John Cole finds Chuck Todd wanking away on Twitter.

Shorter Chuck Todd: It’s only big news if the Democrats fail!

I guess he didn’t pick up on the fact that if they had failed to get the 60 votes, HCR would, for all intents and purposes, be dead in the short run, as the Republicans would filibuster. That is why this is such a big deal- they have overcome the obstructionism of the GOP, and the debate can advance.

Although in fairness to Chuck, he may be more concerned with why Obama didn’t reach out more to President McCain. Not to be too subjective, or anything.

*** Update ***

Can anyone imagine the feeding frenzy for the next two weeks if they had failed to get 60 and advance the debate? Can you imagine the Sunday shows tomorrow? Can you imagine all the headlines speculating if Obama was a lame duck? “Senate fails to advance health care reform. Is Obama’s entire agenda at risk?” and “Obama’s signature legislation killed in Senate. Can he recover?” and “Republicans, spurred by sagging Obama poll numbers and grass roots support from tea party, stop Obama administration in their tracks.”

And Chuck Todd would be leading the goddamned charge with that crap.

Chuck Todd explains in Twitterific form what the Village really thinks. Does he not understand how the legislative process works? Nope. Does he remember that it was a Blue Dog Royal Senator named Max Baucus that helped pass Bush's tax cuts and medicare drug plan:

Some Democrats think Mr. Baucus betrayed the party in 2001 when he supported President George W. Bush's tax cuts, and in 2003 when he was one of two Democrats to help Republicans pass a Medicare prescription drug plan.

If George Bush had failed at getting these through, would Todd be questioning the conservative movement? Nope. They would be telling America that since they elected Bush, the Democrats were traitors to America. But when a Democrat is President all the Villagers look forward to is failure.

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Morgan Weiland at Media Matters summed up this segment nicely--Memo to the media: This has been a great week for health reform:

Discussing health care reform today on Morning Joe, co-host Joe Scarborough and NBC White House correspondent Chuck Todd agreed that "[t]his week has been a mess for the Democrats." Todd added that "it does seem like they decided to take two steps back after they took one step forward because now they got a trillion dollar bill in the House, which is about $150 billion more than they said, than the President said that he wanted, and now they've got to have this back and forth and figure out how to get six to 10 moderate Democrats and Olympia Snowe on board."

I'm going to have to respectfully disagree that the past week was "a mess for the Democrats." Speaker Pelosi reported out a full House bill, the American Affordable Health Choices Act (H.R. 3962), that achieves a number of key fiscal goals that only this summer many in the media were insisting were out of reach. The Congressional Budget Office found that the bill reduces the deficit by $104 billion over the next decade, and continues to chip away at it in the subsequent decade. Plus it comes in under the magic $900 billion number for the net cost of coverage expansion over 10 years -- a cost that is, in CBO's words, "more than offset." And these achievements are doubly important because they satisfy President Obama's must-have requirement that reform "[w]on't add a dime to the deficit."

If anything, all of this adds up to a big step forward -- arguably a bigger one than has ever taken to achieve comprehensive health care reform in this country.

Not in the Villagers on Morning Joe's world though. In their view it's just terrible that the Democrats are breaking with the White House and their obsession with bipartisanship and catering to Olympia Snowe and her love of the trigger. They're more worried about advancing the meme that the Democrats are in disarray and everything is smelling like roses for the Republicans.

Of course we’re not going to get any sort of substantive debate about what’s actually in these bills and what those changes might mean to the American public. No, we get horse race coverage and meaningless talking points churned out as Chuck Todd whines about being criticized for the way they're covering the issue.

They also never talk about what it would mean if Harry Reid forces an actual filibuster--if he would make any of these Senators who are opposed to the bill have to stand up and debate until they dropped. Later in the segment Sheldon Whitehouse was asked if this could still be dragging along as it got close to the holiday break and would Harry Reid consider keeping all of them there instead of going home. He said this could very well go into the holidays or even the beginning of next year.

I wonder how that would play out? Tell them if they want to filibuster the bill, they're welcome to do it all week Christmas week, and let's carry it into New Years week for good measure. If Reid would grow a spine and actually do that I think I'd consider it a holiday gift, not that it's going to happen. It seems Reid and the media are more than content to pretend that Reid's silent filibuster is the norm. What does anyone think would have happened to the Civil Rights Act of 1957 if we'd had a Harry Reid around back then to deal with the likes of Strom Thurmond?

