A WEEK IN THE LIFE: Rachel Maddow's Hannityism!

SATURDAY, APRIL 23, 2016

Bad facts and "grown-ass white men:" It's very hard to describe the morass into which the Maddow Show has descended.

The intellectual illness which now lies at its core pervades every minute of every hour. It's hard to describe a moral illness which is so vast and pervasive. But these are a few basic markers:

The Maddow program avoids one important topic after another. This includes substantive and political topics.

Instead, the program teaches us to loathe The Others. In the process, we're treated to two type of facts:

We're treated to facts which are grossly selective. We're treated to facts which are false.

On Friday evening, April 15, the big cable star who fronts this program decided to cap an appalling week with an opening segment about the vile Candidate Kasich.

The segment was designed to teach us how to loathe this candidate. It's hard to describe this segment's illness, so many thumbs were on so many scales during its execution.

Today, we'll discuss one part of this segment. Next week, we'll be returning to the world of Einstein, but we'll return to other parts of this segment in supplementary posts.

First, a bit of background about the vile person in question:

Candidate Kasich is "pro-life." As a general matter, he is opposed to abortion rights except in cases involving rape, incest or a threat to the life of the mother.

Many people won't be surprised to learn that fact about this candidate. On the presidential level, abortion rights create a hard and fast dividing line between the two major parties.

It has been a long time since a major Republican candidate wasn't "pro-life." Candidate Trump flipped on this issue when he decided to be a Republican. All the way back in 1980, George Bush the elder had to flip on this issue to make himself a viable GOP candidate.

In 1987, Dick Gephardt flipped from pro-life to pro-choice in the course of becoming a Democratic candidate, and so on. In the world we inhabit, Republican candidates are "pro-life." Democrats are "pro-choice."

Pretty much everyone knows this.

Candidate Kasich is "pro-life!" For ourselves, that's one of the reasons—there are others—why we wouldn't vote for Kasich.

That said, a lot of people are "pro-life." There's a name for people like these. They're known as "fellow citizens."

Theoretically, we aren't allowed to invent fake facts about such people just because we disagree with their stance on this issue. Such theories no longer hold on the Maddow program, which has almost totally lost its bearings and should be removed from the air.

On Friday evening, April 15, the giant star who fronts that program decided to help us learn how to loathe Candidate Kasich more fully. She devoted her opening segment to that rather familiar task.

Her deepening craziness took many forms during this course of this segment. Today, we'll restrict ourselves to her first demonstration of Kasich's moral squalor.

Her demonstration was based on selective facts, and on one fact which was false. A lot more craziness would follow as this opening segment proceeded. For today, we'll restrict ourselves to Maddow's first attack on the vile Ohio governor.

Maddow opened with a kooky attempt to "decode" (her term) photographs of two bill-signing ceremonies from the great state of Mississippi. But that was just the warm-up act. Quickly, it led the cable star to this remarkable diatribe:

MADDOW (4/15/16): When Ohio Governor John Kasich, signed legislation in 2011 that ended up closing nearly half the clinics that provide abortions in the state of Ohio, notice something similar. This was his photo op that day.

That's the photo op that Governor John Kasich staged in Ohio for signing that anti-abortion legislation. It was just him and a bunch of grown-ass white men.

And for good measure, they included, in that bill signing ceremony, a very, very young man. They also brought in a little boy who the governor invited to sit on his lap and dot the "I" in the word "Kasich" as the menfolk of Ohio got together to show the boyfolk of Ohio how women's pregnancy can be controlled by the law.

Rather plainly, Kasich had engaged in a vile act back in 2011. As he staged his vile photo op, "it was just him and a bunch of grown-ass white men."

(To watch Maddow's whole segment, click here.)

Question: As liberals and progressives, are we comfortable when a multimillionaire corporate employee throws around language like that?

We think the use of language like that betrays extremely bad judgment. On the other hand, it's clear that this Ohio governor had engaged in a deeply vile act.

As he signed that anti-abortion bill, he even brought in a little boy, to help him learn how to rule over women. Kasich and the rest of that "bunch of grown-ass white men" were helping Ohio's boyfolk learn their role in the world.

Sadly, there's a minor problem with the story as Maddow told it. The bill-signing in question happened in 2013, not in 2011. And it wasn't exactly an anti-abortion bill.

With the help of his grown-ass friends, Governor Kasich was actually signing a giant Ohio budget bill into law that day. The bill contained 5,557 pages. You can see those pages stacked on Kasich's desk in the tape Maddow aired.

The little boy was the son of one of Kasich's grown-ass cabinet members, a few of whom stood in the background. The signing took place on June 30, 2013. To see the photo, click here.

Let's be fair! There were some abortion restrictions in the mammoth budget bill, which ran to 5,557 pages. But no, it wasn't mainly an anti-abortion bill.

It was the state of Ohio's mammoth budget bill. For Maddow's purpose—for the purpose of teaching us how to loathe Kasich—the story works a good deal better if you don't tell the rubes that.

Having said that, please make no mistake—Kasich is "pro-life." For a review of his work with respect to this topic, you can read this slightly confusing report by Michelle Ye Hee Lee in the Washington Post.

Candidate Kasich is "pro-life!" In that respect, he's like every Republican White House candidate since at least 1980. The question we would ask you is this:

By what process did we get from that fact to the story this cable star told? How did we get to a story built around a false fact, a story which featured some very odd language?

That 4-year-old boy was actually dotting the "i" on a giant budget bill on the day in question. There were some abortion restrictions in the bill; Maddow could have reported what they were. Instead, she hurried ahead to some crazier nonsense as she performed her full segment.

It's hard to capture how deceptive and how crazy Maddow's full segment was. The segment was crafted to help you to loathe. Let's mention some facts it left out, just from that opening salvo.

As we'll see next week, Maddow seemed eager to give us peons the impression that Kasich has a bad reputation in Ohio. That intended impression is false. Maddow forgot to mention the giant size of his 2014 re-election. She forgot to mention his sky-high approval ratings in the state of Ohio.

Because that segment was designed to teach us to loathe, Maddow ignored something else. She forgot to mention another provision of that 2013 budget bill, which she had misdescribed and placed in the wrong year.

There actually were some abortion restrictions in that giant bill. Like every Republican for the past forty years, Kasich is "pro-life."

That said, another key provision of that bill helps explain why Candidate Kasich is having trouble in the current White House campaign. Maddow didn't tell us about it, and she never will.

Uh-oh! As part of that bill signing, Kasich used his line item veto to remove a provision concerning Medicaid. Ohio's Republican legislature had included a provision blocking the expansion of Medicaid under Obamacare.

Kasich vetoed that part of the bill before he and the little boy signed it. Later that year, he circumvented his legislature and expanded Medicaid to 330,000 Ohioans completely on his own.

This heresy is one of the reasons why Kasich has failed to gain favor at the pools with Republican regulars. Later, Kasich sounded off at a Koch-organized conference IN 2014, explaining why he committed that heresy.

Politico's Alex Isenstadt describes the stormy scene here:

ISENSTADT (6/9/15): Randy Kendrick, a major contributor and the wife of Ken Kendrick, the owner of the Arizona Diamondbacks, rose to say she disagreed with Kasich’s decision to expand Medicaid coverage, and questioned why he’d expressed the view it was what God wanted.

The governor’s response was fiery. “I don’t know about you, lady,” he said as he pointed at Kendrick, his voice rising. “But when I get to the Pearly Gates, I’m going to have an answer for what I’ve done for the poor.”

The exchange left many stunned. Around 20 audience members walked out of the room, and two governors also on the panel, Nikki Haley of South Carolina and Bobby Jindal of Louisiana, told Kasich they disagreed with him. The Ohio governor has not been invited back to a Koch seminar—opportunities for presidential aspirants to mingle with the party’s rich and powerful—in the months since.

Uh-oh! When that little boy dotted the "i" on that bill that day, he was indeed dotting the "I" on some abortion restrictions. That said, he was also dotting the "i" on health coverage for 330,000 low-income residents of his state.

Maddow will let you hear one of those facts; she will withhold the other. To make her demonization work better, she'll misstate the nature of the bill the little boy signed, and she'll singe your ears with language about grown-ass white men for which her own undergrown, struggling ass ought to be thrown off the air.

We wouldn't vote for Candidate Kasich. We also wouldn't go on TV and do the things Maddow did that night, the things she now does every night.

As her segment continued that night, her selective facts and her demonization continued to the point of near-lunacy. The cable star is working hard to make her viewers extremely dumb. Assuming she hasn't lost control of herself, she has long since stopped being even minimally honest.

Next week, we'll show you more of what happened as she taught us how to loathe Kasich. Journalistically, Maddow's childish, dishonest program has become a toxic waste site. There's a word for what the corporate star is now doing:

Maddow has bought into Hannityism. This familiar corporate cable approach is bad for grown-ups and four-year-old children and for all living things.

Flint watch: Maddow's cartoonized version of Flint!

FRIDAY, APRIL 22, 2016

The things you were never told: On Wednesday, three individuals were charged with crimes stemming from their alleged conduct in the Flint water mess.

That evening, Rachel Maddow reported these charges. In the passage shown below, she continued to build her cartoonized version of what happened in Flint.

Can you spot a few thumbs on the scale?

MADDOW (4/20/16): Today, these first charges, it turned out they were brought by the state attorney general in a big, splashy press conference, with tons of media there, the state attorney general himself making the announcement, giving a big speech. He's widely known to have higher political aspirations in the state of Michigan.

