An "elite destination"?

I'm trying to read Axios: "MSNBC will soon announce plans to move morning anchor Stephanie Ruhle to the 11 pm ET hour that Brian Williams turned into an elite destination, two sources familiar with the move tell Axios." 

Did Brian Williams ever even achieve the comeback he needed? I didn't watch closely, but I don't even understand the claim that he created an "elite destination" out of the MSNBC 11 pm time slot. 

It could mean that very few people watched. Is Axios snarky like that?

But "elite" doesn't mean just small — unless you're talking about type size. It means "exclusive, select" (OED):

1962 G. Murchie Music of Spheres ii. 24 The most elite of the elite new breeds grew powerful antigravity muscles and air gills called lungs.

1985 P. W. On & C. H. Persell in P. W. Cookson & C. H. Persell Preparing for Power i. 28 Janitors pick up the litter of the elite students and the dogs.

2014 G. Tholen Changing Nature of Graduate Labour Market ii. 45 Recruitment practices for elite graduate positions may not deliberately be unmeritocratic.

"Too Many of Trump’s Liberal Critics Are Praising His Strike on Syria."

According to Joan Walsh at The Nation.

She's fareeking out.

On CNN’s New Day Thursday, global analyst Fareed Zakaria declared, “I think Donald Trump became president of the United States” last night. To his credit, Zakaria has previously called Trump a “bullshit artist” and said, “He has gotten the presidency by bullshitting.” But Zakaria apparently thinks firing missiles make one presidential. On MSNBC, Nicholas Kristof, an aggressive Trump critic, said he “did the right thing” by bombing Syria. Anchor Brian Williams, whose 11th Hour has regularly been critical of Trump, repeatedly called the missiles “beautiful,” to a noisy backlash on Twitter....

Any liberal who praises these missile strikes has to account for what comes next....

It was disappointing to see Hillary Clinton say Wednesday afternoon that she thought air strikes on Syrian airfields were an appropriate response to the chemical-weapon attack. She was always more hawkish than I wished, and that shows it. But it’s wrong to insist she’d have done the “same thing” as Trump. Clinton’s secretary of state wouldn’t likely have told Assad we were no longer concerned about removing him; if she did fire missiles at Syrian airfields, she would have done so with a clearer notion of what comes next. Trump appears to be clueless....

Yes, in the imaginary world where Hillary is President, she does the same thing as Trump, but differently. She's so disappointing, and yet so superior to Trump.

It's so difficult for Joan. She doesn't know which way to tsk.

Brian Williams: "This came from clearly a bad place, a bad urge inside of me."

"This was clearly ego driven, the desire to better my role in a story I was already in."

"Why is it when we are trying to say ‘I am sorry’ that we can’t come out and say, ‘I’m sorry’... Looking back, it is very clear I never intended to. It got mixed up. It got turned around in my mind.... I know why people feel the way they do... I get this. I am responsible for this. I am sorry for what happened here. I am different as a result, and I expect to be held to a different standard.... I would like to take this opportunity to say that what has happened in the past has been identified and torn apart by me and has been fixed and has been dealt with... Going forward, there are going to be different rules of the road... I was reading these newspaper stories, not liking the person I was reading about... These statements I made, I own this, I own up to this.... In our work, I have always treated words very carefully.... It is clear that after work, when I got out of the building, when I got out of that realm, I used a double standard. Something changed, and I was sloppy, and I said things that weren’t true. Looking back, that is plain."

That's him, treating words very carefully. Words are his stock in trade. He's used them and he's still using them. For his purposes. I can't imagine why we'd consume what he's serving. 

"ABC has plenty of reasons to be freaking out over the George Stephanopoulos scandal — 105 million, to be exact."

"The seven-year deal — which dwarfs the five-year, $50 million contract scored by since-suspended NBC rival Brian Williams — was supposed to keep Stephanopoulos in front of ABC’s cameras through 2021."

Jon Stewart is leaving "The Daily Show" and Brian Williams is leaving "NBC Nightly News."

Williams is suspended for 6 months. I guess they want to see if we'll forget why he left and start wondering why he's gone, so they can bring him back. That's all very lame and pathetic, and I don't watch the nightly news, so there's a limit to my outrage about NBC's wan interest in the truth.

Stewart is gone for good, presumably, and by his own choice. 