I'll gladly reserve judgement as I would expect everyone will as well on whether we should be clamoring for that or not after we see what makes it to the floor for a final vote. If they go back to either opt-in or Snowe's trigger I don't see how that's a step towards reforming the current system. The other compromises are bad enough already away from single-payer, which is what we should have.

The Villagers always find a way to attack progressives. Here's NBC's 'First Read,' that Chuck Todd is all about says this:

*** Fixing the public option fetish: But the speech also will be a failure if progressives -- Obama’s second audience tonight -- are still obsessing over the public option a week from now. We've said this before and we'll say it again: Obama never made the public option the focus of his health-care ideas, in the primaries or in general election. In fact, he never uttered the words "public option" or "public plan" in his big campaign speeches on health care. But there is no doubt that the public option has fired up the left, and how he sells them near-universal coverage and lower costs -- even if it means no public plan -- could very well be the trickiest part of tonight's speech. Indeed, that the White House allowed this to become the be-all, end-all on the left ("Public option or die!") remains a mystery. On TODAY this morning, White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs said that “there can be no reform without adequate choice and competition,” but didn’t say that choice and competition had to come from a public option.

You will never hear anything like this said about conservatives. Passionately supporting a piece of legislation that we consider vital to real health care reform is now considered a fetish by NBC. WTF is that?
Craig Crawford:

NBC News calls the public option a "fetish." Providing insurance to Americans who cannot afford or obtain coverage is a fetish? A fetish? Have things gone so awry that health care for all is considered a deviant concept. Seems to me that big media's knee-jerk defense of the status quo is the real fetish.

Craig nails it...in a good way that is and without a spanking reference that would be considered un-serious by the beltway elite.

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Chuck Todd walks through the Republicans phony argument on why they won't be able to negotiate with the Democrats on the health care bill. Now that Ted Kennedy is gone there's no one else that will "have a conversation with" them "the way Ted Kennedy would have done it". As if they ever had any intention of working with Democrats on anything. Good bill, bad bill, doesn't matter. They were never going to do anything but obstruct.

Thom Hartmann talks to Jeremy Scahill about his run in with Chuck Todd on Real Time with Bill Maher this past Friday.

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It appears Chuck Todd didn't take too kindly to Jeremy Scahill's drubbing he received on Real Time the other night. From Glenn Greenwald:

According to Scahill (via email), Todd approached him after the Maher show and the following occurred:

Right as we walked off stage, he said to me "that was a cheap shot." I said "what are you talking about?" and he said "you know it." I then said that I monitor msm coverage very closely and asked him what was not true that I said on the show. He then replied: "that's not the point. You sullied my reputation on TV."

Media stars are so unaccustomed to being held accountable for the impact of their behavior -- especially when they're on television -- that they consider it a grievous assault on their entitlement when it happens.

Check out the entire post where Glenn's got much more on some similar events going on lately besides just his own dust up with Chuck Todd. Joe Klein got into it with Aimai of NoMoreMisterNiceBlog who happens to be I.F. Stone's granddaughter. Glenn and Marcy Wheeler had an ongoing feud with Marc Ambinder of The Atlantic. And now we've got Scahill and Todd's back and forth on Real Time.

Glenn summed all of this up much better than I could ever hope to:

Todd's condescending responses illustrate the same point as the above episodes with Klein and Ambinder: in the eyes of Beltway mavens, those who warned about and worked against the radicalism and lawbreaking of the Bush administration are the fringe, crazed, out-of-touch radicals. While Todd was fiddling around with pretty colored maps and fun polling games, Scahill was courageously investigating one of the most corrupt, dangerous and lethal private corporations in the world, yet it's Todd who understands and must solemnly explain the hardened realities of politics to Scahill, the confused and silly Leftist.

There's little question that when people look back at this period in American history, it will be difficult to comprehend what happened in the Bush era -- and especially how we blithely started a devastating war over complete fiction, while simultaneously instituting a criminal torture regime and breaking whatever laws we wanted. But far more remarkable still will be the fact that, other than a handful of low-level sacrificial lambs, those responsible -- both in politics and the establishment media -- not only suffered no consequences, but continued to wield exactly the same power, with exactly the same level of pompous self-regard, as they did before all of that happened. Looking back several decades or more from now, who will possibly be able to understand how that happened: the almost perfect inverse relationship between one's culpability and the price they paid for what they unleashed?