If today's press conference about these criminal charges felt like kind of a well-staged political event, that probably was not by accident. The three people who were charged today, they were, as you probably expected, they were fairly low-level folks, one engineer and one supervisor from a state agency and one guy from Flint who worked at the water treatment plant.

But in addition to being low-level government officials, there's also a sense in which these guys were the low hanging fruit in terms of criminal culpability.

Attorney General Bill Schuette today went out of his way to praise and thank and talk up the skills ands credentials of his crack investigating team that he formed on this matter. And this is not to take anything away from them, but all three of these people who were charged today, the things they were charged for are all things that have been basically reported out in great detail in public by journalists in Michigan.

The allegations against these three low level public officials, they're now spelled out in a criminal indictment from the attorney general, but they were first spelled out in great detail in the public domain.

According to Maddow, the attorney general—he's a Republican— announced these charges "in a big, splashy press conference." But then, he's "widely known to have higher political aspirations in the state of Michigan."

If his press conference "felt like kind of a well-staged political event," that probably wasn't an accident! And not only that. "As you probably expected," the three people who were charged "were fairly low-level folks."

Maddow offered one more grumbling semi-complaint. The actions for which these people were charged "have been reported in great detail in public by journalists in Michigan," Maddow said. The allegations were being spelled out by the attorney general, "but they were first spelled out in great detail in the public domain."

Not that Maddow was trying to take anything away from the attorney general, or from his team!

Rachel Maddow has the soul of a propagandist. Since December, she has been treating Flint as one of her favorite cartoons. She seems annoyed by anything that doesn't fit the cartoon she's been drawing, in which a mustachio-twirling Governor Snyder engaged in cartoon-level criminal conduct from beginning to end.

Might we state the obvious? It's common in prosecutions of various types to charge the lower-level participants first. Beyond that, if the alleged misconduct by these three people has been widely described in the press, it isn't hard to see why they would have been charged.

In the course of his big, splashy, well-staged press conference, the attorney general said these charges were just the start. It remains to be seen if anyone else will be charged. It remains to be seen if Tuesday's charges will be upheld in court.

For today, we thought you ought to consider something else Maddow said Tuesday night. After her initial grumbling and spinning, she interviewed Curt Guyette, an investigative reporter for the Michigan ACLU who has been deeply involved in this matter.

Uh-oh! Guyette said he's been impressed by the work of Attorney General Schuette's team, by whom he has been interviewed.

("The people he brought in to really conduct the investigations independently have really, really good reputations," Guyette said. "I was one of the person they talked to because of the work that we had done. And they were very thorough. I really got a good opinion of what they were doing as far as the state attorney general's office." It sounds like Guyette has been turned!)

Guyette was interviewed by Schuette's team because of his investigative work concerning the water disaster. During her opening presentation, Maddow played videotape of an interview Guyette conducted with one of the people who have now been charged.

For ourselves, we're never happy when people get themselves into serious trouble. But in this videotaped interview with Guyette, Flint water supervisor Mike Glasgow seems to acknowledge substantial wrongdoing:

GUYETTE: How were you able to determine that every single house had a lead service line?

GLASGOW: We're not, really. We throw bottles out everywhere just to collect as many as we can to try to hit a number. And that's why, we just turn in every result that we get in.

GUYETTE: You indicated on those reports that all those lines were lead service lines—

GLASGOW: To the best of our knowledge.

GUYETTE: When you didn't have actual documentation for each house where you put that down.

GLASGOW: Yes, we're still looking for the records.

For the videotape of Maddow's first segment, just click here. The Guyette/Glasgow interview occurs at 7:30.

Regarding that interview, Oof. Once the problem began, Glasgow seems to have been involved in falsifying inspection records.

Guyette does not seem amused on that tape. That said, here's the problem:

According to Maddow, all the conduct for which Glasgow and the two others were charged has been "reported out in great detail in public by journalists in Michigan." Their conduct has been "spelled out in great detail in the public domain."

Here's the problem:

According to the Nexis archives, Glasgow's name has never been mentioned on the Maddow Show. A cynic would tell you why:

Glasgow was an employee of Flint. He didn't work for Governor Snyder, the cartoon villain Maddow has been cartoonishly trying to hang.

Can we mention two other names you've never heard on the Maddow Show? We refer to Michael Prysby and Stephen Busch, the two state workers who were criminally charged this week along with Glasgow.

How odd! According to Maddow, the alleged misconduct by these three people has been laboriously described in the Michigan press. (Presumably, the videotape of Glasgow speaking with Guyette may have been available.) But how strange! Maddow has never mentioned their names or told you what they apparently did.

A cynic could explain that omission. In reality, Maddow has been pretending to report what happened in Flint. In reality, she has been offering viewers a deeply selective cartoon, in which she has been carefully sifting the information we are allowed to hear.

She hasn't interviewed Professor Edwards, or even told you what he has said about what happened in Flint. (Edwards has said that state employees were systematically lying to others in the state government and to the EPA. That doesn't fit Maddow's cartoon.)

Maddow hasn't been willing to tell you what Edwards has said. Beyond that, she hasn't reported the apparent conduct of the three people who got charged, none of whom are Snyder hacks.

Can we talk? Ever since the start of Flint, Maddow has been crafting her latest cartoon, aiming her narrative at one of her long-time favorite villains. At this point, cartoonizing favorite demons is pretty much all Maddow does.

Maddow shouldn't be on the air. She's tremendously skilled at selling herself, much less than obsessively honest regarding everything else.

In our view, Maddow needs help. So do her misused viewers.

A WEEK IN THE LIFE: "Our child's treasury of John Kasich!"

FRIDAY, APRIL 22, 2016

Part 5—Cable's dumbest week ever: Monday, April 11, 2016 dawned both clear and cold.

(Presumably, this was true somewhere. On occasion, we'll follow modern cable news practice, replacing balanced presentations of fact with familiar, novelized formats.)

As that Monday dawned clear and cold, liberals and progressives found themselves confronted by a wide range of issues, concerns, inventions and substantive topics.

Candidates Clinton and Sanders were locked in a war for the state of New York. Below, you see just a few of the questions which were involved in their glorious fight:

How should progressives view the provisions of the 1994 crime bill?

Was Candidate Clinton a snarling racist for having used the term "superpredator" on one occasion in 1996? What about the snarling racism of Candidate Sanders, who kept denigrating Democratic voters in the Deep South?

Which candidate had the better proposals concerning "big banks?" Which candidate had the better ideas about federal, state and local minimum wage proposals?

Which candidate had the better proposals concerning international trade? Which candidate had the better proposals concerning low-income schools?

(Tell the truth! Have you ever heard our corporate progressives so much as mention that last topic? On even one occasion? Why do you think that is?)

Should Candidate Clinton be raising money at exclusive $353,000-a-plate galas? Should she release the transcripts of her paid speeches to you know who?

Should Candidate Sanders have flown to the Vineyard to appear at those swish soirees? Should Candidate Sanders raise money for congressional candidates, as Candidate Clinton has done?

Which candidate is more upset about police misconduct and error? Has either candidate offered any actual proposals in this general field?

Has either candidate made any sense concerning recent events in Flint? If so, what has that candidate said? Why haven't we heard it discussed?

Many topics were being churned as the hopefuls fought for New York. In the course of all the hubbub, candidates were denigrated in various ways, sometimes in ways which may have been a tiny small bit less than obsessively honest.

That very same Monday night, Professor Dershowitz paraded his way onto CNN and offered a rather peculiar account of his real-time views concerning that ancient crime bill. In this and a million other ways, the nation's hustlers, pundits, grabbers and con men were distorting the nation's recent past in service to their own reputations and in search of advancement and profit.

A person with a cable news show could have performed a wide range of valuable services during the course of this week. A real news program could have performed a wide range of journalistic services.

Instead, the eponymous show of a big major star responded with one of the dumbest weeks ever performed in the already awful, thirty-plus years of so-called "cable news." We refer to The Rachel Maddow Show, the rapidly devolving "cable news" show whose multimillionaire TV star has been in a headlong state of decline for at least the past year.

The Maddow Show began the week with guest host Steve Kornacki forced to read a silly account of that 1994 crime bill. Later, he was forced to tease the declining program's latest explosive and highly exciting sexy-time big major sex scandal:

KORNACKI (4/11/16): What do the FBI, the archdiocese of Washington, D.C. and the embassy of Japan all have in common? It turns out they have a pretty interesting connection to the D.C. madam scandal. Some new reporting on that tonight.

Stay with us.

Alas, poor Kornacki, the analysts cried. Involuntarily, we averted our gaze during the subsequent segment, which dripped with the thrill of very raw sexy-time sex. That said, the monster dumbing didn't begin until the program's star returned to the air, dragging her endless array of performance tics behind her.

As we all know, ticks can spread all sorts of disease as the weather warms. In the realm of intellectual health, so can the mugging and routine dissembling of this borderline corporate star.

A year or so back, the cable star's corporate bosses decided to adopt their latest new corporate approach. The channel would become "the place for politics," or rather for an imitation of same.

In the course of that latest adjustment, Professor Harris-Perry ended up on the junk heap. The major star of whom we speak seems to have made an adjustment.

Rachel Maddow has dumbed her show down within an inch of its life. She gambles each night that we liberals won't notice.