Mr. Stewart, whose contract with Comedy Central ends in September, disclosed his plans during a taping of the program on Tuesday.

Saying that “in my heart, I know it is time for someone else” to have the opportunity he had, Mr. Stewart told his audience that he was still working out the details of his departure, which “might be December, might be July.”

“I don’t have any specific plans,” Mr. Stewart said, addressing the camera at the end of his show, at times seeming close to tears. “Got a lot of ideas. I got a lot of things in my head. I’m going to have dinner on a school night with my family, who I have heard from multiple sources are lovely people.”

Reading that, I feel a tad skeptical. The man is in contract negotiations! Comedy Central just lost Stephen Colbert, and Stewart must believe they really need continuity on "The Daily Show." Stewart has stayed in his place there for 16 years, while his subordinate comedians — Steve Carell, Stephen Colbert, John Oliver — have moved on to bigger things. They owe him. His departure might be December, might be July? Might be years from now! Throw more money at Mr. Stewart, Comedy Central, you cheap bastards! Show some respect! Show some gratitude!

He said he wants to spend more time with his family. That's code for: I didn't want to have to leave. Isn't it?

That reminds me of something from this Daily Beast article about David Axelrod and his new book that's going to be the basis of my next post:

["Believer: My Forty Years in Politics"] recounts... his parents’ divorce and his father’s subsequent suicide; and his guilty conscience over his own role as an often-absent parent, working on out-of-town campaigns while his wife, Susan, kept the family together as they confronted the challenge of raising a daughter seriously disabled by epileptic seizures.

“It was painful to write some of that,” Axelrod says, noting that he as he put together the family chapters, he sent them to his eldest son, Michael, as a cautionary note: “Don’t do to your kids what I did to you.”

"I'm utterly uninterested in the news that Williams is stepping away from his job for a few days."

I wrote that last night as a footnote to a subject that did interest me: Maureen Dowd's revelation that NBC executives knew Brian Williams had a problem of "constantly inflating his biography" and that it had become "a joke in the news division." Why was nothing done about it?

I was writing on my iPad last night, so it was too hard to elaborate, but now that I've got a keyboard, I wanted to say that there are 2 reasons why I'm not interested in the news that "Brian Williams is stepping away from NBC Nightly News for a number of days."

1. Williams should be fired. A voluntary (or coerced) hiatus is too piddling to matter.

2.  I never watch any nightly new shows. It's like a corruption scandal in a sport I don't watch.

I think in the whole time I've been writing this blog, I watched a nightly news show exactly once: to check out the debut of Katie Couric as a network news anchor: "Okay, I'm watching the Katie Couric show." ("It's so annoying to feel forced into it!...)

I do watch the Sunday morning talk shows — ugh, they'll probably blab too much about Brian Williams today — but that's because they are bloggable — more analysis of the news I've already read (and there are transcripts).

The nightly news shows — if I remember them correctly — present summaries of news stories that I already know about through reading. I guess I could blog about the slanting and distorting and the choice of stories, but I can't bring myself to care by the end of the day when I've already applied my bloggerly attention to the printed mainstream media like the NYT and the Washington Post. And there's no transcript.

The network news just doesn't seem important anymore. Good news for Brian Williams: There's a limit to the damage you've done. (I must say, I feel a little sorry for him — his lying seems pathological, the man appears to be mentally disordered — but he makes $10 million a year, so... no pity.)

It's those network executives who deserve our contempt. Their failure to do anything when they knew for so long about his problem shines a light into the abyss of their standards.

"NBC executives were warned a year ago that Brian Williams was constantly inflating his biography."

"They were flummoxed over why the leading network anchor felt that he needed Hemingwayesque, bullets-whizzing-by flourishes to puff himself up, sometimes to the point where it was a joke in the news division."

Some surprising background, from Maureen Dowd.

By contrast, I'm utterly uninterested in the news that Williams is stepping away from his job for a few days.

"Who knows what impact incoming fire will have on Brian Williams’s career."

Says Ken Auletta in The New Yorker (where the punctuation is presumably punctilious, but that's a question without a question mark).

Yet this much is clear: ​journalists are supposed to be more transparent than the politicians we cover. We’re unpopular, in part, because we don’t practice the transparency we preach. Brian Williams believes that journalism is a noble calling, and he has often honored that calling. But by resorting to spin he let down more than “some brave military men and women.”