In fairness to Chuck Todd, he was not one of the ones out there cheerleading for the war and I really liked him when I'd see him on C-SPAN's Washington Journal about every morning when he was working for The Hotline. He's a numbers guy. He was one of the best in the business at reading and sorting through the numbers on how our elections were going to turn out. I don't think coming to MSNBC however, has been good for Chuck Todd.

And now he's on there with the rest of them repeating the narrative of how terrible for the Democrats it would be if any investigations are allowed to happen, and if anyone from the Bush administration is held accountable. It's all politics to Chuck.

Here are my thoughts on that. One of the reasons it would be turned into a game of politics is because Chuck Todd and the rest of the beltway media would report it as such, instead of a legal matter. What Chuck Todd is relaying is what the Republican Party would like to see happen if the Democrats or this Department of Justice goes after the law breaking. It would be the choice of those in the media to validate the Republicans' sniping, which would inevitably follow (and already has for that matter), or to dismiss them as playing partisan politics in order to cover up law breaking for political gain.

Of course since the media was part and parcel in allowing the atrocities of the last eight or nine years, that's never going to happen.

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Chuck Todd got called out on Real Time by Jeremy Scahill for calling investigations into torture "political catnip". Apparently Todd has taken no lessons from his back and forth with Glenn Greenwald on the issue since he was still as defensive as ever when someone with well more than an ounce of journalistic integrity calls him out for his lack of it.

Todd went on Morning Joe defending Cheney, and Glenn Greenwald ripped him for the same thing Scahill took him to task for on Real Time:

NBC's Chuck Todd -- who, remember, is billed as a reporter covering the White House, not a pundit expressing opinions -- was on MSNBC's Morning Joe on Tuesday discussing reports that Eric Holder is likely to appoint a prosecutor to investigate Bush torture crimes. Needless to say, everyone agreed without question that investigations were a ridiculous distraction from what really matters and would be terribly unfair. This, along with Mika Brzezinski and Pat Buchanan, is what Todd argued after he was asked about the Holder story and the Cheney/CIA story (video is below):

Todd: Look, let's take all of these stories in one big thing: really, the only important thing -- the most important thing -- the President has to focus on is getting the public's trust on the economy, and pushing health care. Cheney, the CIA, and in some respects Sotomayor are cable catnip --

Brzezinski: Yep.

Todd: It's news catnip - but they're sort of clouding the two most important issues the President's got to get his arms around this week: winning back trust of the middle on the economy and pushing health care through.

Brzezinski: I would completely agree with you, yet the questions are being raised by news organizations like the New York Times. Pat Buchanan, chime in, because as I've been reporting [sic], and I'll say it for Chuck's benefit here: speaking to a former senior intelligence official yesterday on the phone for quite some time, saying that this program that Cheney was apparently blocking the CIA from giving Congressional intelligence officials information on, was not even a program -- it was not operational -- it was not even at the stage where you would tell Congress about it or talk to high-level administration officials about it.

Is this much ado about nothing to get the attention off what needs to be done?

Buchanan: Well it's exactly what Chuck said, it's a massive distraction . . . . Let me ask Chuck this: it seems to me you got a real problem for the administration if you go forward at Holder's level --

Todd: Right.

Buchanan: and they appoint a Special Counsel, the first thing the CIA guys do is say is: yeah, we did it; we waterboarded them; and here's the authorization from these lawyers who said we could do it --- the lawyers come in and say we were asked for our opinion and Cheney was the guy who asked us, and the President told us to go ahead and do it. Aren't you right into the White House of the Bush administration as soon as you appoint that independent counsel?

Todd: And I think that's why, in the President's gut, he doesn't want to do this. They've made that clear they don't want to do this. I think that's what you see a lot of the West Wing -- they don't want to get into this because of what you're saying.

Ultimately, a lawyer gets paid to not tell you what the law is -- but to interpret the law, to tell you how far you can push things until you cross a line that a judge will say is illegal. That's what lawyers get paid to do: they get paid to interpret the law, and interpret the law in a way that allows you to stretch things.

You are on a slippery slope - this is a very dangerous aspect to go after, because these CIA guys will say, as you said Pat, we got the letter from these lawyers in the Bush Justice Department that said we can do this. You can't suddenly change the law retroactively because there's another interpretation of this. I'm sure there are a legal minds that will fight and say I don't know what I'm talking about here, but it seems to me that's a legal and a political slippery slope.

This is about as typical a discussion as it gets among media stars as to why investigations are so very, very wrong and unfair and unwise. Still, this discussion in particular vividly highlights several important points worth noting about the role of the establishment media.