So far, that gamble has worked.

That said, the monster dumbness of last week's programs calls out for description. Also, the ugliness of the lessons she taught—the ugliness of her endless, cartoonized lessons in cartoon tribal loathing.

Assuming basic emotional competence, it would be hard to get more cynical than this program's star has become. That said, the host has discussed her emotional problems at several points in the past.

For ourselves, we don't assume that the cable star is in full command at this point. All too often, she doesn't quite seem to be.

We say that because we watch the show, and marvel at what we see each night. That said, last week's programs set a new standard for insults to the viewer's intelligence and for the sheer joy of the cartoonized loathing which dominated the week.

How dumb were Maddow's performances last week? How many times can you say it? If you want to see what dumb looks like, we'd recommend the segments she did on Thursday night concerning a huge invented concern:

The cable star fears, or says she fears, that delegates to the Republican convention in Cleveland may be bribed by Candidate Trump this summer. Even worse, they may be bribed in a way which is perfectly legal, because the very large bribes will be paid outside the state of Ohio!

Maddow had already wandered into the woods when she asked a former U.S. attorney to help her evaluate this dystopian nonsense. Needless to say, she had burned away her initial segment on this imagined concern with a meandering, time-wasting review of an obscure Ohio state law, a law which emerged from the 1876 Republican convention, which was held in Cincinnati.

Repeatedly, Maddow killed time last week with pointless trips to the past. As she endlessly wasted time in this way, she failed to address the many real issues surrounding the current campaign.

In this instance, she devoted one segment to Rutherford B. Hayes, then rubbed her hands, as Hamlet once did, concerned about what might be coming this summer. Like Cassandra, she could see the disaster:

"Under federal law, arguably, a rich candidate like, say, Donald Trump, could spend a few tens of millions of dollars of his personal wealth buying a few hundred delegates new houses, or new cars, or just writing them checks in order to seal up the nomination for himself. Federal law apparently would not stop that," the cable star excitedly said.

It wasn't clear why this very strange person thought she knew such a thing about federal law. In her second segment concerning this nonsense, she brought on a former U.S. attorney to help her think the problem through.

Credit where due! The former U.S. attorney somehow managed to keep a straight face as he kept telling the cable star how thoroughly she misunderstood the way federal and state laws really work. That said, nothing could get the nagging fear of these crimes out of this strange person's head. After dismissing the U.S. attorney, she closed the second segment like this:

MADDOW (4/14/16): Steven Dettelbach, former U.S. attorney, thank you for helping us understand this. This is a strange aspect of this story, but it's good to be forewarned. Thank you, sir.

DETTELBACH: Thanks.

MADDOW: The prospect of Ohio prosecutors prowling the Cleveland convention site to try to suss out bribery when one of, when one of the contenders for the nomination is the Ohio governor because they're going to prosecute this under state law? God, let it not come to that!

All right. Much more ahead. Stay with us.

Say what? No one had raised "the prospect of Ohio prosecutors prowling the Cleveland convention site to try to suss out bribery"—in this case, bribery by Candidate Trump involving tens of millions of dollars!

Instead, Dettelbach had simply told Maddow that, despite her time-wasting trip to the past and despite her attempts to define federal law, any such bribes could be prosecuted under federal or state law. Along the way, he had batted away her silly idea that Ohio law wouldn't hold if Candidate Trump simply paid these bribes across the state line in Indiana.

Rachel Maddow didn't go down without a ridiculous fight. In this exchange, note the way she pushed back against the idea that Indiana was out as a locale for the safe legal paying of bribes:

DETTELBACH: So we talk about, in the criminal law, a thing called venue, jurisdiction. Where can something be done? And you know, just as if you committed fraud and part of the fraud occurred in Ohio and part of the fraud occurred in Indiana, or a crime of violence or rape or any horrible crime, you know, if part of this crime occurs in Ohio, you're going to have to face an investigation and prosecution in Ohio.

MADDOW: In terms of— I don't mean to get too technical, but in terms of what you mean by "taking place in Ohio," how would that apply to basically a bribe that was consummated in Cleveland, right? So let's say someone in the U.S. Virgin Islands makes a deal, is offered a bribe, accepts the bribe and then turns up in Cleveland and all they do in Cleveland is vote. Would that still be—

DETTELBACH: Well, "all they do." That's a pretty big thing to do! That's what you're being bribed for, is the vote.

She didn't mean to get too technical with the former U.S. attorney!

Dettelbach did a good job not laughing in the cable star's face. But even after he told the star that she'd pulled her concerns right out of her ascot, she closed the segment with a dystopian image of federal prosecutors prowling the waterfront, trying to run down these crimes.

God, she hoped it didn't happen, she said. To state the obvious, these two segments were her way of helping us think that it would.

Maddow burned two segments last Thursday night on this fanciful nonsense. As she repeatedly did last week, she began with a time-wasting trip to the past, then pretended to examine her fanciful concerns with a former U.S. attorney.

As she did this, serious topics went wholly unexplored. In the broader sweep of the week's programming, a cynic would say the purpose of this strange excursion was clear:

In the absence of any such occurrence, Maddow had associated Candidate Trump with the most cartoonish type of criminal conduct. He might bribe the delegates with new houses or, on the cheap, with new cars!

He might spend tens of millions of dollars on these bribes! Not to get too technical about it, but if he bribed them in Indiana (or in the Virgin Islands), his bribes might be A-OK!

No one has suggested that Candidate Trump has tried to do any such thing. But Maddow's program is now built around cartoonized portraits of the many Very Bad People whom she cartoonishly loathes.

She picks and chooses and dreams up facts to help you share her loathing. The most pitiful example of this cartoonized loathing was performed by the star Friday night.

"Behold, happy Friday night," the major star said at one point. "This is our child's treasury of John Kasich engaging with women voters."

In that moment, the cable star offered an apt review of her ongoing behavior. Her cartoonized portraits of those whom she loathes now operate on the level of an 8-year-old child.

Maddow repeatedly deceives her viewers to deliver these cartoonized portraits. In the process, liberal brain cells wither and die. This conduct may keep her ratings up. But this conduct is bad for the world.

Maddow opened last Friday's show with a long cartoon portrait of Kasich. We wouldn't vote for John Kasich ourselves. But if we ran a cable show the way this cable show is now run, we'd fall to our knees, debase ourselves, and apologize to the whole world, especially to the liberal viewers who Maddow keeps treating like dumbbells and dirt.

Did last week's programs constitute the dumbest week "cable news" ever aired? We don't know how to answer that, but those embarrassing cartoonized programs surely came fairly close.

Tomorrow: Cartoonizing Kasich—and us

Concerning that interview: To watch Maddow's interview with Dettelbach, you can just click here. Tape of the previous segment wasn't posted.

Don't waste your time with the program's transcript. Like many transcripts from this channel, it bears a shaky connection to the words the star and her guest really said.

Does this cable star possibly need some help? Sadly but inevitably, we don't think she's going to get it.

Slightly shaky narrator watch: Professor Dershowitz and the crime bill!

THURSDAY, APRIL 21, 2016

What he said in real time: This Monday night, we happened to catch Professor Dershowitz chatting with Don Lemon.

Mainly, they were discussing free speech, on campus and elsewhere. At one point, though, the thoughtful professor said this:

DERSHOWITZ (4/18/16): As an liberal Democrat, I wrote against the crime bill in 1994 and 1995. It was a disaster and I was opposed to it then and I'm glad there's a debate about it. Just don't stop other people from expressing different views.

We're not saying that statement is wrong. We just thought you might like to see what we found when we fact-checked Professor Dershowitz's claim.

For the record, Dershowitz was involved in the O.J. trial during much of that period. No one can say that he was trying to get everyone locked up!

That said, we haven't found anything he wrote in opposition to the crime bill. We did find these remarks from Crossfire in February 1994, Chief Justice Sununu presiding:

SUNUNU (2/16/94): Alan Dershowitz, how come it's the rich limousine liberals that seem to have the toughest time understanding that if you get habitual crime committers off the street, then you keep them from committing crimes?

DERSHOWITZ: I want to get the habitual offenders off the streets. I'm very tough on crime. This is not a liberal-conservative issue.

SUNUNU: Sure, it is.

DERSHOWITZ: I'm very anxious to see the maximization of getting people off the street. Three strikes, you're out will increase crime. It is not tough, it is not smart. Let me tell you why it'll increase crime—

SUNUNU: How about four strikes, you're out?

DERSHOWITZ: Any number of those strikes, you're out, any kind of mandatory life imprisonment. Let me tell you why.

No matter what point you get them off, if the goal is to put them in jail between the ages of 50 and 80, and remember, life expectancy for prisoners exceeds that of life expectancy for the rest of us. So we're talking about supporting people in prison during their 50s, 60s, 70s, and even 80s.

The problem is, people don't commit crimes when they're 50, 60, 70, and 80, at least not violent crimes, and for every cell that's taken by an 80-year-old, that means there's a 20-year-old who can't be put in a cell. So I think "three strikes, you're out" is not smart. It's not tough, it's just kind of bumper sticker criminology and it won't work.

