Morning Jolt
. . . with Jim Geraghty
March 31, 2010
In This Issue . . .
1. Obama to Critics: I Understand Only Most of You Are Crazy Conspiracy Theorists
2. CNN Should Begin Prime Time with 'The Hunt for Richard Quest's Indoor Voice'
3. Snot-Nosed Punks Will Pay 17 Percent More to Relieve Sinus Congestion
4. Addenda
Good Morning,
Welcome to your Wednesday Jolt!
Enjoy,
Jim
1. Obama to Critics: I Understand Only Most of You Are Crazy Conspiracy Theorists
AP: "President Barack Obama says he believes the Tea Party is built around a 'core group' of people who question whether he is a U.S. citizen and believe he is a socialist. But beyond that, Obama tells NBC he recognizes the movement involves 'folks who have legitimate concerns' about the national debt and whether the government is taking on too many difficult issues simultaneously."
A guy who has dramatically expanded the federal government's role in banks, student loans, auto making, health care, real estate, insurance, and energy industries is lamenting that people call him a socialist. What more does he have to do before the label becomes less than outlandish, establish SMERSH? Note the not-too-subtle sleight of hand in the way Obama lumps together Birthers with the general opposition to him. I haven't been to a tea party since last fall, but has anybody seen any signs or chants focusing on the Kenyan Secret Agent theory? Isn't the general outrage focused a bit more on the here and now and how we're getting the rawest deal since Arnold Schwarzenegger took on the mob? (Pardon me, I meant the raw f'ing deal, as Vice President Coprolalia would put it.) President Obama, we've moved on from your Kenyan birth. It's time you did the same.
Left Coast Rebel: "I can relate. I guess that the White House features a 'core group' of Marxist-Leninists bent on turning America into a Banana Republic. But beyond that, I recognize that the White House also has 'folks that simply just want to spread the wealth' and are taking on too many things, simultaneously."
I sense some head-spinning from Meryl Yourish: "So the post-partisan, post-racial president has chosen to take the fringes of the Tea Party movement and slam the entire Tea Party with them even while declaring that is not what he's doing. The utter gall of the man simply amazes. So let's see if we get this straight. There are some people in the Tea Party who have legitimate concerns. But the core group -- the reason the party was founded -- is made up of Birthers. And the media will not present this as a slam, because of course, Obama says it isn't. He's not slamming the Tea Party. Just the core group that founded it (and, in their eyes, is presumably running it, though the Tea Party is decentralized). Ladies and gentlemen, the next lefty talking point is out of the gate."
2. CNN Should Begin Prime Time with 'The Hunt for Richard Quest's Indoor Voice'
Dang: "CNN continued what has become a precipitous decline in ratings for its prime-time programs in the first quarter of 2010, with its main hosts losing almost half their viewers in a year. . . . Now Mr. Cooper sometimes finds himself losing to repeats of shows on MSNBC and HLN."
I appear on CNN from time to time, so this means I enjoy their programming . . . from time to time.
Perhaps I'm the exact wrong target audience; because I deal with news all day long, by prime time I just want to watch Jack Bauer waterboard Charlie Sheen or watch Adam Baldwin sneak in references to Jonah's book on Chuck. But really, who's yearning to watch Larry King lob his latest round of softballs to Ryan Seacrest in the 9 p.m. hour, or Anderson Cooper deploying his trademark soulful-mournful look while sucking in his gut in a t-shirt before some far-off scene of horrific human misery? Am I really supposed to gravitate to Larry King's health-care discussion with Mitt Romney and Kathleen Sebelius when a few nights earlier the show's hot topic was Kirstie Alley's promise to keep off the weight this time? And by the 10 p.m. hour, how much news is breaking? Cooper's either giving us the day's headlines that we could have heard at any other hour or walking in the footsteps of Sally Struthers in some refugee camp that just reinforces the sense that yes, the world is going to hell in a handbasket. And the onetime host of the reality show The Mole will be furrowing his brow at us the whole time.
