The moderator shouldn’t be the story; the candidate should be the story.

There are at least two things wrong with this picture, first- politics is not a game and the incestuous Versailles Villager culture that looks at it that way and casts themselves in the role of Football Referees is exactly what’s wrong with the Media that can no longer be called news.  It has all the gravity of Professional Wrestling with less entertainment value.

Secondly, if you want to be taken “seriously” you need to stop peddling crap like this-

Chuck Todd Pretends David Brooks Is An Expert On Race Relations

By LeftOfCenter, Crooks & Liars

November 30, 2014 12:42 pm

This is an uncomfortable conversation, Chuck and Brooks both admit. I suppose it’s because two white guys, with absolutely no idea what it’s like to live with the institutionalized racism that plagues our society, are offering their assessment of a situation they don’t really care to discuss.

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Naughty social problems? I didn’t know that discussing race issues is naughty and unpleasant. I suppose he feels it doesn’t matter what color people are, as if society has no institutionalized racial-disadvantages and racial discrimination is a figment of all of our imaginations. Chuck later asks Brooks, the new race guru,

How does this conversation continue next week?

So it’s not a threat Chuck? It’s a promise, we’ll have more David Brooks next week?

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Thanks David Brooks, for reminding us of everything that is wrong with the GOP when it comes to helping our children. They have no use for early childhood education (or any education that they don’t profit from), they cut funding for poor minority youth programs and scholarships for disadvantaged youth. The GOP is the worst offender when it comes to financing the very same programs that Mike Brown wasn’t privileged enough to enjoy. They ignore the simple unpleasant truth that the Republican party has destroyed education funding, across the board, since Nixon.

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It is run by very, very bad people who firmly adhere to a “Rule or Ruin” view of America, and have a long and ridiculously well-documented history of playing to the lowest and ugliest instincts of its angry, paranoid base as their truest path to prosperity and power.

Of course, if Mr. Brooks was being interviewed by, say, a journalist on, say, a news show, this subject might have been pursued further. But as luck would have it he was, instead, interviewed by Chuck Todd on “Meet the Press”.

Unfortunately this is one time the tired old trope is true- both sides do it.  It’s not so much about Brooks being a Republican as it is he’s shilling 30 years of proven Neoliberal failure that is the D.C. consensus.