You can learn a lot by watching TV, it turns out! Here’s what I learned by watching this morning’s “Morning Joe.”
First, it’s okay to be a druggie, boozing, womanizing liberal so long as you support covertly aiding the enemies of our enemies (mistaking them for our friends). This we learned from Joe Scarborough’s valedictory declaration that the recently deceased Charlie Wilson was an “American original.” I wonder if he ever used those terms when he was in the House to describe Bill Clinton?
Second, the American people don’t like Obama because they didn’t like Bush. This insight comes from noted medium Peggy Noonan. Her analysis of the American people’s reaction to health care reform was (to paraphrase) that they don’t want the same people who ran the Iraq war to run health care. As a descriptive account of what Americans are thinking, this is obviously wrong. Who really thinks that way, besides Peggy Noonan? More importantly, it’s wrong even for Peggy Noonan to think this way. The sins of Donald Rumsfeld are not transferable to Kathleen Sebelius.
Third, torture and only torture ever produces good intelligence. While Jane Mayer patiently explained that we have gotten more actionable intelligence by treating people humanely than we ever did by torturing them and denying them due process, Joe Scarborough incredulously stammered that that just couldn’t be so — everything we know about al Qaeda must have come from waterboarding!
If I ever go to the gym in the morning again, be sure to tune in that afternoon for another installment of “Lessons from Today’s ‘Morning Joe.’”