JammieWearingFool: "We could do this monthly or quarterly and just plug in the same text and just leave space for the new numbers. Same story, different day: Fox rises, CNN plummets, MSNBC continues to flounder. Maybe the idiotic left who snivel and whine about Fox News Channel might step back and realize it is they who are responsible for sending so many viewers their way by constantly talking about them. But hey, who are we to give advice to these clowns?"
Ed Morrissey offers a diagnosis: "They can certainly keep telling themselves that their hosts don't align with a 'partisan point of view,' but the viewers obviously think otherwise. Anderson Cooper helped popularize the 'teabagger' slur used against Tea Party activists, which certainly would have alienated that demographic. Larry King isn't exactly known for his welcoming attitude towards conservatives, and neither for that matter is Campbell Brown or Rick Sanchez. When conservative points of view are expressed by guests, the CNN hosts display a lot more skepticism for them than with the expressions of liberal points of view. (Full disclosure: I've been on with both Campbell and Rick and they've treated me fairly.) It's not hostility, like one sees on MS-NBC, but if CNN thinks that equates to not having a partisan point of view, then small wonder they haven't been able to stanch the bleeding. . . . Being better than MS-NBC is, in any case, damning with extremely faint praise."
Faint praise? UVB-76 is more enjoyable listening than MSNBC prime-time programming.
(And let's note that Campbell Brown is, er, welcoming to at least one right-of-center guy.)
Tom Bevan has a simpler, but more expensive sure-fire option: "I've hit upon a brilliant strategy for CNN to reverse its rating slide: fire Jon Klein and hire Roger Ailes."
3. Snot-Nosed Punks Will Pay 17 Percent More to Relieve Sinus Congestion
My brother will probably not enjoy appearing in this column, but his case is illustrative. In 2008, he decided he was backing Obama, because the country "couldn't get worse" than it was under Bush. My parents, who make me look like a raving Bolshevik, argued that under Obama, America would be "just like it was under Jimmy Carter!" My brother stared back and pointed out that to a man born in 1979, that phrase means about as much as citing the Civil War.
The story has a happy ending, if you consider voting for Chris Christie last year a happy ending. But a lot of young voters who backed Obama are about to learn that valuable lesson about trusting politicians: "Under the health care overhaul, young adults who buy their own insurance will carry a heavier burden of the medical costs of older Americans -- a shift expected to raise insurance premiums for young people when the plan takes full effect. Beginning in 2014, most Americans will be required to buy insurance or pay a tax penalty. That's when premiums for young adults seeking coverage on the individual market would likely climb by 17 percent on average, or roughly $42 a month, according to an analysis of the plan conducted for The Associated Press."
Mary Katharine Ham: "The young people of the Obama generation are used to being able to change their cell-phone background pictures twice a day, to customize their iPods, cars, and DVRs to their exact specifications on a whim, and in many cases, for free. Obamacare will necessarily mean fewer choices for young people at higher prices, and it will not be the market's fault. Will they always hold the federal government, which takes a third of their income, to such an appreciably lower standard than they hold their $150 smart phones? Democrats are counting on it."
Aaron Yelowitz, writing over at Cato: "The problem is that we've heard this line before. Inter-generational redistribution is fundamentally unfair to the young because it creates a situation where the old, who vote, have incentives to ratchet up benefits -- and to ratchet up taxes on the young, who don't vote. Social Security collects from the young and gives to the old, and is clearly a net tax on the young. As Jonathan Gruber reports, the young have very little confidence -- deservedly so -- in Social Security's implicit promises. Experience shows that whatever new taxes ObamaCare imposes on the young will grow over time."
Guess you kids won't be able to afford all that loud music that sounds like crap now, huh? Now get off my lawn.
4. Addenda
Gallup's latest poll shows "only 21% think the new law will improve their health care, while 50% believe it will make it worse." The other 29 percent responded, "Get the hell away from me, I know a death-panel scout when I see one." |
