Andrea, Jennifer, and The 2 Williams.

I assured you that I would write this post. It's something that should be very fun for me, but I've made it obligatory. I said "It's one of my favorite stories ever." And then, fooling about in the comments:

Every task seems like more fun than the subject I regard as the ripest of the week, Andrea, Jennifer, and The 2 Williams. 

What is wrong with me? I just got up to make my 5th cup of coffee! 

Did William Shakespeare drink coffee? Did William Faulkner?... 

"He didn't have coffee, he didn't have vanilla, he didn't have cocoa. Imagine writing Hamlet without a cup of coffee. That's amazing."... 

Faulkner drank, but not so much coffee. 

"Jeezus Christ! Have you ever heard of anyone who drank while he worked? You’re thinking of Faulkner. He does sometimes—and I can tell right in the middle of a page when he’s had his first one"

So, yes, the "2 Williams" are Shakespeare and Faulkner. They were in the news last night because Andrea — Andrea Mitchell, the NBC News chief Washington correspondent — tweeted something so mind-bogglingly stupid — stupid, evil, and hilarious — and Jennifer — Jennifer Rubin, the WaPo columnist — lunged horribly after Andrea's tweet. These people — Mitchell and Rubin — are supposed to be the elite, but they are not even elite enough to keep from stumbling over a high-school level literary reference or even to think of making sure — with the quickest Google — they're not making a gaffe. 

Andrea saw what looked like it might be an opportunity to mock Ted Cruz.

"President Trump plans to invite President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia to visit Washington in the fall, the White House said Thursday..."

"... an invitation that stunned the nation’s top intelligence official, who said he was still groping for details of what the two leaders had discussed in their encounter this week in Helsinki, Finland. 'Say that again,' the director of national intelligence, Dan Coats, replied when Andrea Mitchell of NBC broke the news while interviewing him at a security conference in Aspen, Colo. 'O.K.,' Mr. Coats said, taking a deep breath and chuckling awkwardly. 'That’s going to be special.'...  [T]o Mr. Coats, who has been at odds with Mr. Trump about whether Russia meddled in the election, the prospect of another one-on-one encounter was clearly rattling...."

That's how the NYT reports the news, featuring characterizations of the vocalizations and breathing patterns of Dan Coats. But you can characterize it yourself (albeit under the influence of the anxiety-marimba music layered in by the NYT):



Why is Coats chuckling on stage with Andrea Mitchell? He seems to be playing to the audience and doing some sort of theater of everyone knowing that the President is — what? — weird/crazy/his own sort of guy?

By the way, if Trump were actually treasonous or colluding with The Enemy or exposing us to grave danger, it wouldn't be something to chuckle over! So, obviously Coats knows much more about it all that we do, and he's chuckling for the crowd, not holed up at work desperately trying to save us from destruction.

"If we Republicans choose Donald Trump as our nominee, the prospects for a safe and prosperous future are greatly diminished."

Mitt Romney doles out his fatherly warnings.

“Isn’t he a huge business success and doesn’t he know what he’s talking about?” Romney asked mockingly. “No, he isn’t, and no he doesn’t.”...

Romney also slammed Trump as “a phony” and “a fraud” who is “playing the American public for suckers."

ADDED: I used the verb "dole," so I feel I should add "Bob Dole Warns of ‘Cataclysmic’ Losses With Ted Cruz, and Says Donald Trump Would Do Better."

AND: "He is basically arguing for gridlock, deadlock and I know from my own reporting that Mitt Romney is putting himself out there. He will never say this, but he's putting himself out there as the party's alternative to Donald Trump." Said Andrea Mitchell.

Chuck Todd was heavily pushing the politicization of the Colorado Planned Parenthood shooting.

It permeated "Meet the Press" today. The worst part was in this segment of the interview with Ben Carson:

CHUCK TODD: There was this shooting in Colorado Springs. And overnight, there's now been reports that the shooter was yelling about baby parts. 

Yelling? I thought "no more baby parts" only appeared somewhere in the shooter's rambling, unfocused interview with the police. Todd is making it seem like an Allahu-Akbar-type battle cry.

CHUCK TODD: Planned Parenthood put out this statement, "We've seen an alarming increase in hateful rhetoric and smear campaigns against abortion providers and patients over the last few months. That environment breeds acts of violence. Americans reject the hatred and vitriol that fueled this tragedy." That was, again, from a Planned Parenthood Rocky Mountain spokesperson. Do you believe that the rhetoric got too heated on Planned Parenthood? And are you concerned that it may have motivated a mentally disturbed individual?