Todd later tried to defend himself by doing an interview with Glenn as anyone who reads this blog may recall. Todd didn't fare much better with Scahill on Real Time and was making the same sorry arguments that Glenn already ripped him apart on. Heaven forbid that might stop him from doing it again with an audience that probably had no idea what Scahill was talking about.

It's always enjoyable to me watching these beltway bobble heads who are in love with cozying up to power have to answer to someone who is not, and who actually wants some real reporting to take place, and to see how they react. I look forward to reading Glenn Greenwald's response to Todd's statements tonight if he decides it's worth taking the time to write about.

On Andrea Mitchell's show this morning, Chuck Todd was on to opine about health care reform. He said one outrageous thing and one right thing. The Toddster said that progressives might be attached to the public option because conservatives immediately attacked it. WRONG.

Mitchell:...how did this become the thing that liberals will not live without?

Todd: ...what's ironic is I think it became a big deal from the left because originally it was the immediate point of attack from some conservatives. Immediately. That that is the public option so you sort of wonder was it simply a political reaction from the left. "They don't like it, we love it."

Since there is no single payer, the public option is the only way that there will be sufficient competition that would force the health insurance companies of actually competing on the open market and making it possible for Americans to have a real alternative to them. The public option is our compromise you sad sack of know-nothingness. We wouldn't form a coalition around something just because conservatives object. That thinking only further illustrates how much the beltway despises us. We are thinking people who actually can evaluate policy on its merits and not out of resentment. When Kyl said "co ops' was just another Trojan horse for government run health care I thought that spoke volumes to the way they are treating health care reform. Wouldn't you expect the media to pounce and say that republicans never had any plans to become part of the negotiating process over health care reform? Even Chuck Grassley's insane statements haven't generated much of a reaction from the press.

What Todd is right about is that President Obama does not have any good spokesman for his positions other than himself. I've written many posts about this problem and I traced it all the way back to the general election. I also wrote about it here: With Surrogates like these... and here. The President shouldn't be the only person that can sell his positions, but the Senate is devoid of anyone that can speak with true conviction that can reach the American people. It's sad.
At least for progressives, Rep. Anthony Weiner has stepped up and become a real force in talking about the necessity of having a public option. More of him please.

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Anthony Weiner Leaves Joe Scarborough Momentarily Speechless When Arguing for Health Care Reform

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Rachel Maddow and Kent Jones do a hokie, but apt parody of what dealing with the Republicans on health care amounts to. Kent Jones really doesn't want to order pizza, and the Republicans really don't want any sort of health care reform.

Maddow: Republicans in the United States' Senate are Kent. And we're trying to order pizza. They do say that they want health care reform.

[....]

Because Republicans have said that they want health care reform, Democrats have been trying to work with them to come up with a bill that both sides can agree on. We can compromise. Democrats took national health care and single payer off the table from the very beginning because they were sure that Republicans wouldn't want those.

Then they started negotiating down from there, trying to find something, anything that the Republican would say yes to. But just as national health care was unacceptable to them, and single payer was unacceptable to them, the public option is also turning out to be unacceptable to them. And now even the further watered down reform option of co-ops are unacceptable to them.

[....]

That's a really important moment. Senator Grassley is the top Republican negotiator in the Senate on health care and he just admitted to Chuck Todd that even if he personally gets to draft a bill for the Senate to vote on, even if he ends up with a policy to vote on that he thinks is great, he himself might not vote for it.

Mean while Jon Kyl, the number two Republican in the whole Senate told reporters on a conference call today that dropping the public option still won't get any Republicans to vote for the bill.

No matter what is in the bill, Republicans are not going to vote for the bill. No matter what is on the pizza, Kent doesn't want it.

Maybe it's time for Democrats to take the hint. Republicans don't want pizza. Order exactly what you want. Put together the best possible reform bill purely on the basis of what you think the best policy for the country is, and then, forget the Republicans. Focus on getting all the Democrats in line to vote for it.

The Republicans are not here to help. And Kent is not here to make a good pizza order. Take the hint.

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This doesn't sound good.

SCHULTZ: And finally, my sources on Capitol Hill—going to health care now, Chuck—are telling me that in the Senate, the public option is in serious trouble.

Are you hearing that?

TODD: I‘ve heard the same thing. You know, in the Finance Committee, Kent Conrad, who‘s the guy that sort of created the idea for the co-op, what I would advise you, Ed, is get to know what this co-op is going to do.

