Dumbass Media, Dumbass Politics

There is some awfully good writing in the blogosphere today. Here, Jeanne D’Arc shares a searing portrait of her own personal brush with an Arnold-pig and how it made her feel — the powerlessness and self-doubt that such actions provoke.

And, she points out yet another example of the extreme ignorance that permeates the media coverage of politics:

My angriest moment last night did not come with the announcement that a sexual predator was now in charge of my state, but earlier, when, on MSNBC, Laurence O’Donnell was making an interesting point about Gray Davis, which I think applies to all the Democrats progressives hate.

He noted that Davis took huge amounts of money from growers, but when an issue of enormous importance to farm workers came up last year — giving them the right to mandatory mediation, which they needed to get around the growers’ stalling — he sided with the workers. Ultimately, even the worst of the corporate Democrats has the glimmer of a soul, which can’t be claimed by the other side.

O’Donnell went on to point out that this time around it was Herr Schwarzenegger who got the growers’ money, but he was struggling to talk over Chris Matthews, who snapped, “Who gave him more?”

The farmworkers? Chris Matthews thinks Gray Davis sided with farmworkers because they gave him more money than growers? Well, don’t I feel silly. I’ve lived in an agricultural part of this state for more than twenty years, and I never knew that rich farmworkers were buying up our politicians. It must be all the money they save by living five or six men to one seedy motel room.

There were so many examples of dumbass commentary last night that any questions as to why the public voted for a groping, malicious, preening movie star were answered. Rank stupidity is a ratings grabber.