Carson handled the question by going utterly generic —  rejecting "any hateful rhetoric directed at anyone from any source" and recommending that we "stop trying to destroy each other" and "work constructively."

Earlier, Todd asked a similar question of Donald Trump, albeit without the inappropriate reference to "yelling."

CHUCK TODD: Now, a spokesperson for Planned Parenthood is concerned that the heated rhetoric around the Planned Parenthood debate could've had an adverse effect, basically, on this mentally disturbed individual. Do you think the rhetoric got out of hand on Planned Parenthood?

Trump stuck to his idea that the man (Robert Lewis Dear) is mentally ill. And that's when Todd brought up that "he was talking about baby parts and things like that... during his interview." Todd seemed to be trying to get Trump to back off on the political headway that anti-abortion forces have made with the undercover Planned Parenthood videos. Trump did not give him that (though he took a sideswipe at Republicans):

There's a name for this argument Debbie Wasserman Schultz is making about Hillary Clinton's story of trying to enlist in the Marines.

It's "fake but accurate."

Watch the video of Andrea Mitchell pushing for an explanation for why Hillary is going around making this claim that's quite unlikely to be true and that WaPo's fact checker has given 2 Pinocchios. DWS begins by impugning the very asking of the question: "Why on earth are we talking about this?" Mitchell stands her ground. Obviously, we're talking about it because Hillary Clinton is using her personal story in her current campaigning for President. DWS shifts to presenting the story as illustrating something that is true (that women have struggled over the years with acceptance into the military). In that light, the details of whether the story is real doesn't matter as long as it works to understand a problem that is real.

ADDED: Here's the WaPo fact checker piece. It not only shows the fakeness of Hillary's story, but it also undermines the "fake but accurate" presentation, because it doesn't even illustrate the general problem accurately. Excerpt:

Women have been part of the Marines since 1918, and were deployed to Korea in the 1950s. “By the height of the Vietnam war... about 2,700 women Marines served... both stateside and overseas,” according to the Women Marines Association. “By 1975, the Corps approved the assignment of women to all occupational fields except infantry, artillery, armor and pilot/air crew.”

And: "A former Marine lawyer, who was actively recruiting for the JAG at the time, says it is 'ludicrous' to suggest someone with Clinton’s skills would have been rejected. Since the draft had ended, 'we were frantic for lawyers,' he said, declining to be identified. Neither age nor eyesight would have been issue, he added. Many of the newly recruited lawyers were at least 26 years old and eyesight was only an issue for pilots, he said."

"Is [Carly Fiorina] really, truly so filled with rage? Probably not."

"When she ran unsuccessfully against Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) in 2010, she was a moderate, pro-business Republican. That erstwhile profile would get her nowhere in this year’s presidential race, however, when everyone is scrambling to get to the right of everyone else and 'moderate' is a dirty word. One has to wonder if the showy posture of ultraconservative anger isn’t the biggest lie of all."

Writes Eugene Robinson.

I wonder if Hillary Clinton is watching Fiorina's rise and trying to learn something about how a woman can present herself in an exciting, compelling way. Robinson, I suspect, would only like to say that it's those terrible Republicans who respond to anger, but Democrats are responding to Bernie Sanders and he always sounds and looks angry. (Take any video of him, pause it randomly and repeatedly, and marvel or giggle at how every freeze frame is another angry face.)

And on "Meet the Press" the other day, when asked whether Hillary Clinton is "in tune with the mood of the electorate," Andrea Mitchell said no, because "She's not angry enough." Mitchell seemed to think it would be too hard for Hillary to feed the hunger for rage: "[I]t's hard for her to be angry because then you've got, you know, Donald Trump saying, 'She's shrill,' which is a sexist word, let's face it. But she has to get around that. But the anger, the passion is all on people going on the attack, whether it's, you know, whether it's Donald Trump, whether it's Carly Fiorina, or whether it's Bernie Sanders."

If Carly can do it, why not Hillary? Carly undermines that pro-Hillary sexism argument, that if Hillary displays emotion, she'll be judged according to standards that are only imposed on women. There are reasons for a candidate to eschew the anger mode, but Carly makes it harder for Hillary to claim she must be flat and bland lest people see her as a screeching harridan.

The coldness and the hotness — Hillary Clinton and Carly Fiorina on "Meet the Press."

On "Meet the Press" today (which began with an interview with Hillary). Brooks said:

Sometimes she's campaigning like she's in Napoleon's march on Moscow, just like a trudge through the winter. This was a little more upbeat, a little more fun...