SUNUNU: You've gotten them off the streets at a time when they are most likely to commit crimes. You've put them away for a long time—

DERSHOWITZ: I want to do all that. I just don't want to put them away mandatorily for life. I don't want them in jail when they're 70 and 80 years old. I'm happy to have them in jail when they're 25 and when they're 30 and when they're 35 and 40, but I want to have some discretion to let them out so that the 20-year-olds, the guys who are out there robbing the convenience stores and killing the Ma and Pa owners, the really violent people, are the ones who are put in those jail cells, not the octogenarians who, 30 years ago, may have had three offenses separated out by 15 years. It just makes no sense.

SUNUNU: You've now got the geriatrics argument against bringing people who are habitual criminal offenders into prison permanently.

DERSHOWITZ: No, I want to put them— John, you're missing my point. I just don't want to leave them in there until they're 80 years old.

Professor Dershowitz wanted to spring the 80-year-olds so he could lock up the 20-year-olds! We're not sure Lemon got that sense from his thoughtful remarks Monday night.

Final thought: What absolute creeps those Clintons were to ignore this real-time advice!

Weirdness watch: How weird is the Rachel Maddow Show?

THURSDAY, APRIL 21, 2016

Last night's first eight minutes: How weird is the Rachel Maddow Show? Consider the way the program's host burned away her first eight minutes last night.

Maddow started in a familiar way. "We've got a big show tonight," she said. "There's a lot going on today in the news. There's a lot going on in politics."

Maddow listed a few of the things which were going on in the news. She then burned the next eight minutes ignoring those newsworthy topics.

She started in one of her typical ways, discussing something she can't explain—and talking about someone's mustache. No, we actually didn't invent this typical, ill-advised bullshit:

MADDOW (4/20/16): I want to start tonight with something that I'll tell you, off the bat, I cannot explain it. It's legitimately weird. Maybe you can explain it, but I can't.

And it concerns this guy—concerns this handsome gentleman. His name is Eliot Engel.

He's one of the more recognizable members of Congress. In any setting, in any picture, if people are holding still or moving really fast, you can tell if he's somewhere in the frame because Eliot Engel, as you can see, he has a truly heroic, giant mustache.

It's a completely different size than the whole rest of him. Clown shoes are to clowns what Eliot Engel's mustache is to Eliot Engel.

I say that with total affection. My dad had a mustache for most of my life that looked exactly like Eliot Engel's mustache. He has since shaved it, but I still think of him as kind of looking like Eliot Engel, at least between the nose and top lip.

Anyway, because he reminds me of my dad before my dad shaved, because he has inarguably the best Democratic mustache in American politics, Congressman Eliot Engel of New York was easy to spot on stage last night as a whole giant crowd of New York state Democrats crowded on stage with Hillary Clinton, as she finished up her victory speech in Manhattan.

So amid former Mayor David Dinkins, and current mayor, Bill de Blasio, and the attorney general for New York, Eric Schneiderman, all these other New York officials, all these people up there, there unmistakably, right, is Eliot Engel, right behind Hillary Clinton there.

See, there's the mustache? Mr. Mustachio!

Eliot Engel and his mustache represent a district just north of New York in Westchester County. It's a very heavily Democratic district. It also turned out last night to be a very pro-Clinton district. Hillary Clinton won that congressional district last night by a 38-point margin.

To peruse the full transcript, click here.

At this point, Maddow is about to describe the news event she says she can't explain. Before we discuss that topic, consider what she had already done.

In that opening passage, you see several of Maddow's defining traits. For starters, you see her unfailing instinct to talk about herself in every conceivable circumstance.

Before her news show reported any news last night, she decided to talk about her father's mustache. This is fairly typical stuff from this weirdly self-referential person.

You see a second familiar instinct in that opening passage. In her string of comments about Engel's mustache, you see the instinct she announced long ago, when she said she doesn't want a more grown-up public discourse.

Maddow went on and on, for several minutes, about Rep. Engel's mustache. We said that conduct was ill-advised. Here's why:

Do you know how hard it is to convince our "journalists" that they shouldn't engage in such discussions? That they shouldn't engage in endless, trivial, irrelevant talk about public officials' appearances, including their clothing, their shoes and their hairstyles?

Given the nature of the baboons who constitute the American "press corps," it takes a lot of work by their trainers to convince them not to do this—to convince them that they shouldn't be talking about earth tones, three-button suits, polo shirts and cowboy boots. Or about the hairstyle and wardrobe of Howard Dean's wife, as Maureen Dowd did in two disgraceful columns about Dr. Judith Steinberg back in 2004.

Especially in the age of Dowd, the baboons who serve in our national press corps love discussing such matters. It's hard to get them not to do it. Along comes Maddow, with her vast sense of license, encouraging them to dispense with this wise sense of restraint.

Maddow is one of the least disciplined people we've ever seen in the press. Her sense of entitlement is overpowering, vast. For some reason, she thinks it makes sense to say that Rep. Engel's mustache represents a form of clown shoes, as long as she says that she offers that comment with total affection.

Maddow burned roughly three minutes discussing Engel's mustache. Her sense of entitlement is vast. It's a shame that she's still on the air, but the firm is making money from her incessant clowning.

That said, the larger weirdness to this opening effort came when Maddow began to discuss the topic she can't explain. This seems to involve a reporting error from Tuesday's election in New York, but there's no way to say, given Maddow's lack of effort and discipline.

Once Maddow finally stopped musing about Engel's mustache and the way it makes her think of dear old dad, she described some peculiar election results from Engel's congressional district. According to Maddow, an early return on Tuesday night showed Ben Carson getting a strangely large number of votes.

Also according to Maddow, when the final results were released, they showed Carson getting a substantially smaller number of votes.

Maddow said she can't explain it, but that maybe we can. This raises a fairly obvious question—why would she open her show with an apparently trivial matter which she can't explain? Maddow's weird instincts then came to the fore when she proceeded to express a view about this thing which she can't explain. Here you see some very bad judgment joined to some very dumb thinking:

MADDOW: Ben Carson went from 2,056 votes to 162 votes...That saved Ted Cruz from a fourth place finish [in that one congressional district] to a guy who is no longer running and hasn't been for weeks.

What happened there?

New York is a cosmopolitan, fairly well off state that just had presidential primaries in both parties that were unusually consequential and exciting. Millions of dollars were spent by the candidates to inspire voter turnout. Dozens if not hundreds of candidate events were held in New York City and in New York state. Palpable enthusiasm across New York for this presidential contest this year and still, New York is so screwed up.

New York makes it so difficult to vote in this state that New York's voter turnout was worse voter turnout than every other state that has held a primary so far this year other than Louisiana, which is also a disaster, but everybody expects that from Louisiana. New York has archaic, arcane, terribly run, non-transparent, super-sketchy elections and they have forever, thanks to the fact that the elections in this state are organized and administered by the state of government of New York, which proudly features what I think is inarguably the most inconsistently and flagrantly corrupt state legislature in the entire nation, at least as measured by indictments and convictions, right?

I mean, there's a lot of competition for most corrupt state legislature. But New York.

Even so, even with Ted Cruz appearing to benefit from a last minute surge of minus 1,800 votes for Ben Carson in one congressional district—Ben Carson, who was apparently beating him in that district! Huh? What?

Nevertheless, the results were stark enough in New York that even the disaster that is the election system in this state, it cannot disguise the overall story of what happened here.

That is a very strange rant. That said, it's par for the course for the very strange person who fronts the Maddow Show.

Maddow opened this rumination by saying she doesn't know why Carson's vote total changed in that congressional district.

One possibility? It could have been an initial reporting error, a type of event which seems to happen fairly often in American elections. But after wasting about three minutes discussing the local congressman's mustache, Maddow headed down a road which ended with her denouncing the whole state of New York for its allegedly "super-sketchy" elections.

Maddow marveled at the fact that New York had a lower turnout rate than other primary states this year. She failed to note one obvious factor—unlike other states, New York's primaries are restricted to registered Republicans and Democrats.

Other states let everyone vote. You can even jump into the other party's primary, trying to screw up their candidate selection process. Whatever one thinks of these different approaches, it isn't especially hard to see why New York's turnout would be lower than that in an "open voting" primary state.

Maddow took a different approach. She implied that scandal was involved, or something like that. It's impossible to say, from her long formless rant, what point she was trying to make.

She almost seemed to be suggesting that someone was trying to help Ted Cruz avoid the embarrassment of finishing fourth behind Carson in one congressional district. Strange as Maddow is becoming, this undisciplined semi-suggestion is basically par for the course.

(For what it's worth, New York's total Democratic vote this Tuesday was roughly equal to that from the primary in 2008.)

Let's review:

Maddow started last night's show with a long discussion of a congressman's mustache. She then embarked on a weird discussion of something she can't explain.

Almost twenty-four hours later, had she even tried to figure it out? Had she asked election officials about the changed total for Carson?

There was no indication that she had. Instead, she was off on a rant.

Here's the ultimate problem:

By now, the Maddow Show's peculiar host had burned eight minutes off the start of her alleged news program. She had started the program by listing the important events taking place in the world. She then proceeded to burn eight minutes talking about her father's mustache and ranting about a set of alleged problems she didn't bother defining.

Maddow wastes time the way other folk breathe. This practice is becoming one of the defining traits of her ridiculous "cable news" program.

One last point:

You can't see what we're about to mention. The Maddow Show had enough sense not to post the videotape from this latest ridiculous effort.

That said, Maddow didn't seem to have done a thorough review of the election data which had her so upset. In the preliminary results which she showed on the air, Carson was shown receiving 12% of the Republican vote in Engel's 16th congressional district.