I‘ve talked to some who are big advocates of the public insurance option who believe they can do things within the framework of this co-op that will make folks who are supporters of the public—overall big public option feel better about this. But the fact of the matter is, you‘re not going to get Grassley. You might not get Ben Nelson. You might not get Kent Conrad for anything that‘s called a public insurance option.

And the “co-op” may be just better language to use and easier to sell in some of these places. So, as somebody said, it can walk like a duck, it can quack like a duck. You just can‘t call it a duck. And so, “co-op” may be the language of choice here.

Kent Conrad and Chuck Todd obviously think we're all dumb as stumps.

Looks like Glenn Greenwald caught Stephen's attention as well. From The Colbert Report:

Investigating prisoner abuse will be a political food fight, and that is messier than torture.

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This absolutely must be heard to be believed. Chuck Todd is more than mere Villager in this interview with the, ahem, Constitutional scholar Glenn Greenwald, he is defender of the Bush Administration, and any administration's ability to make up their own rules. In Todd's Politics Uber Alles worldview, losing an election is the best/worst punishment for any Presidential wrong-doing. This is the line Cheney has used, as well: that because Bush "won" two elections, their power was absolute and inviolable for at least the term of office, and now it appears, beyond.

Audio from Salon Radio, where the full transcript is also available.

Glenn Greenwald: So what do you think happens - I think what has destroyed our reputation is announcing to the world that we tolerate torture, and telling the world we don't --

Chuck Todd: We have elections, we also had an election where this was an issue. A new president, who came in there, and has said, we're not going to torture, we're going to do this, and we're going to do this--

GG: What do you think should happen when presidents--

CT: Is that not enough? Isn't that enough?

GG: When, generally, if I go out and rob a bank tomorrow, what happens to me is not that I lose an election. What happens is to me is that I go to prison. So, what do you think should happen when presidents get caught committing crimes in office? What do you think ought to happen?

CT: You see, this is where, this is not - you cannot sit here and say this is as legally black and white as a bank robbery because this was an ideological, legal --

GG: A hundred people died in detention. A hundred people. The United States Government admits that there are homicides that took place during interrogations. Waterboarding and these other techniques are things that the United States has always prosecuted as torture.

Until John Yoo wrote that memo, where was the lack of clarity about whether or not these things were illegal? Where did that lack of clarity or debate exist? They found some right-wing ideologues in the Justice Department to say that this was okay, that's what you're endorsing. As long the president can do that, he's above the law. And I don't see how you can say that you're doing anything other than endorsing a system of lawlessness where the president is free to break the law?

CT: Well, look, I don't believe I'm endorsing a system of lawlessness; I'm trying to put in the reality that as much that there is a legal black and white here, there is a political reality that clouds this, and you know it does too.

Glenn Greenwald is too much of a class act to point out that the "political reality" Todd is defending is about a group of Washington insiders who KNOW that they attended cocktail parties with those who knew about and permitted torture and murder of prisoners of war under the aegis of the United States Government. That unpleasant political reality is something the Georgetown Power Set, a group for whom Todd curries favor, does not want to acknowledge for fear it will sour their bipartisan seven-layer dip.

Memo to Chuck: Glenn soured the dip and drank your milkshake. Go find that copy of the Constitution you didn't read before you dropped out of college. Really.

Digby:

If the conventional wisdom were to shift on torture, say if a different administration and their allies in the village decided that it was important for America's image that these investigations take place, Todd would be right on board with it. (This was, in fact, why I thought the Obama administration would legitimately want to pursue these investigations and Todd's bizarre repetition of the talking point that torture investigations will harm America's image abroad is quite telling. You can be sure he didn't come up with that all by himself.) He has no independent judgment and zero insight into his role in the political process.

I would just write him off as another fluffy spokesmodel except he's got a real job as political director at NBC news. As shocking as it seems, he's really quite powerful. His shallow understanding of the issues at stake --- the reduction of absolutely everything, (even torture and murder) to the insider political parlor game are the most important requirement for advancement in the beltway press and he has that function totally mastered.

Heather: Below is Chuck Todd's appearance on Morning Joe, where he decries torture investigations as political "catnip". This appearance precipitated the interview above.