A little more fun than this...



Brooks continues:

She's basically has a defensive posture. And that means she's erecting walls, not trusting people, and there's no romance. People, especially this year, they want a little romance, they want a lot of ideological action going outward. But she's on the defensive. And so that's the core problem. It's not the emails. Nobody's going to disqualify her as president because she used one server versus another. That's not a real scandal. It's her attitude.

Later, asked whether Hillary Clinton is "in tune with the mood of the electorate," Andrea Mitchell says she is not because...

She's not angry enough. She's not-- And it's hard for her to be angry because then you've got, you know, Donald Trump saying, "She's shrill," which is a sexist word, let's face it. But she has to get around that. But the anger, the passion is all on people going on the attack, whether it's, you know, whether it's Donald Trump, whether it's Carly Fiorina, or whether it's Bernie Sanders.

"Shrill," yeah, it is used to push women back, but Carly Fiorina is a woman, and she's not cowed at all. She, too, was interviewed earlier in the show, right after Hillary, and she was fierce, utterly on the attack, especially as Chuck Todd tried to get her to concede that she'd misstated what she thought she saw in that harvest-the-brain Planned Parenthood video. Watch it:



Why won't she concede that the fetus we see is stock footage, intercut to increase the emotional impact of the story that is related by a witness? I say it's a deliberate trap. The video makes us feel we saw the event. One could be wrong, and maybe eventually Carly will say she did look back and sees now that she was conflating the image with the spoken account. But until then, she's creating pressure on everyone to view the video for themselves, and once people do that, most will be horrified by the story and want to know if it's true, and those who want to say but Carly was wrong about seeing the incident in the video will seem morally unbalanced, perhaps monstrous. That's what you want to talk about?!

Andrea Mitchell asks Kathleen Sebelius: "Along the way, what was your low point?"

On "Meet the Press" this morning. And Sebelius said:

Oh, Andrea, it would have to be the time I curled up into a little ball and cried all day. If it weren't for all the ice cream... people say I wasn't good at planning for all the things that could go wrong, but I did have the foresight to load the freezer with chocolate-chip Haagen Dazs... I cried and cried and consoled myself with ice cream and I tell you, Andrea, if it weren't for all that ice cream, I would have committed suicide.

Actually, that's not what Sebelius said. That's what I said watching "Meet the Press" and thinking Andrea Mitchell had resorted to an absurdly girlie question.

What Sebelius actually said was: "Well, I would say that the eight weeks where the site was not functioning well for the vast majority of people was a pretty dismal time. And I was frankly hoping and watching and measuring.... " etc. etc. Pretty dismal, but not emotional in any personal way.

MSNBC takes Romney's "WaWa" remark out of context for the purpose of mockery.

Shame on Andrea Mitchell and Chris Cillizza for their clown work in this travesty of journalism.

You've got to watch the clip, knowing how completely out of context it is. Look at the bullshit blank disbelief mugging they do for the camera. How embarrassing!

Here's something else out of context:

Now I don't need no WaWa
And I know how sweet life can be
So I get myself free... of WaWa
I don't need no WaWa

IN THE COMMENTS: t-man said:

Wawa is the best convenience store chain in the country!...

Also, it isn't WaWa, that would be ridiculous. It is named after the town of Wawa, Pennsylvania.

Yes, there's no internal capital W. I  checked the company's website. I was carrying over the error made a the WasHington PoSt website.

ADDED: Rush Limbaugh is opening his show today with this story. MSNBC is doing it again, he says, connecting it to the doctoring of George Zimmerman's 911 call. "It was blatant and they got caught... and now everybody is ridiculing them."

Was Hillary jetlagged? That's a hell of an excuse for the lady who purveyed the 3 a.m. ad!

The "Today Show" dialogue:

MEREDITH VIEIRA: This was definitely an uncharacteristic response by the Secretary of State, leading some to suggest that either she is jetlagged or jealous of her husband and the huge shadow that he casts, most notably last week in North Korea, where he negotiated the release of those two American journalists. What are insiders saying about this this morning?

ANDREA MITCHELL: Insiders would tell you probably a little of both. A lot of jetlag, clearly. By then she was at the half point in a twelve-day trip, seven countries. Very difficult travel. She had done twenty-two speeches and five interviews and she was exhausted—and and clearly, some would say, having a bad hair day. So not an easy day for Hillary Clinton.