That would seem like a strangely large number of votes. However, the same document which Maddow displayed on the air showed Carson getting 9% of the vote in the 17th district. Whatever was happening in the 16th district, it also seemed to be happening over there.

Normally, journalists try to learn what they're talking about before they go on the air and spout. Maddow, though, is profoundly undisciplined.

She's getting more so all the time. Inevitably, this is what happens when you pay people millions of dollars and shower them with sudden, massive fame.

Final plea: it's very hard to get these baboons to stop discussing public officials' boots, shoes, polo shirts, sweaters, pant suits, bald spots and hair.

That said, the peculiar host of the Maddow Show doesn't want a grown up discussion. We're all paying the price for this Peter Pan's very strange privileged conduct.

A WEEK IN THE LIFE: The Candide of major cable news stars!

THURSDAY, APRIL 21, 2016

Part 4—It's the best of all worlds Over Here: Is a $15 minimum wage a good idea? A $15 federal minimum wage?

Like you, we don't have the slightest idea how to answer that question. In part, that's because we get our "news" from "The Carrot Top of Cable News Stars," as she's now often described.

Last week, this major star performed her show from Tuesday through Friday night. On Tuesday night, she opened her week by killing a whole lot of time, and a lot of brain cells, with a pair of numbing segments about Phyllis Schlafly, 91, who ceased to be a significant player many years ago.

Before she wasted our time on Schlafly, she wasted our time by letting us know what Prescott Bush thought about Nelson Rockefeller's divorce. What he thought about that divorce in 1964!

On Wednesday night, this same cable star opened her show with footage from the Tricia Nixon/Edward Cox wedding, a glorious event which took place in 1971. This particular killing of time had been preceded by footage of President Nixon's final address. We were told that he was weeping throughout, though it didn't quite look like that.

Question: Has anyone ever killed more time on "cable news" than this particular star? As it turned out, Wednesday evening's long journey through Nixon and Cox had led to that $15 federal minimum wage, which the cable star took pains, all week, to avoid discussing with respect to the substance or merits.

Would a $15 federal minimum wage be a good idea? This question was in the ether last week as Candidates Clinton and Sanders fought for the state of New York.

That said, you never saw a substantive discussion of this proposal on this major star's cable show. Instead, she used the exciting, unexamined proposal as a way to kill brain cells in one of the oldest ways there is--by insisting that the Very Bad People are all Over There, while our own tribe is able to boast The Best of All Possible Candidates.

Quick hint—our tribe isn't able to boast the best of all possible candidates. Each of our candidates is substantially flawed, as is often the case in the world.

That said, you'll rarely learn that saddening fact from this major star. Last week, she taught us something utterly different. She taught us how to loathe The Others, in the present and in the past tense.

She also taught us to love Our Own, as tribal players always will do. A cynic would say that the cable news star does this to fluff her ratings, and to keep corporate earnings up.

"Is everybody happy?" Long ago, Ted Lewis made the question famous.

In modern times, a cynic would say that this cable star asks herself the very same question as she plans her eponymous TV show. To justify her massive salary, a criterion must be met:

Her ratings are built upon the eyeballs of Clinton fans and Sanders fans. Both groups of viewers must be kept happy all through her hour-long show!

Last Tuesday night, she addressed each of the groups after the endless time waste built around the irrelevant Schlafly. Here's how the fawning went down:

In her next segment, the cable star wasted time with the suggestion that Vice President Biden and President Obama had both endorsed, or semi-endorsed, Candidate Clinton that day.

In fact, no one had endorsed anyone, but it was a good way to kill more time and to fluff Clinton supporters. She closed her segment with a promise to Sanders fans:

MADDOW (4/12/16): In the Democratic Party that really, really likes President Obama and Vice President Biden, if you are the woman who is running for president right now, both of those comments have got to be very welcome.

But I should also tell you, in that hard-fought Democratic primary, there was also some really, really good news for Bernie Sanders today. And that's next.

Yay yay yay yay yay yay yay! Clinton fans got to be happy about those non-endorsements. But Sanders fans were going to get some good news too!

In the next segment, the star made them happy this way:

MADDOW: The New York primary is a week from tonight. On the Republican side of this race, Donald Trump is leading by such huge numbers, he may be breaking records for this primary season actually...On the Democratic side, it's not nearly as dramatic, but Hillary Clinton continues to hold a big lead in the state of New York.

All that said, though, there is one way on the Democratic side in which Bernie Sanders is really cleaning up in New York. No idea what it's going to mean for the ballot box, but Bernie Sanders' rally crowds right now are freaking enormous.

Yay yay yay yay yay yay yay! Clinton is ahead in the polls, but Sanders is drawing really big crowds! Everyone gets to be happy!

The cable star rattled pointless statistics about those Sanders crowds. At the end of this waste of time, she oohed and aahed about a rally which would take place the next night:

MADDOW: And at this event, there are going to be more celebrities and bands than usual for a big Bernie Sanders event. But even still, look at this! So far, 17,000 people have RSVP'ed for the event on Facebook already and counting, and it's not until tomorrow night!

I mean, in terms of history here and context, in the 2008 presidential race, you might remember that Barack Obama also did a massive event at Washington Square Park. In the 2008 race, he drew a crowd of 24,000 people at the same location where Bernie Sanders is going to be tomorrow.

And turning out 24,000 people in New York City, that was almost an unimaginable number that year for candidate Barack Obama. But after he turned out 24,000 people in Washington Square Park, he went on that year to lose the New York primary to a candidate named Hillary Clinton.

So rallies are not votes, but they're something. The number of people Senator Bernie Sanders is turning out is a political phenomenon unto itself.

Watch this space.

A cynic would say that "Watch this space" was the key message there. The cable star is constantly telling us not to go away.

At any rate, this time-wasting segment gave both groups of viewers a way to feel good. Clinton was ahead in the polls—but Sanders was drawing amazing crowds! Within our own exalted tribe, it was the best of all possible worlds, especially when you considered Prescott Bush's views on divorce! In 1964!

Also, Schlafly's gay son!

It was all good in our glorious tribe, even as the bulk of the hour had been burned away. And sure enough! The following night, the cable star used that footage from the Nixon-Cox wedding to drive her point home again!

Forty-five years after the wedding in question, it turns out that Nixon's son-in-law is chairman of the New York State GOP! And as we showed you yesterday, it turned out, last Wednesday night, that he was about to do a horrible thing, perhaps as a reflection of his "troubled Republican royalty pedigree!"

As we showed you yesterday, the cable star revealed that "Edward Cox, Dick Nixon's son-in-law" was going to hold a black tie, $1000-a-plate fund-raising dinner that Thursday night! "In one of these huge midtown hotel ballrooms!" "In the heart of New York City!"

The "exclusive sold-out" gala event was "going to raise a gazillion dollars for the Republican Party of New York State," the major cable star said. Surely, no one else would ever behave that way!

In the course of her tribe-pleasing segment, she said the event would be "black tie" three separate times; six times, she called it a "gala." She failed to mention an obvious fact—all the pols for whom she pimps have attended a million such dinners.

Might we cite an example? Two nights later, Candidate Clinton was going to attend an exclusive gala in California. That exclusive gala was going to be up to $353,000-a-plate!

The cable star forgot to say that. Instead, she pushed the troubling Cox event into one of her brain cell-killing frameworks. She noted that people were going to protest the Cox event, demanding that $15 minimum wage.

She never discussed the actual merits of a $15 federal minimum wage. Given cost-of-living differences, should rural Mississippi have the same minimum wage as a place like San Francisco? Could a $15 minimum wage be harmful in low cost-of-living areas?

If the minimum went to $15 in Mississippi, where would it have to go in Seattle? Would these arrangements actually make good economic sense?

All week long, the cable star avoided such boring discussions. She avoided mentioning the fact that our two candidates differ on this proposal.

Instead, the cable star used that black tie gala to pimp the tribal greatness of her viewers, who she was making happy this night. Below, you see the way she closed her segment about that troubling exclusive event.

Her message was unusually clear. We are The Very Good People. We are Their "exact opposite."

We are living in "Oppositeland" as compared to Them:

MADDOW (4/13/16): On the Democratic side of the presidential race, we had stunning visuals today that showed how, on the Democratic side of the race, it's basically the exact opposite right now of the party-crashing we are expecting tomorrow night from the minimum wage protesters at the New York State black tie $1000-a-plate Republican gala. It is Oppositeland to that in the Democratic Party right now.

And that's next. Stay with us.

"Stay with us" may have been the key message there. The cable star was holding her crowd by saying they're morally great.

The Others are holding black tie galas! Over here, it's Oppositeland.

The cable star never discussed the merits of that $15 proposal. She never discussed the differing views of Candidate Clinton and Sanders, even after those differences came into question at Thursday night's debate. When she returned from that break on Wednesday night, the cable star pimped the various ways in which "the Democratic candidates in this primary spent today trying to outdo each other supporting working people, with trying to prove that they mean it."

She never mentioned any differences between the two Democratic candidates on any issues concerning working people. She never mentioned any specific proposals. It was fawning to her viewers, straight outta some imagined place.

Bill Clinton came from a place called Hope. We're now from Oppositeland.

The cable star spent large chunks of her week pandering to both major groups of her viewers. Clinton fans and Sanders fans got to be happy alike.