How does Auletta know Brian Williams believes that journalism is a noble calling? And... "more transparent than the politicians we cover" sounds like a damned low standard. I'm not sure Auletta even believes journalism is a noble calling.

Brian Williams lied and he's still lying... but why?

Power Line's John Hinderaker details why it had to be a lie from the start and why Williams's effort to cover his lie now can only be more lying:

Confronted with the facts, Williams recanted and apologized, chalking up his repeated error to the “fog of memory” after 12 years. No one is buying Williams’s apology, for several reasons: 1) it wasn’t 12 years ago when he started telling the story, but shortly after the event; 2) whether your helicopter was or was not hit by an RPG isn’t the sort of thing you are likely to be confused about; and 3) even the apology wasn’t candid. Williams wrote that “I was indeed on the Chinook behind the bird that took the RPG,” but failed to note that his helicopter was “behind the bird that took the RPG” by an hour.

Williams is not just an anchor, he is the Managing Editor of NBC Nightly News. Given the magnitude of the firestorm in which he has been engulfed, and the lack of any apparent defense for his mendacity, it seems inevitable that he will resign or be fired by NBC.

This is so devastating to Williams that it's hard to fathom why he did it. Wasn't it brave and honorable enough to be traveling with the military in Iraq? Isn't it braver to get on a helicopter knowing the one in front of you was hit than to happen to find yourself on one that is hit? Why lie and lie about something that you know many people are able to refute? It's so reckless and unnecessary. It makes you seem like you're a compulsive or pathological liar or you've got some strange self-destructive urge. Hinderaker's speculation is quite different from mine:

Williams used the story to burnish his credentials as a reporter; as a war correspondent; as a man.... He advanced his career... But I speculate that there was more to it than that. Often when he told the story, the context was Williams’s expression of admiration for the fighting men and women whom he got to know in Iraq.... the soldiers whom Williams got to know in Iraq work for peanuts, relatively speaking.... [T]he kind of wealth that has been heaped upon Brian Williams gives rise to a phenomenon that has played much too large a part in our national life: liberal guilt. Again, this is pure speculation, but I suspect that Williams’s emotional need to portray himself (in his own mind, not just to outsiders) as someone who braved dangers, was shot at and nearly killed, was part of how he assuaged the guilt that came packaged with the hundreds of millions of dollars he has earned for doing, really, not much.

But it was dangerous to be there and to get on the helicopter when the helicopter an hour ahead of you got hit! Why pile a lie on top of that? Out of guilt? And what's liberal about that guilt? Anyone who hasn't fought in war could feel guilty that others have done more. Hinderaker has to drag in the pay differential. I guess the idea is that it's liberal guilt, because nonliberals don't feel bad about making a lot of  money. Hinderaker goes on to speculate that this liberal guilt — if it was strong enough to motivate Williams to take such a huge and stupid risk — could have infected all sorts of news stories on NBC.

How has liberal guilt shaped stories that he has written and delivered on the economy; on taxes; on wages; on corporate profits; on fiscal policy; on race relations; on affirmative action; and on many other subjects NBC News has addressed over the years? If Williams would make up bald-faced lies in one context to assuage his own liberal guilt, is it unreasonable to think that he and his NBC colleagues have passed off misrepresentations, misleading data, errors of omission and, yes, outright falsehoods in service of the liberal cause on other topics, for the same reason?

I assume there's a liberal slant to its news, but I haven't bought the "liberal guilt" theory of Williams's bizarre behavior. It could nevertheless be true that liberal guilt drives the liberalism of liberals. I've spent decades deeply embedded among liberals and guilt just doesn't seem to be the central force in their psychology. "Liberal guilt" is some kind of meme among conservatives, and it doesn't resonate for me.

ADDED: What's up with Hinderaker and semicolons? I invite speculation about the mind of conservatives.

"Maybe she can get one of those Wisconsin doctors to write her a fake note."

Instapundit's intro to "Where’s Hillary’s Medical Report?"

Here's my original 2/19/11 report on the doctors offering to write sick notes for protesters who were skipping work for the Wisconsin protests:

At first I thought it was some sort of comic street theater, but it was, apparently, real doctors, defending what they were doing.... I asked if it was dishonest or unethical, and the answer was that everyone has symptoms, perhaps a migraine, diarrhea, or insomnia....

