Distraction watch: Ahab-like bluenose can't stop chasing guv!

FRIDAY, APRIL 1, 2016

Lead in the water forgotten: Just this morning, we were struck by our advanced age.

It happened when we read this news report about excessive lead in the water at even more Newark public schools.

We're so old that we can remember when we liberals were supposed to be concerned about matters like this! We tried to remember when that was.

Then it hit us! Oh yes! It was like six weeks ago!

Ground zero for this apparent concern was the Maddow Show. As of today, the topic has been abandoned, forgotten. A cynic would say the reasons for this are obvious.

A cynic would say that Maddow's rather selective reporting about Flint was always all about one thing—her long-time pursuit of Governor Snyder, one of her many white whales. Today, she has a better cetacean to chase through the seas—Governor Bentley, who may have been "shtupping" his "mistress," or so the bluenose Maddow obsessively says.

(And says. And says. And says. Who can think about lead in water when Bentley's been shtupping his mistress?)

Last night, she was at it again, two nights after her hour-long string of apologies about the way "we have been playing Alabama Governor Robert Bentley's phone sex tapes here on the show, here on the news, over and over again. Which admittedly is weird." Last night, she was going on about the "lurid headline" she had spotted atop a report in the Birmingham News, along with the "almost unbelievably provocative detail" she felt she had seen "in the story."

(Just for the record, no "phone sex" occurs on these "phone sex tapes." That's Maddow's crazy inner voice warning her that somewhere, without her permission, a pair of The Others may have been "shtupping" each other.)

(Mencken defined Puritanism as "the haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy.” Maddow is ruled by a different fear—the fear that somewhere, some Republican pol may be "shtupping" someone he likes. Inside this crazy person's head, a voice says this simply can't happen.)

In the last two days, the children at TPM have also begun to trouble themselves about all this possible shtupping.

(For the record, there is no evidence that anyone ever got shtupped. Although, of course, it's possible! Sometimes people "shtup" each other. Even Mother and Father!)

The children at TPM are young and inexperienced. We'll guess they're basically following Maddow's ridiculous lead on this stupid distraction, which the cable star has declared to be "huge national news."

Can someone answer a question for us?

Why should any liberal care about what Bentley may or may not have done with a woman he seems to have liked? Beyond that, why would intelligent youngsters at TPM want to mimic our resident bluenose?

Maddow's program and performance get crazier by the week. Last night, she opened her show with an angry, jumbled segment in which she repeatedly misstated the typical line of conservatives and Republicans concerning abortion and who should get blamed or punished when it happens.

As of Wednesday night, Candidate Trump didn't seem to know the drill in this area. Last night, Maddow didn't seem to know it either, or she was simply venting outside the lines, as she increasingly does. That said, her program devolves further every week. Meanwhile, all that concern about lead in the water is gone, long gone, now that she has a red state governor to chase for what she really hates.

Increasingly, Maddow is drifting out of her head. Given the power of tribal authority, we liberals can't seem to see this.