CSotD: Only getting part of the picture
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So, if you go the Kevin Kallaugher page of the (online) Baltimore Sun, here's what you'll find:
And no amount of clicking or other cyberfoolery will show you anything more complete or coherent, at least as of 6 a.m. this morning.
Perhaps they'll fix it, perhaps they won't. The Old Man Remembers when, if a TV station was having an on-air glitch at night, you could call, get through to the control room and explain the problem. They'd thank you and, moments later, the problem would be fixed.
Then voicemail was invented and nobody had to be responsible for answering phones before 8 am or after 5 pm anymore, and, even if you got through Touch-Tone Hell to somebody live during regular business hours, they would "take a message" that never changed the garbled transmission.
And this has adapted to the Internet where nobody is ever on duty at any time of day. Now, with layoffs, it hardly matters, because they barely have enough people on hand to do it wrong, never mind fixing anything.
Fortunately, there is Facebook. (Now, there's a sentence you don't hear often!)
Kal — whom I should mention has recently published one of the most fun and elegant cartoon collections ever seen — posted the full cartoon on his page, and here it is:
And, once you see the full picture, you see a commentary on how we are unable to solve the problems facing our nation because the Republicans are obsessed with attacking the President.
Which is true. And you don't have to be partisan to say it, because they themselves announced from the start that their policy throughout the Obama administration would be gridlock and failure. (Insert your own cheap joke about politicians finally keeping a promise.)
Only you haven't seen the full picture and it ain't cheap. In fact, it's mighty expensive. And it's not funny, nor is anyone answering phones in the control room.
Fareed Zakaria laid it out on his show yesterday (beware the autoplay — you can read the same thing in text form in his weekly column), with a discussion of Mark Leibovich's book, "This Town" which lays out the extent to which Washington DC has become a city of lobbyists and their future colleagues, who are currently undergoing training by serving terms in Congress.
"Leibovich describes a city in which money has trumped power as the
ultimate currency. Lobbyists today hold the keys to what everyone in
government — senator or staffer — is secretly searching for: a
post-government source of income. He cites an Atlantic magazine report
that says that in 1974, only 3 percent of retiring members of Congress
became lobbyists; today, that number is 42 percent for members of the
House and 50 percent for senators."
One major result, he reports, has been incredibly long, complex laws that have become, according to the book, long and complex "because they are qualified by provisions, exceptions and exemptions put
in by the very industry being targeted — a process that academics call
'regulatory capture.'"
It's not a matter of "big government" but of "bad government," where "everybody does it" isn't even on the level of an excuse anymore, but has become part of the operating manual, and where those who preach loudest against government are first at the trough when the slop arrives.
Zakaria criticizes "The Town" for simply taking a "gee, look at this" tone rather than one of horror, but, in any case, it's an opportunity to see more than the cropped, incoherent version of our government provided by the members of the White House Concubines Association, who are far harder to reach than those now-shielded engineers in the control room at your local TV station, and whose annual fawning celebration of themselves and their lack of objectivity is referenced in the second and third of these Leibovich interview clips from the Daily Show.
(UPDATE: Had an autoplay problem with these as embedded videos,
but they're still very worth watching:)
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