In that light, I'm sure Hillary does have symptoms. She's probably suffering horribly from the anxiety around the Benghazi attack and the possibility that she might have to speak about it. And she keeps telling us she's tired:

RUSH: Susan Rice last night on the NBC Nightly News with Brian Williams.  He played a portion of his interview with Susan Rice, and then he asked her, "Why was it you that Sunday morning?" Why did they send you out there to every Sunday show, five of them?  "Of all the people in government, why the US Ambassador the United Nations answering questions about the attack at Benghazi?"

RICE:  Secretary Clinton had originally been asked by most of the networks to go on.  She had had an incredibly grueling week dealing with the protests around the Middle East and North Africa.  I was asked. I was willing to do so. It wasn't what I had planned for that weekend originally, but I don't regret doing that.

RUSH:  Did you hear what she just said there?  She said they asked her to go 'cause Hillary was tired. Hillary Clinton had originally been asked by most of the networks to go on.  It was Obama who shut it down.  Obama wanted Susan Rice out there.  He wanted somebody far away from the story telling this lie that it was the video that led to the unrest.  Somebody close to it woulda had a little bit tougher time with any credibility telling the lie. But you get Susan Rice, she's distant. She is the UN ambassador, got nothing to do with Benghazi, not in the State Department. She has no representation at the consulate or at Benghazi, send her out there, and so Brian Williams said, "Why send you?"  "Well, you know, Hillary, she originally was asked, but she really had a grueling week.  I mean, dealing with protests in the Middle East and North Africa, she was really tired."

Hillary Clinton and Susan Rice — the spent and the expendable.

The come-on line everyone's talking about, from last Sunday's episode of the new HBO show "Girls."

Hanna Rosin sets up the discussion at Slate:

I don’t quite know what to make of Booth Jonathan’s come-on: “I want you to know, the first time I fuck you, I might scare you a little, because I’m a man, and I know how to do things.” Marnie was touched by it, obviously...

Marnie is the character whose actual boyfriend is so sensitive to her needs she finds him boring and hopeless. "Girls" is like the new "Sex and the City," and Marnie's the closest thing to Miranda — the main character's best friend, the confidante.

The ladies over at Slate go on and on about this line, e.g.:

[L.V.] Anderson: As that scene and others showed, this was the episode I thought Allison Williams' acting chops proved really not up to the task of playing Marnie. She can do annoyed and bitchy just fine, and we've seen that (and almost only that) in the first and second episode. But between the crying scene (when Hannah tells her she has HPV) and the masturbation scene, Williams in this episode was in over her head. I have never seen such bad fake crying in my life, and the bathroom masturbation is the least realistic scene in this show so far. Could I imagine Marnie going home and masturbating later that night? Sure. Can I imagine her SO INFLAMED with lust that she had to alleviate her sexual urges as soon as possible? Not for a second. What did you guys make of that scene?...

Dana Stevens: Not to get too personal, but do any of you know any woman, however hot and bothered by the manly charms of Jorma Taccone, who would masturbate standing up in an art-gallery bathroom while wearing pantyhose?

Allison Williams is the daughter of TV newsman Brian Williams, and what he feels is:

It’s kvelling, pride. It’s incredibly great. Her co-creator and I have known always that she was going to be an actress. So it’s fantastic.

You’re fine with the awkward sex scenes?

Unmitigated joy.

We've been watching this show, by the way. It's actually quite different from "Sex and the City" in that the sex lives of these girls — called "girls," obviously, to highlight their immaturity — is not glamorized. It's actually so sad it conflicts with the humor. One of the 4 girls is a virgin. (She's the Charlotte analogue.) She's our favorite character, played by Zosia Mamet, who is David Mamet's daughter. (I don't know what's with the famous dads angle, but Mamet is a fine comedienne and Williams is... as noted above.)

What's the best position for a 2012 candidate to take on the Arizona approach to immigration enforcement?

The Obama administration fought this law, in what culminated in an embarrassing performance at the Supreme Court this week. And Chuck Schumer's saying that if the Supreme Court upholds Arizona's law, the Democrats in Congress will rise up and kill it. But polls show that a big majority of Americans — and about half of Hispanic-Americans — support what Arizona has done — even after extensive efforts by the Democrats+MSM to make us all feel as though only terrible, racist people think Arizona's okay.