They all got fed the same old gruel about Schlafly and the weeping Nixon and his black tie son-in-law with the wedding we should resent and the exclusive gala. On Friday, they all got fed the same denunciation of Candidate Kasich, a borderline-demented attack which we'll review tomorrow.

They all got fed the same factual errors; such "errors" are a common part of this strikingly truth-challenged program. Later on that Wednesday night program, each group got fed a fawning interview with a United States senator who is supporting their hopeful.

Good God. Senator Merkley went first. He'd endorsed Candidate Sanders.

Quickly, the cable star started fawning. "When I described you as an iconoclastic liberal, I meant that in the nicest possible way," she said. "Iconoclastic in kind of a lot of different ways, at a lot of different levels," she said, "...because I think you have shown you're willing to go your own way and come up with your own policy positions and cast the political winds wherever they are."

Merkley supported Sanders well; he also spoke well of Clinton. And sure enough! When the cable star interviewed Senator Murphy, a Clinton supporter, she actually started with this:

MADDOW: I imagine you might have been able to hear my conversation there with Jeff Merkley. One of the things I thought was notable about his news-making endorsement today is that he is very positive about the Democratic field. He told us that Democrats are spoiled for choice. They're both two great candidates.

Do you feel that same way about this race?

Senator Murphy said he did! As she finished a notably worthless three-question interview, the cable star began gushing again:

"You and Senator Merkley are both—you go your own way, you're both such principled progressives. I really appreciated the chance to have you both here tonight."

She closed the show in her favorite way this night. Deliciously, we were headed back to her favorite sexy-time tale:

MADDOW: We have yet more news tonight, this time on a story we've been following more closely than sometimes feels comfortable. It's about the D.C. Madam case from about a decade ago and the fight by one lawyer involved in that case to release what he says are previously unseen phone records from the D.C. Madam escort service at the center of that scandal.

Yay yay yay yay yay yay yay! It would be her program's fifth segment about the D.C. Madam, "a story we've been following more closely than sometimes feels comfortable." What else can you do when Governor Bentley refuses to "shtup" former aides?

The major star in question performed four programs last week. Given our own constraints of length, it's hard to capture all the ways she dumbed her viewers down—insulted their flagging intelligence, degraded the national discourse.

That said, her program is built on the wasting of time—the wasting of time and the love of loathing, delivered by any means necessary. She's dedicated to something else too:

Avoiding discussions of substance.

On Friday night, the cable star taught us how to loathe Candidate Kasich. Her lessons involved some astonishing logic and several flat misstatements.

Her segment about the ways to loathe Kasich was just this side of demented. Our view?

The cable star who performed that segment should be taken by the arm and led away, by attendants who really care.

Tomorrow: How to loathe Candidate Kasich. Also, how to bribe GOP delegates!

The cable star pretends: This was the cable star's second question for Senator Murphy, the Clinton supporter:

MADDOW: One of the reasons I want today talk to you tonight, sir, is you've been so forward about trying to define a progressive foreign policy and a progressive national security agenda on the Democratic side. Is that also key to your endorsement decision here?

Murphy said that was a part of his endorsement decision. "I think Bernie gets that as well," he said. "I just know in her work as secretary of state, Hillary Clinton was pioneering in some of these ideas how you use softer power rather than harder power to influence world events."

Let's face it. That isn't the way Clinton is viewed by many of the cable star's viewers.

That statement begged for a follow-up question. The cable star followed with this:

MADDOW: Do you think you have a bead on how your state is going to vote? The Connecticut primary is not far off. There has not been much polling. But we have seen the polling tighten in Connecticut like it has in so many states over the course of this race.

The cable star was playing it dumb. The D.C. Madam was next!

Flint watch: Concerning those criminal charges!

WEDNESDAY, APRIL 20, 2016

What you have and haven't been told about what happened in Flint: For the record, we're pretty much never happy to hear that people have gotten in trouble.

We don't root for people to be harmed. We leave that to our massively overpaid, corporate "cable news" stars.

That said, the first criminal charges have now been filed concerning events in Flint. As we read about these charges, we thought about what you have and haven't heard about what happened in Flint.

For ourselves, we don't know what happened in Flint. In large part, we don't know what happened in Flint because we've watched the pseudo-reporting of cable's own Rachel Maddow.

Because we don't know what happened, we don't know if these charges are justified. That said, this is from Monica Davey's initial report for the New York Times:

DAVEY (4/20/16): The first criminal charges stemming from the Flint, Mich., water crisis were filed on Wednesday, as two state officials and a city employee were accused of offenses including covering up evidence of lead contamination.

Michael Prysby, a district engineer with the state Department of Environmental Quality; Stephen Busch, a district supervisor in the same department; and Michael Glasgow, the city’s utilities manager, face a mix of felony and misdemeanor charges. The charges are linked both to the handling of a change in the city’s water supply in 2014 and to months of official denials that the change had led to a dangerous level of lead flowing into residents’ homes.

The charges were brought by the state attorney general, Bill Schuette, and authorized by Judge Tracy Collier-Nix of Genesee District Court. They were announced at a news conference in Flint on Wednesday.

Those charges could be justified—or it could be a big cover-up! We'll only say this:

When we read about those charges, we thought about Professor Marc Edwards' congressional testimony back on February 3. We also thought this:

If you get your news from Rachel Maddow, you don't know what Professor Edwards testified to that House committee. Questioned by Reps. Cummings and Chaffetz, he explained who he thought was mainly to blame.

It started with some state environmental officials, he said. A cover-up followed from there:

CUMMINGS (2/3/16): I want you to be clear, and I'll say it 50 million times and I mean it. I want the EPA to be held responsible for addressing the things that they're supposed to address. But it seems—

Help me with this, OK, because I'm just listening to you. You don't seem to put too much blame on the state. Why is that? Or am I missing something?...

EDWARDS: My perspective on this is the fact that these are the agencies paid to protect us, the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality, and Susan Hedman at EPA is the top environmental cop in the region.

I have said repeatedly that the primary blame for this rests with a few people at the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality, without question. But in terms of other people in the state, those core professionals misled them throughout this whole thing. [Former mayor] Walling in Flint, for example, reached out after reading Miguel's memo, as a considerate mayor would, to Susan Hedman [of the EPA]. Said, "Is this something I should take seriously?"

And she told him, the top environmental policeman in the region told him, "I am sorry this memo ever took place and I'll get back to you after I edit and vet it." So I—

One hundred percent of the responsibility lies with these employees at MDEQ, there's no question. But the EPA had the chance, because of Miguel Del Toro, to be the hero here and Ms. Hedman snatched defeat for EPA from the jaws of victory by discrediting his memo and standing by silently as she knew that federal law was not protecting Flint's children.

[...]

CHAFFETZ: I just to follow up on what Mr. Cummings was talking about, Mr. Edwards.

These people at the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality, do you feel that they were misleading people? Were they providing false information? What were they doing? And who were they doing it to?

EDWARDS: I think it probably started innocently. I think someone forgot to follow the law [about corrosion control], but they ignored warning sign after warning sign...And gradually, step by step, they just felt like they were covering this up. There's no question about it.

You read the e-mails. They were—

They lied in writing to the EPA, and it was only after [Flint parent LeeAnne Walters] figured out that they were not using corrosion control that they started this new story that we don't know if we have to have corrosion control. So I think the written record is quite clear on this.

CHAFFETZ: They were telling that to the EPA. What about to the governor's office and other state officials?

EDWARDS: It's very clear to me that they misled the epidemiologists who were looking at that. The very first thing that they did was to reach out to these MDEQ employees and say, "Is there something wrong with the water?" And the talking points, the notes from that memo used by the epidemiologists, basically repeated one lie after another after another about the actual situation in Flint.

And when you're a scientist and you have been misled so fundamentally by someone in a position of trust, that skews your interpretation. So I have criticized what the Health Department did, and the fact that they never told the governor about the spike in elevated lead that was occurring. And I have, I have talked about their unethical behavior in the month of September, when they refused to share data with me and Dr. Mona about the lead poisoned children. But you have to—

When you look at the ethics of this, you have to look at what they were told and put yourself in their position and I fault them, but the blame lies with these three or four employees who were actively misleading everyone.

Edwards' impressions could be wrong. But his main impression was this:

The whole thing started as a mistake by a handful of state environmental officials. Once they realized that they'd bungled badly, they began lying to cover up their blunders.

He said they lied to the EPA and to Governor Snyder's staff. That may not be what happened here, but it seems to fall in line with today's criminal charges. (Edwards was also very critical of the EPA's Susan Hedman.)

Professor Edwards' impressions could always be wrong. That said, you've never been told about his testimony if you watch Rachel Maddow.

Everyone regards Edwards as one of the heroes of this matter, and as the leading expert who got involved in this mess. Why has Maddow kept you from hearing what Edwards said at two House hearings?

We can't answer that question. A cynic would say the answer is obvious:

Maddow has always treated this story as a cartoon in which Snyder, one of her (many) favorite demons, has been cartoonishly demonized. According to Professor Edwards, the principal demons were elsewhere.

Professor Edwards could be wrong, but Maddow has kept you from hearing his views. Simply put, Maddow shouldn't be on the air. She simply seems to be too unbalanced for the important role she's been given.

Judging from her downward spiral, the wealth and the fame haven't helped. As in The Emperor's New Clothes, no one can see her horrible work for what it so plainly is.

Campaign watch: SANDERS TIES CLINTON IN NEW YORK!

