Joan Walsh: Sunday best: Chuck Todd loses it

[DonViejo]

Sunday best: Chuck Todd loses it

He blasts Jack Welch for "corroding trust in our government" while Paul Krugman drives Mary Matalin insane


What use are Sunday morning news shows in our post-truth political era? Four days after Mitt Romney lied his way through his debate with a listless, diffident President Obama, and two days after former GE CEO Jack Welch ousted Donald Trump to become Mayor of Crazytown on Foursquare, journalists and campaign surrogates had a lot of decisions to make: Would conservatives escalate, backing Romney and Welch? Would liberals fight back more effectively than Obama (OK, that’s an easy one)? And would reporters on the panels lapse into easy “both sides do it” equivalence and ignore the way the Republican campaign, including Welch and Romney himself, has ratcheted up the prevarication and character assassination to new levels?

To keep from drowning in despair and nihilism over what the Sunday shows tell us about the bankruptcy of American politics, Salon is bringing you Sunday Best: Our choice of the best moment of all on the top Sunday shows. (We may occasionally have to turn to MSNBC’s “Up With Chris” or “Melissa Harris-Perry,” but if we put them in the mix every week, it wouldn’t be a fair fight. We’ll mainly focus on the productions of the big networks.)

This Sunday, there were plenty of good moments.

Predictably, Democrats fought back better than Obama did, with Robert Gibbs calling Romney’s performance “fundamentally dishonest” and his budget math “absolutely crazy” on ABC’s “This Week.” On Fox, Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley told Chris Wallace, “The fact of the matter is in this debate we saw Big Bird meet the big lie.” Also on “This Week,” Paul Krugman told the panel, “The press just doesn’t know how to handle flat-out untruths,” which led Mary Matalin to absolutely lose her shit and call Krugman himself a liar.

You have mischaracterized and you have lied about every position and every particular of the Ryan plan on Medicare, from the efficiency of Medicare administration, to calling it a voucher plan, so you’re hardly credible on calling somebody else a liar.

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[Doctor_J]

1. Towar dthe end

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One final debate note: I’m not a fan of “both sides do it” journalism, but to be fair, while there’s no equivalent of economic birtherism on the left, there is a kind of ”debate trutherism,” where fervent Obama supporters, especially on Twitter, explain that the president was once again playing 18th-dimensional chess and intentionally blowing the debate only to win it somewhere down the line, drawing out Romney’s lies with his somnolent performance. Um, no. Obama blew it, big time.

Thankfully, the campaign rejects debate trutherism. “The president is his harshest critic,” David Axelrod told “Face the Nation.” The debate about the debate is over. If we don’t want to say Romney “won” because lying should disqualify you from a win, let’s just say Obama lost. And move on

can we, people?