And I just want to remind you of something that you may have forgotten: the reason Barack Obama was able to overtake Hillary Clinton in the race for the Democratic nomination. What was the issue that tripped her up and gave Obama the opening to look like the sensible, moderate person?

But it was a question about driver's licenses for “undocumented workers'' – the politically neutral terminology for “illegal aliens'' which she prefers – that created the most trouble for Clinton during last night's two-hour debate of the Democrats staged in Philadelphia....

New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer has proposed giving driver's licenses to illegal immigrants, NBC moderator Tim Russert reminded Clinton. “You told the Nashua, N.H., editorial board it makes a lot of sense,'' he said. “Why does it make a lot of sense to give an illegal immigrant a driver's license? ''

“ Well, what Gov. Spitzer is trying to do is fill the vacuum left by the failure of this administration to bring about comprehensive immigration reform,'' she said. “We know in New York we have several million at any one time who are in New York illegally. They are undocumented workers.

We know all about Spitzer trying to "fill the vacuum," but let's not digress into the subject of prostitution in this post.

“They are driving on our roads,'' she said. “The possibility of them having an accident that harms themselves or others is just a matter of the odds. It's probability. So what Gov. Spitzer is trying to do is to fill the vacuum.

Ahem. I'm trying not to get distracted!

“I believe we need to get back to comprehensive immigration reform because no state, no matter how well-intentioned, can fill this gap,'' Clinton continued. “There needs to be federal action on immigration reform. ''

“Does anyone here believe an illegal immigrant should not have a driver's license?'' Russert asked the other six Democrats assembled on stage.

Damn! I miss Tim Russert! Here's video. I love the point — at 2:53 — when she complains that "everybody" — i.e. Tim — is playing "gotcha." Because he got her. And that's the moment when she loses.

After that point, it looks as though they are moving on to the next topic: protecting children — children! — from — horrors! — the Internet. We got a laugh watching the now-disgraced John Edwards scramble to: Children? Protect children? I would. But he shifts back to the immigration topic, not to take an actual position himself, but to attack Hillary for taking more than one position, and after all the years of "double-talk from Bush and from Cheney...  America deserves us to be straight.'' (Yeah, be straight, John. Tell it to the jury.)

And then Barack Obama gets his chance. At 4:10, the moderator (Brian Williams) calls on him: "Senator Obama, why are you nodding your head?"

“Well, I was confused on Sen. Clinton's answer,'' Obama said. “I can't tell whether she was for it or against it, and I do think that is important.

“You know, one of the things that we have to do in this country is to be honest about the challenges that we face,'' Obama said. “Immigration is a difficult issue. But part of leadership is not just looking backwards and seeing what's popular, or trying to gauge popular sentiment. It's about setting a direction for the country, and that's what I intend to do as president.''

That's obviously total mush, but he sounds calm saying it. He's pushed to take a position and — caught — he says that Spitzer has "the right idea... because there is a public safety concern":

"We can make sure that drivers who are illegal come out of the shadows, that they can be tracked, that they are properly trained, and that will make our roads safer. That doesn't negate the need for us to reform illegal immigration.''

So he agrees with Hillary's first position.  I had forgotten that. I can't remember how this issue played out and why it hurt Hillary so much and helped Obama. Maybe it was simply that she lost her cool and sounded dishonest, and he lucked into an opportunity to seem solid and competent.

Watching the GOP debate tonight.

1. Yes, again. I'll do numbered updates.

2. Gingrich — who looks tired and badly made up — is asked about electability. He says "a solid conservative... who has the courage to stand up to the Washington establishment" is exactly what the American people want.

3.  Gingrich will have a website responding to the "at least 4 things" Romney just said that are false.

4. Santorum gives a great answer to the question why he lost his Senate seat in Pennsylvania.

5. Romney isn't going to apologize for his success or for free enterprise, and he's critical of Gingrich for picking up the "weapons of the left," attacking capitalism.

6. Romney and Gingrich are given free rein to go back and forth against each other, with Romney accusing Gingrich of "influence peddling" and Gingrich seeming quite angry and defensive.

7. Gingrich opines that Castro will not "meet his Maker," because he's going to Hell. I suddenly figured out what's likeable about Gingrich: his unlikeability.

8. From my son John's live-blog: "Brian Williams asks Gingrich a ridiculous question: whether he'll shift in his views on foreign policy in order to get Ron Paul's endorsement. Williams seems like he isn't even trying to do a good job of moderating the debate." Ha ha.