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Working for MSNBC has been bad for Chuck Todd. I really used to like his analysis back when he was just weighing in during the mornings on C-SPAN and writing for The Hotline. Chuck seems to think that Sarah Palin has now had some magical pixie dust scattered on her that makes her immune from the same scrutiny other politicians have to endure because she has become....a celebrity. Isn't that special?

Chuck Todd seems to have forgotten what he wrote back on Aug. 2, 2008, when John McCain ran his "celebrity" ad against then candidate Barack Obama.

The hardest thing to do in politics is campaign as someone you aren't.

People can spot an imposter from a mile away.

The most successful politicians are the ones who embrace their best traits while turning their liabilities into loveable attributes.

And yet, many a candidate tries to run as something they aren't simply because the strategy dictates it. And when even a good strategy doesn't match the candidate, the result can be a disjointed campaign that produces a lot of uncomfortable moments.

Unless, somehow, the candidate figures out how to embrace the strategy.

Are we seeing this happen right now to John McCain?

If you were to diagnose the best way to go at Obama in the midst of this disastrous Republican environment, you might come up with the tactics the McCain brain trust unveiled this week: Paint Obama as a bit full of himself, over-confident, elitest and out of touch.

There are a number of ways to paint that picture, including attacking Obama for his celebrity. America has a love-hate relationship with celebrity. We love to follow celebrities but we also love to mock them. And secretly we believe we're better than they are.

Making light of Obama's pop icon status and trying to use it as a way to undermine his serious presidential credentials is a good one. The latest McCain ad did just that. We may love U2 and we may love Bono's humanitarian efforts, but do voters in Youngstown want him as president?

But the flaw in this attack from McCain is that it doesn't fit who he is. This is a guy who hangs out with Warren Beatty. This is a guy who is married to a wealthy beer heiress. This is a guy whose senior adviser was Arnold Schwarzenegger's campaign manager. This is a guy who owes much of his success in national politics to marketing himself as a political celebrity.

And attacking Obama’s celebrity is just one part of the playbook. There are two more plays: attacking his experience and attacking his common touch.

So now that Sarah Palin is a "celebrity" in Todd's eyes, it's all good. Not something to potentially attack someone for. When asked why he thought Palin was leaving the Governor's office, Todd seemed to think it was all about that great conservative value, lining ones' own pocket. I'm sure they'll all be trying to spin that into something positive for her as well. She just needs the money since that evil liberal media, and those evil folks who kept filing those darned ethics charges against her made her need to quit and go make some money instead of paying fines for politicking when she was supposed to be governing.

Transcript below the fold.

Continue reading »

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While the rest of the Morning Joe crew was espousing their new found love for Helen Thomas and former MSNBC reporter Chip Reid, Carl Bernstein managed to get Chuck Todd's back hair up by reminding him that the White House press corps yelling at the Press Secretary is not exactly what anyone should consider real journalism.

While I whole heartedly agree with Todd that it is important to hold these people accountable, Bernstein's points about this entire ordeal looking petty, and about where real journalism happens, which is reporters getting out there and knocking on doors, and digging into whether someone's actually telling you the truth or not, fact checking what you're told, etc. is what should be considered actual journalism is valid as well, and he managed to make Todd look petty while making it.

Todd tried to defend what the White House press corps does on a daily basis, and not very well IMO. When you're making excuses for asking Michael Jackson questions you've already lost the argument Bernstein was trying to make.

I want to know where these birds were with their love of Helen Thomas when the Bush White House refused to call on her for the better part of eight years? I'd also like to know if they're going to continue to support her if she asks some tough questions on things like these bank bailouts, spying on everyone which hasn't stopped, or these mindless wars that we're still sending our troops off to fight and die in. Is that going to make the "news" cycle on Morning Joe? Somehow, I doubt it.

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h/t Media Matters

The Politico's Mike Allen seems to think that if you're a comedian, you can't stop yourself from making a fool of yourself in public. I get so tired of this sort of rhetoric about Franken because it completely ignores the rest of Franken's biography. Al Franken is a comedian, but he has accomplished a lot of other things during his life as well which I'm sure the likes of Mike Allen are aware of, but do their best to ignore, and instead decide to belittle him as Allen did here.

The other thing that bears noting is that most successful comedians are also wicked smart, as is the case with Franken. Those in the beltway bubble would do well not to challenge or mock professional comedians. They'll find themselves on the wrong end of a punch line and regretting it if they do. Personally I'd be happier if the Drudge Report, tabloid reporters from The Politico STFU and quit making asses out of themselves on television rather than our newest Senator Al Franken being quiet.