Here's the old 3 a.m. ad, which was supposed to make us think Barack Obama would screw up when he was sleepy or something:



Obama seems tired/testy at times, but there's no video of him acting anywhere near as out of it as Hillary when she snapped in the Congo:



ADDED: Looking at the "Hillary snaps" clip one more time, I'm thinking if only she had smiled when she said that, it would have been if not just fine, kind of all right. She's teaching a feminist lesson — actually, an important one — and those things require a decent amount of lubrication.

"I couldn't believe that people would really believe that Muskie was eating Ibogaine."

"I never said he was. I said there was a rumor in Milwaukee that he was. Which was true. And I started the rumor in Milwaukee." Said Hunter S. Thompson.

Scroll to 1:35 in this trailer from the movie "Gonzo: The Life and Work of Dr. Hunter S. Thompson":



That sprang to mind when I read this comment, from Simon, on the first post of the day:

Ann said...

"Thanks to Andrea Mitchell for revealing that the campaign is prompting the press to take that line."

That's a positive way to think about Mitchell's role. Being a cynic, though, I can't help but think that another way one could think about it is as lamppost journalism. Mitchell is presumably an Obama supporter, and this rumor would be a useful way to limit McCain's victory last night and grab back the headlines. No one was talking about this before Mitchell brought it up, and if Mitchell wants to maintain the veneer of journalistic neutrality, she can't raise the suggestion herself. Ah, but she can raise it herself if she can claim to be simply reporting what the Obama campaign is saying.

Bill Kristol on the Saddleback Forum.

He makes 3 points:

1. Rick Warren was great:

Warren’s queries were simple but probing. He was fair to both candidates, his manner was relaxed but serious, and he neither went for “gotcha” questions nor pulled his punches. And his procedure of asking virtually identical questions to each candidate during his turn on stage paid off. It allowed us to see the two giving revealingly different answers to the same question.

I agree. I can't think of anyone I've seen do a better job of probing prospective Presidents. He did a brilliant job of demonstrating the way and the extent to which religion belongs in politics. If Warren is to be the new face of Christian evangelism in America, we are experiencing a great advance.

2. McCain won.

Obama made no big mistakes. But his tendency to somewhat windy generalities meant he wasn’t particularly compelling. McCain, who went second, was crisp by contrast, and his anecdotes colorful.

I agree that McCain was crisp. McCain kept launching anecdotes, which ought to have made him seem windy too, but they were such good anecdotes, he kept them very short, and he acted like he thought it was stretching the format to include them, so I never got the feeling that he was padding and running out the clock.

But I think Obama was good too. He does tend to drift about abstractly, but he seems to be thinking out loud, and this often makes him seem real and compelling. Sometimes, such as when he talked about same-sex marriage, we think we can see him dissembling. Now, you might think it would be great to have a President whose dissembling shows, but he's going to have to engage in world diplomacy on our behalf.

Kristol bolsters his opinion that McCain won by pointing to Andrea Mitchell on “Meet the Press,” who said “the Obama people must feel that he didn’t do quite as well as they might have wanted to in that context. ... What they’re putting out privately is that McCain ... may have had some ability to overhear what the questions were to Obama.” Ha ha. Thanks to Andrea Mitchell for revealing that the campaign is prompting the press to take that line.

3. Obama and McCain "have different 'worldviews'":

Obama said ... “Now, the one thing that I think is very important is for us to have some humility” as we confront evil. Why? Because “a lot of evil has been perpetrated based on the claim that we were trying to confront evil.” After all, “just because we think our intentions are good doesn’t always mean that we’re going to be doing good.”...

But here as elsewhere, Obama stayed at a high level of abstraction. It would have been interesting if Warren had asked a follow-up question: Where in particular has the United States in recent years — at home or especially abroad — perpetrated evil in the name of confronting evil? Hasn’t the overwhelming problem been, rather, a reluctance to effectively confront evil — in Darfur, or Rwanda, or pre-9/11 Afghanistan?

John McCain appears to think so. Unlike Obama, he took the question about evil to be in the first instance about 9/11. McCain asserted that “of course evil must be defeated,” and he put “radical Islamic extremism,” Al Qaeda in particular, at the top of his to-defeat list. In this context, McCain discussed the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and concluded by mentioning “the young men and women who are serving this nation in uniform.”

They were different in response to the question about whether evil exists and, if so, what we ought to do about it. We all know McCain thinks much more readily of the military and that he'll doggedly go for victory once we've engaged. Obama, by contrast, tends to mull over America's failings. There were many other differences on display at the forum. Compare their answers on abortion and their efforts to put a number on "rich." It's this displaying of differences that matters far more than any conclusions about who won.

"Fake interviews."

Barack in Iraq.