"Perry shows no remorse, not even a tiny smidgen of reflection, especially when we know for certain that he signed the death warrant for an innocent man."

Writes Andrew Sullivan, live-blogging last night's debate.

Let's look at the transcript:

[BRIAN] WILLIAMS: Governor Perry, a question about Texas. Your state has executed 234 death row inmates, more than any other governor in modern times. Have you...

(APPLAUSE)

Okay, the applause interruption really does look bad. But that's not Perry.

Have you struggled to sleep at night with the idea that any one of those might have been innocent?

So... "might have been innocent." Where is the information that Texas "for certain" executed "an innocent man"? I know Perry didn't "sign the death warrant," because — pay attention, Andrew Sullivan — and I'm quoting the Washington Post here: "Decisions to seek the death penalty are made by local prosecutors. Unlike in some states, the governor does not sign death warrants or set execution dates." And I'm not seeing any information in that recent article about the execution of a man known to be innocent. So what is Sullivan posturing about?

Here's Perry's answer:

PERRY: No, sir. I've never struggled with that at all. The state of Texas has a very thoughtful, a very clear process in place of which -- when someone commits the most heinous of crimes against our citizens, they get a fair hearing, they go through an appellate process, they go up to the Supreme Court of the United States, if that's required.

But in the state of Texas, if you come into our state and you kill one of our children, you kill a police officer, you're involved with another crime and you kill one of our citizens, you will face the ultimate justice in the state of Texas, and that is, you will be executed.

WILLIAMS: What do you make of...

(APPLAUSE)

This time the applause is fine. Perry has shown respect for the legal process and for the scope of his role as governor. He's expressed support for the death penalty in an articulate and circumspect way, and most Americans do support the death penalty. He was asked to confess that he agonizes about the possibility of mistakes, and he gave a sober — not emotive — response that refers to the safeguards of the legal process and the proportionality of the punishment.

WILLIAMS: What do you make of that dynamic that just happened here, the mention of the execution of 234 people drew applause?

Again, Williams —skillfully — lures Perry into the realm of emotion. Perhaps he's looking for a big moment, perhaps something like what happened to Michael Dukakis in the second presidential debate in 1988. Dukakis was against the death penalty, and the question asked by Bernard Shaw invited him to show some passion and fire about crime — what if your wife were raped and murdered? — and Dukakis stayed doggedly on his track, expressing coolly rational rejection of the death penalty.

In last night's debate, Perry declined the invitation to show passion about death — the death of the convicted murderer — and, like Dukakis, he stayed coolly rational. In Sullivan's words, he "shows no remorse" or "reflection" — but he did show reflection, reflection about the soundness of the system of justice. He didn't show remorse. Remorse is what you ask a criminal to show. It was fine for Perry not to be lured into displaying angst over executions. But then I thought it was fine for Dukakis to keep from getting sidetracked by Shaw's melodramatic hypothetical. All we're talking about is the public's response to the candidate and the journalist's effort to create excitement. The difference is, most Americans support the death penalty, and they don't need elaborate expressions about the deep significance of death when it's the death of a convicted murderer.

Perry does well at this point:

PERRY: I think Americans understand justice. I think Americans are clearly, in the vast majority of -- of cases, supportive of capital punishment. When you have committed heinous crimes against our citizens -- and it's a state-by-state issue, but in the state of Texas, our citizens have made that decision, and they made it clear, and they don't want you to commit those crimes against our citizens. And if you do, you will face the ultimate justice.

That's the answer, plainly and appropriately stated. Sullivan's straining to use this to portray Perry as evil is — to my mind — and I oppose the death penalty — demagoguery.

It's absurd to use Teddy Kennedy's death to push the health care bill.

First, a collection of clips:

Speaking of naming the bill under Ted Kennedy, we have a State-Run Media montage here, day two: pushing health care for Kennedy. Here we have John King of CNN, Jessica Yellin of CNN, Roger Simon of Politico, David Gregory at NBC, David "Rodham" Gergen at CNN, Brian Williams of NBC, Kelly O'Donnell at NBC, and Kiran Chetry at CNN all talking about the passing of Senator Kennedy and health care reform.

KING: There was a change in the political dynamic after President Kennedy's assassination. Will there be a change in the health care dynamic after his passing?

