Daytime TV: This way lies Bedlam!

THURSDAY, JANUARY 19, 2012

Dogs and well-paid speeches: Yesterday, we tuned in to Alex Wagner’s show on the One True Channel. It was our first time.

At the moment we clicked the TV on, what was Wagner’s panel discussing? The time Mitt Romney strapped his dog to the roof of his car!

We can’t find a tape of this segment. (For yesterday’s opening segment, click this.) But Maggie Haberman said something like this: She doesn’t think it’s fair to raise the topic a thousand times daily.

Why is Wagner on the air? In part, because she’s very telegenic—and because she’s a grinner, a pleaser. In essence, she’s a much smarter version of Erin Burnett.

That said, did we note that she and her fatuous panel were discussing the dog on the roof of the car? By the way: When pundits burn their daytime hours having these utterly worthless discussions, are you surprised that they seem to know so very little about actual serious topics?

On a career basis, Wagner can’t go wrong mucking around in this pitiful tripe. In this morning’s column, Lady Collins does a bit of nut-picking in South Carolina. (Collins enjoys mocking “the lesser breed,” if we might quote our Chekhov.) Then, she pretends to evaluates Romney’s performance in Monday’s debate:

COLLINS (1/19/12): MITT ROMNEY The South Carolina primary has been one long obsession with Mitt Romney’s extreme richness. This is partly because Newt Gingrich keeps carping on it. Which, to be honest, we have enjoyed very much. But, mainly, it’s because Mitt is so weird and off-putting on the subject. Like the time he told people he was unemployed. And, this week, when he dismissed the fees he earns as a public speaker, which ran to $374,327 in one recent year, as “not very much.”

People, what is it with this guy? Mitt was charging around $42,000 a speech. If you were planning to run for president and didn’t need money, would you deliberately pursue a sideline that would put you in the top 1 percent for about 12 hours’ worth of work? And, while we’re at it, if you were that rich and had a very large family to take to Canada, wouldn’t you hire a plane? What kind of obsession is it that makes a multi-multi-multimillionaire show up for the GoldenTree Asset Management convention for a $68,000 fee? Or drive for 12 hours with the Irish setter strapped to the car roof?

That whole passage is so stupid it squeaks; it’s deeply, profoundly defective. (Did Romney “tell people he was unemployed?” Even Andrew Sullivan was honest enough to say, in yesterday’s post, that Romney made this statement “half-seriously.” In fact, Romney's remark was a joke. Although your lizard brain may insist that it had to be more, so much more.)

Collins doesn’t understand why Romney would charge for those speeches—or why he would make them at all? (She calls it an obsession. Note the way she lets you roll your eyes at the name of that convention group.) What then does she understand? Just this: She knows how to run for Romney’s dog, strapped to the roof of the car. Strapped to the roof of the car in 1983!

Why didn’t Romney hire a plane if his family was going to Canada? These are the weirdly defective thoughts which torment this high lady’s sleep.

This way lies Bedlam. In fact, we’re long since there. Collins has made no attempt to explain Romney’s conduct at Bain Capital, or to explain his gruesome policy proposals. Instead, she keeps dragging us up on the roof of the car—just as she once penned low-IQ garbage concerning vile Candidate Gore.

Our thoughts often turn to mental illness when we read Collins' columns. As a general matter, it isn’t good to speculate about that topic. But such thoughts flashed through our mind again today. How could anyone fail to wonder about this particular writer?

Yesterday, we flipped on the TV machine thingy. Wagner and a gang of pleasers were up on the roof of that car.