WEDNESDAY, APRIL 20, 2016

New York Times does it again: On November 3, 1948, the Chicago Daily Tribune made itself eternally famous.

It did so by bungling a front-page headline. DEWEY DEFEATS TRUMAN, the famous headline said.

This morning, the New York Times decided to get in the act. When we arrived at the coffee joint, we scanned the front page of our hard-copy Times. Above the featured front-page report, here's what the headlines said:

TRUMP LANDSLIDE GIVES
CRUCIAL LIFT IN DELEGATE LEAD
Regains Control of Race for G.O.P.—
Clinton and Sanders in Tight Race

You can't blame reporters Healy and Haberman for the bungled last line of that headline. Nothing in their early-edition news report explains where that premature, inaccurate statement came from.

Presumably, some editor got a snootful, then took things from there. As a result, Candidate Dewey only tied Truman this time.

Candidate Sanders may win next week. Meanwhile, we thought the Times made up for its front-page error with a news report in the National section, a news report about life expectancy in the United States.

The report was written by Sabrina Tavernise; it included some eye-catching data. As we started our reading, these first samples caught our eye:

TAVERNISE (4/20/16): The new federal data, drawn from all deaths recorded in the country in 2014, showed that life expectancy for whites dropped to 78.8 years in 2014 from 78.9 in 2013.

[...]

In contrast, life expectancy for blacks rose to 75.6 in 2014 from 75.5 in the previous year.

"Those numbers have really been jumping around," we skillfully said to the analysts. Worried by what we were reading, we sat up straight in our chairs.

Before long, the Times was trying to "talk us down" by providing a bit of perspective. To us, it felt like one of one of those phony "trend stories" the Times just loves to make up:

TAVERNISE: Typically, most of the deaths in the country occur among people in their 60s or older. Deaths in people who are younger or middle age are relatively rare...

On its face, it seemed to make sense, but we weren't entirely sure. The word "typically" raised warning flags, especially followed by "most of."

Could Tavernise be up to some tricks? "Run a fact-check on those numbers," we flawlessly barked at the analysts. By now, this sort of thing is second nature for us.

Truman died at 88, Dewey at 68. To this point, that's all the analysts have been able to tell us.

Those data seem to support the Times' supposition, one analyst self-importantly said. We're having his claim double-checked. It's just what we do around here.

For ourselves, we've never trusted anyone over 30. That was always Bob Dylan's key point. If you simply withhold your trust, there's a good chance you'll never get hurt.

A WEEK IN THE LIFE: Taught to loathe The Others well!

WEDNESDAY, APRIL 20, 2016

Part 3—Loathing in the past tense: On Tuesday, April 12, a certain major "cable news" star returned to her eponymous program after a day of rest.

She fronted the cable news show for each of the next four nights. The masterful dumbness of her work now belongs to the ages.

How dumb was the cable star's work on those time-wasting, dumb-dealing programs? Consider the way she started her week on last Tuesday night's program.

First, a quick bit of background. As the cable star began her mugging, a trivial event had occurred.

This trivial event involved Phyllis Schlafly, the 91-year-old activist who was once a major force in conservative and Republican politics.

It seemed that a war had broken out for control of one part of Schlafly's 44-year-old organization, the Eagle Forum. As best we can tell, the organization's board was attempting to oust Schlafly from its nonprofit group, though not from its political wing. The attempted coup apparently stemmed from Schlafly's endorsement of Candidate Trump last March.

Adding to the excitement and fun, one member of this "Gang of 6" (Schlafly's term) was Ann Cori, Schlafly's very own daughter. Plainly, the whole thing was delish.

The attempted partial coup may have been delicious; it was also unimportant. Phyllis Schlafly was a powerful figure on the right for decades. Rather plainly, that's no longer the case.

How important was the attempted partial coup, against which Schlafly had railed in an April 11 press release? Truth to tell, the attempted partial coup just wasn't real important.

According to Nexis, the attempted partial coup hasn't been mentioned in hard-copy editions of the Washington Post or the New York Times at all, right to the very day.

On line, the Post gave the attempted partial coup 355 words in this brief blog post by Dave Weigel. On April 13, the Times reposted this AP report on its web site. For better or worse, that was it.

In all honesty, this attempted partial coup just wasn't very important. Schlafly was once a very big deal. She isn't a big deal today.

Correction! The attempted coup wasn't important—unless you were watching a certain "cable news" program last Tuesday night! On that night, a certain major cable star placed this trivial pointless event roughly on a par with the outbreak of World War III.

Good lord! Refreshed by a well-deserved day of rest, the major star opened her program with an endless, 21-minute report about the attempted coup. Roughly half her program's broadcast minutes had already been wasted this way, but when she returned from commercial break, she then devoted a second segment to an interview about the way the attempted partial coup had happened.

By the time all this nonsense was done, the cable star had burned away at least 60 percent of her broadcast minutes. "We've got much more ahead tonight. Stay with us," she said as she took another break, apparently without irony.

As we noted in Monday's report, a slough of major issues of substance begged for exploration last week as the New York primary fight proceeded. Why had this unnamed major star burned so much time on this pointless event?

We can't answer that question. What explains the descent of this cable "news" program into relentless inanity in the past year? We can't tell you that either.

But the endless segments about Phyllis Schlafly introduced two major themes from last week's broadcasts. In those programs, we liberals were taught how to loathe The Others more fully and, a bit more specifically, how to loathe The Others in the past tense.

For the record, the major cable star in question seems to know that Phyllis Schlafly is a thing of the past. You could tell she knows this from this part of her endless report:

MADDOW (4/12/16): After her command performance at the 1992 Republican convention, there was a really awkward moment when her oldest son was outed as gay. She's the leading voice of vituperative, anti-gay politics in the Republican Party and then she had to come out and publically confirm that, yes, her oldest son is gay, but also he works with her and she says he agrees with her on everything, including how anti-gay she is. That was awkward.

There was that moment last fall when Phyllis Schlafly and her Eagle Forum put out an excited press release announcing that all of the Republican presidential candidates would be coming to the Eagle Forum's national convention, what they call their Eagle Council. And then in the end, only four of the 17 Republican candidates actually showed up, and one of them, Rick Perry, only showed up because he decided that Phyllis' Eagle Council would be an excellent place to quit the race. The first person to drop out of the Republican presidential race this year dropped out on Phyllis Schlafly's stage.

To watch that whole segment, just click here. Warning! Brain cell loss!

Almost none of the hopefuls showed up for Schlafly's event, the cable star reported. This helps us see that she understands that Schlafly's no current big deal.

That said, the schadenfreude was wonderful, including the delicious part about Schlafly's own son having turned out to be gay. To confirm that "awkward" state of affairs, the cable star's site offered a link to this ancient news report from 1992. Just for the record, the cable star didn't mention the part of the headline and the report where Schlafly said that she loved her gay son.

The cable star may have felt that you didn't need to hear that.

Nor is there any place in that linked report where Schlafly said that her son "works with her and agrees with her on everything, including how anti-gay she is." That statement by the major star seems to have been false. But as we'll see a bit later this week, this wasn't the only time she played this game to help us improve our loathing last week. As with many such media types, this cable star has seemed to become less and less obsessively honest as her devotion to loathing has grown.

Those endless opening segments last Tuesday constituted an amazing waste of time. As we close today's report, let's return to that one key distinction about last week's programs. This involves the way we were taught how to loathe those from the past.

If you choose to watch the endless, 21-minute segment which opened Tuesday's program, you'll receive your latest lesson in how to loathe The Others. The love of loathing was on wide display on last week's time-wasting shows.

In the course of last week's programs, the star performed a rather selective segment which helped us learn to loathe Candidate Trump even more. On Friday, she opened with a truly demented segment in which we were taught, through demented means, how to loathe Candidate Kasich.

We'll review those segments on Friday. For today, let's note the way we were incessantly taught how to loathe in the past tense.

Good God! If you watch that endless, Tuesday night segment, you won't be restricted to loathing the highly irrelevant Schlafly. As the segment opens, you'll even learn how to loathe the late Prescott Bush, the father of "Poppy" Bush.

(Why should we loathe Prescott Bush? In 1964, "he didn't just abandon his friend. He publicly excoriated his friend as a moral reprobate for what he had done"—for having gotten a divorce. So we were taught Tuesday night.)

On Wednesday night, your time was wasted in even more remarkable ways. The cable star opened by revisiting Richard Nixon as he made his famous final speech as president.

For some reason, the cable star seemed to think that this famous speech, which is frequently aired, has almost never been seen. Once again, the schadenfreude was thick as she wasted everyone's time playing a chunk of that speech.

("He cried pretty much throughout the speech, or at least on and off throughout the speech he cried...Oh my God, was that speech dark." Also amazingly pointless.)

As it turned out, the cable star had mainly wasted our time that way so she could help us learn to loathe someone else. That person is Edward Cox, President Nixon's son-in-law, the current chairman of the New York State Republican party.

After wasting our time with pointless footage of the White House wedding of Cox and Tricia Nixon, the cable star finally helped us learn the best way to loathe Cox.

Uh-oh! Cox was throwing a black tie event in Manhattan last week! Unless your brain has been taken to Neptune, this is demented stuff:

MADDOW (4/13/16): In New York state, he's not just a Republican in good standing, he's actually today the chairman of the New York state Republican Party. And as someone with that sort of troubled Republican royalty pedigree, as somebody who is no stranger to gala high-profile events, tomorrow night in New York City, Edward Cox, Dick Nixon's son-in-law, is going to be hosting an exclusive sold-out huge black tie gala event.