YELLIN: Senator Kennedy's death will inspire his colleagues in Congress to find a way to pass health care reform.

SIMON: If President Obama wants to carry the torch that the Kennedys had passed to him, President Obama's going to have to pass health care.

GREGORY: ...as the result of the Senator's death, because he was such a champion for health care.

GERGEN: This may open a new window for Barack Obama to bring Democrats and Republicans back to the table in Teddy Kennedy's memory.

O'DONNELL: Democrats are saying respect for Kennedy could change minds now. National sorrow has created political momentum before.

WILLIAMS: I received an e-mail today that said, "In lieu of flowers, let's pass health care reform."

CHETRY: To honor his memory, could lawmakers find the inspiration to reach across the aisle and get health care reform passed?

It's absurd to expect the death of a 77-year-old political figure, who was known to suffer from a fatal cancer, to be anything like the response to the sudden, violent death of a 46-year-old President. Even assuming both men were equally beloved and even if the older man had also been President, the emotion cannot be anywhere near the same.

The murder of John Kennedy was a profound shock that had the power to reconfigure our minds. It made us want to find something positive to do in response. The death of a sick old man, who had had more than the usual allotment of years, is sad for those close to him, but otherwise is an utterly normal event, sad only in the way that it is sad that we are all mortal.

There is nothing to be done about it. It is absurd to use that phenomenally mundane event to push and prod us to take political action.

"You want fries?" asks Obama — playing a burger-gofer in an inane sequence for NBC cameras.

And no, despite that HuffPo headline, he does not get “frustrated.” He’s being comical. Watch the video. You’ll see. You’ll also see Brian Williams — I’m thinking of the car scene — gesticulating in a way that can only be described as douchey.

(Cross-posted on Instapundit.)

Okay, enough with the shoe shopping. Let's live-blog the big debate.

7:58 ET: I am so ready for this. It's do or die time for Hillary. And I'm watching the debate with a big Hillary supporter. I want to see some major action in the first 20 minutes. MSNBC is banging drums and hyping the debate (which starts in an hour). They show a picture of Jonah Goldberg and call him a "clown" who compared Obama to Hitler. I think the sensible people will switch over to "American Idol" and then return to MSNBC when this silliness is over.

9:01: "Oh, the debate."

9:04: Brian Williams plays Hillary the "I am absolutely honored" from the last debate followed by the "shame!" routine from the other day. What's with the mood swings? It's a "contested" campaign, she says and segues into a discussion of health insurance. The follow-up is about the "native garb" photo of Obama. Hillary doesn't know where it came from and doesn't condone it. Obama accepts her assertion about the "native garb" photo. Both of them derail Williams's plan and make this whole huge segment of the debate about the details of their rival health care programs. It's one filibuster after another.

9:19: Hillary seems to think that her getting the first question again is worthy of note, and she makes a clumsy reference to "Saturday Night Live," something about Barack Obama needing "another pillow." I don't like this infantalizing of Obama, and I don't her acting like people are picking on her. Tim Russert is struggling with her over NAFTA now, really trying to pin her down. Is she ready to opt out of NAFTA in 6 months? She says yes — unless it can be renegotiated on labor and environmental standards. This sounds harsh, but since Obama proceeds to agree with her entirely, it's not a point of distinction and should have no effect on anyone's decision.

9:35: Is anyone still watching? So far, it's been an annoying combination of wonky and angry.

9:48: Tim Russert seems angry too as he hypothesizes about how the Iraqis may react to a new President announcing a planned pullout.

9:53: "I think Senator Clinton showed some good humor there," Obama says after seeing the clip of Hillary being sarcastic about his speaking ("the heaven's will open," etc.). He nicely avoids the bait and gets back to talking policy (which is exactly what his strategy should be, since it's only Clinton who can benefit by shaking things up tonight). "I'm not interested in talk. I'm not interested in speeches," he says. Hillary offers that she was "having a little fun," and it's hard to have fun on the campaign trail.

10:08: Russert is raging. Hillary needs to release her tax returns! (She's too busy to do it before next Tuesday, she says, as if she'd personally get the papers together.) Obama should denounce Farrakhan! (He blusters.)

10:13: Hillary scores! When she ran for the Senate in 2000, she rejected the support of the anti-Semitic Independence Party. She "wouldn't be associated with people" like that. So far, Obama has only said that he gave a sermon denouncing anti-Semitism. Then there's some confusing byplay over whether "reject" is a stronger word than "denounce," and Obama gets away with resolving it by saying he would "reject and denounce." So her strong point got fuzzed over. He still hasn't denounced Farrakhan. She loses the moment and says "good, good." He beams. We go to commercial. Her moment is squandered. He got away with something there.

10:19: Obama is confronted with his "most liberal" ranking. I find his talking tiresome and will need to check the transcript to see if he said anything interesting.

10:33: In lieu of a closing statement, each is asked about the other, and many tedious words are blabbed. Arghhh! I hit the wall after that reject-and-denounce fiasco.

11:18: So what did you think of "American Idol"? Did David Cook deserved to be slammed for liking crossword puzzles when the other guys were about tennis and drag racing? Cook was the hardest rocker... yet somehow he's a pussy because he's — by his own admission — a "word nerd." Tonight was interesting because 2 guys who were unimpressive last week were really good: Chikezie and David Hernandez. I really liked Hernandez doing "Papa Was a Rolling Stone" — it was 70s night — what a great song. Now, I'm watching the adorable, scream-inducing David Archuleta singing "Imagine." Randy — who loves him — asks why he skipped the first verse. David does not say because it's against religion, just that he had to cut it shorter and he likes the last verse best, but I think he didn't want to disrespect religion. Now Paula says she wants to hang him from her rear view mirror, which I suppose means she thinks he's Jesus. Either that or she thinks he's air freshener. But the way she goes on to break down crying over how it was the most beautiful thing she's ever heard, I don't think it can just be that he's super-fresh. Simon says "Right now, you're the one to beat." Two guys who fell in my estimation this week were Michael Johns (why is the macho guy bleating Fleetwood Mac?) and Jason Castro (dull). And what are we to think of Luke Menard? He picked an incredibly complicated song — "Killer Queen" — and pulled it off decently (but couldn't be Mercury). Something I don't even want to think about: Robbie Carrico singing "Hot Blooded" (man, I hate that kind of song). Or Jason Yeager (what a cheeseball!). And then there's Danny Noriega. He's very sweet, and he sang a great song ("Superstar"), but he's just not good enough. (Here, listen to Karen Carpenter sing it.) He could be the Sanjaya this year, but the young girls are going crazy for the kid who's actually really good, li'l David Archuleta, so we won't be having a Sanjaya.

Confined to quarters, soaking up atmospherics.

"Meet the Press" is offering an interview about an election, but it's John Kerry, chewing over last fall's U.S. election. Part of the opening teaser for the interview is "What would he do about Iraq?" – the very question I waited to hear him answer for the entire length of the campaign.

But, before the interview, let's have a little news from Iraq. Ooh, Brian Williams is on the scene, with his eyebrows slanting in the circumflex position of worry and his arms in the akimbo position of scolding. He's just had an interview with Iyad Allawi, who was "obviously expressing great confidence that this is the first day of a new era." Yeah, he would, that Pollyanna, so please, Brian, spread some gloom so we can feel good again about our negativism:

We should back up to the overall feeling here, and that I think most here would agree is a kind of general unease … uh … atmospherically … as we have heard many booms and concussions over the past hour … uh … as we have combined, really, over the past few days. A while back the threat of pedestrian suicide bombers had us confined to quarters. And there has been violence. As of air time this morning, fourteen attacks … thirty-six people dead so far. But, Tim, like the election numbers, those will change, and probably the best way to approach all of the numbers we'll be hearing today – you hear turn out at 72% in one precinct, 50 in another, 4 percent in another is with the same caution we exercise in the states with those now-famous first wave exit polls and other early information. This is probably, it's safe to say at this hour, a fairly unquantifiable election so far.

Good set-up for the Kerry interview. Remember how happy Kerry supporters were for a while when they heard the early numbers last November? So, anti-Bush folks, transform that old November disappointment for some new hope for a disastrous election in Iraq. Don't listen to Allawi, whom Williams got an interview with and immediately brushed aside. Listen to Williams, who is there on the scene, confined to his quarters by the threats of violence that the voters themselves defied. Williams is right there in Iraq, squirrely and squirreled away in his hotel room, where he soaks up "atmospherics." He hears some booms in the distance, so he can tell you first hand about the "general unease."