Tickets to attend are reportedly a minimum of $1000 each. The event is going to happen in one of these huge midtown hotel ballrooms at the Grand Hyatt on 42nd Street in the heart of New York City.

At this event tomorrow night, they're going to raise a gazillion dollars for the Republican party of New York state. Mr. Cox, as chairman at this event, he will be hosting all three Republican presidential candidates in person, at this event tomorrow night.

And we can now report that Edward Cox will also have several hundred, if not several thousand, severely unwanted guests at the same New York City black tie gala tomorrow night.

The loathsome Cox would be wearing black tie at a fancy, thousand dollar a plate dinner inside a fancy hotel. In this way, he was going to raise a gazillion dollars for the Republican party of New York.

Outside, people would be protesting, demanding a $15 minimum wage. We'd gone through all that Nixon/Cox bullshit just to arrive at that.

What makes that resentment-fueled presentation just this side of demented? Ignore the amazing waste of time involved in watching the tired old tape of Nixon allegedly weeping. Ignore the loss of brain cells as viewers were forced to watch tape from the Nixon/Cox wedding, an event which took place in 1971.

The cable star was firing resentment about that fancy black tie dinner! Unless your brain has been taken to Mars, you may understand that the pols for whom this cable star pimps all take part in such fund-raising dinners, even as our resentment was fueled at the thought that Cox, with his "troubled pedigree," would be doing such a thing.

Please understand this:

During the course of last week's programs, the cable star never discussed, explained or clarified the merits of the $15 minimum wage. Most strikingly, she never discussed the differences between the two Democratic candidates concerning that high-profile proposal.

Last Thursday night, those differences came to a head during the Democratic debate in Brooklyn. The cable star didn't discuss those differences on Friday night. Instead, she opened her program with a truly demented segment in which we were given demented instruction in how to loathe Kasich more fully.

This major star spent almost no time discussing matters of substance last week. Instead, she wasted endless amounts of time with pointless journeys into the past, teaching viewers how to steep themselves in resentment and loathing.

On these time-wasting excursions, we learned how more fully to loathe Prescott Bush, Phyllis Schlafly, Nixon, Cox and President Reagan, among a range of historical players. We were also taught to loathe Trump and Kasich. We'll explore the lunacy of that last lesson in Friday's report.

We were repeatedly taught to loathe and resent, often through the use of tortured or flatly inaccurate presentations. But as we were taught to loathe and resent, this major star made virtually no attempt to explore major matters of substance.

As our public discourse devolves, matters of substance are just for the squares! If you're paid $7 million per year by your grasping corporate owners, you're expected to teach us rubes how to loathe. It's the best way to gather the gullible eyeballs your sponsors simply adore.

Starting with the Schlafly time-waste, the cable star's programs were dumb and demented last week. You'd almost have to write a book about those programs to work all the dumbness in.

We'll sample some of this master dumbness in our next two reports. That interview about the legality of bribing Republican delegates was plainly dumbness for the ages. Not to mention the faux interviews with the two Democratic senators!

On one point, though, all could agree as the cable star mugged and clowned and pretended to bring you "the news." Over here, in our own perfect tribe, we marks are lucky enough to have the best of all possible candidates.

Tomorrow: The dumbness-dealing cable star pretends to discuss our own hopefuls

Pulitzer watch: The data we see and the data we don't!

TUESDAY, APRIL 19, 2016

A well-deserved prize for the Post: It happens every spring.

Yesterday, we granted a favorable review to Farah Stockman's front-page report in the New York Times about reactions to the 1994 crime bill. We even praised Stockman for her skill at kissing ascot.

Sure enough! That very same day, Stockman was awarded a Pulitzer prize. In this morning's New York Times, the award is reported as shown below.

Michael Grynbaum did the report. Can you spot a pattern here?

GRYNBAUM (4/19/16): Two other newspapers besides The Times won two prizes apiece. Farah Stockman of The Boston Globe, who recently joined the Times staff, won the commentary prize for columns examining the legacy of busing and segregation in Boston; Jessica Rinaldi of The Globe won in the feature photography category for her photos of a young boy struggling after a history of abuse.

The Tampa Bay Times won for local reporting for its look at the stunning failure rates among black students in a Florida county school system that abandoned racial integration.

Two newspapers won Pulitzers for work about public school issues.

That said, you've heard nothing about Stockman's columns or about the Tampa Bay Times reports. We explained the reason for that yesterday:

Nobody cares about any of this! More specifically, nobody cares about "stunning failure rates" among the nation's black kids. Nothing could be more obvious.

How good were those columns and reports? We can't tell you that. We weren't aware of Stockman's work, were only vaguely aware of the work by the Tampa Bay Times.

That said, both pieces of work garnered Pulitzer prizes—while leading to zero discussion. Your cable stars are much too busy rattling poll results.

We do feel sure that the Washington Post deserves its Pulitzer prize. Grynbaum describes its project thusly:

GRYNBAUM: The Pulitzers are now in their centennial year, and the winners announced by Columbia University on Monday reflected some of the changes sweeping the media landscape. Among the winners was The Marshall Project, an online outlet founded 17 months ago. The Washington Post took the national reporting prize for a project that used data, graphics and other tools of digital journalism to chronicle every killing by a police officer in 2015, unearthing fresh insights into a subject that has dominated the national political debate.

As we noted some months back, the Washington Post did something amazing here. Breaking every rule in the book, it compiled real information about an important subject!

As we've said for many years, facts and information play almost no role in our discourse. The Post was swimming against the tide in this undertaking.

The Post compiled a wealth of data on the subject of police shootings. Their decision to do this was strange, because modern journalism is more often defined by the flight from data.

Our big newspapers refuse to produce accurate reports about domestic and international test scores. The refusal to do so almost seems to be a point of professional pride.

Those same newspapers refuse to report the crazy data which define the ginormous looting of us the people within our "health care system."

Both sets of data are very basic and very important; both sets of data are religiously kept from view. Incredibly, the Post decided to create a wealth of data about another important subject. For that highly unusual conduct, they well deserve their prize.

That said, ask yourself this:

According to Grynbaum, the Post has "unearth[ed] fresh insights into a subject that has dominated the national political debate." Do you have any idea what those insights are?

Have you seen a single discussion of the wealth of data the Washington Post created? Are you aware of a single "fresh insight" which has emerged from their work?

Grynbaum seems to be describing a world he imagines instead of the world which exists. We can think of many discussions which should have resulted from the Post's data, but we haven't seen those discussions occur. Our discourse is based on the reading of polls, with mugging and clowning thrown in.

In honor of the Post: We'll try to get to a discussion which should have followed from Ta-Nehisi Coates' best-selling book, Between the World and Me.

The discussion in question should have followed from that book, but manifestly didn't. We don't have discussions in our country. We have instead polls, gaffes and cant.

A WEEK IN THE LIFE: Steve Kornacki forced to recite!

TUESDAY, APRIL 19, 2016

Part 2—What the staffers wrote: Last Monday, April 11, a certain major cable news star enjoyed a much-deserved day of rest.

Steve Kornacki took her place on her eponymous cable news show. As such, he was forced to read the politically-careful drivel concocted by the major star's horrible staff.

Poor Kornacki! As a company man, he was even forced to read this at one point:

"All right. We have a big update tonight on a story we've been following closely on this show. It concerns one of the great Washington D.C. scandals of modern times."

To which great Washington D.C. scandal was poor Kornacki forced to refer? Earlier, he had teased the segment on which he was now proceeding:

KORNACKI (4/11/16): All right. And what do the FBI, the archdiocese of Washington, D.C. and the embassy of Japan all have in common? It turns out they have a pretty interesting connection to the D.C. madam scandal. Some new reporting on that tonight.

Stay with us.

For the full transcript, click here.

"Stay with us" may have been the real nugget statement there. At any rate, poor Kornacki was then forced to read the material the cable star's staff had composed about "that pretty interesting connection to the D.C. madam scandal."

Poor Kornacki! The segment he proceeded to front was the fourth segment about this thrilling sexy-time scandal performed on this cable news program since the inaugural segment on Tuesday, March 29.

When the major cable star returned to her eponymous program last week, she performed the fifth such segment on Wednesday evening, April 13. On that occasion, the nugget statement was this:

"Watch this space."

From March 29 through the present, this particular cable news program has presented five separate segments about the so-called D.C. madam. That's a reference to Deborah Palfrey, the very exciting madam in question, who thrillingly took her own life in 2008.

In none of these sexy-time segments have viewers been told some basic facts—that Montgomery Blair Sibley, the living link to the thrilling story, is a frequently-disbarred lawyer, a crackpot former presidential candidate, and a ginormous birther. The reason we keep getting served this story was made abundantly clear in the third such segment, when the major cable star speculated that the name of Candidate Cruz may appear in the madam's old phone books, although she offered no evidence to that effect and pretended to be disgusted by the tabloid rags which are spreading that rumor around.

(She displayed one of the tabloid rags two times, thus letting us know how disgusted she was with the tabloid's ugly rumor. For our previous report, click here.)

In that segment, you got a look at the current state of this cable news program's soul. That third segment came live and direct from familiar satire about the way a certain type of player will spread a rumor around by pretending to be appalled by the rumor's existence.

Back in the day, we liberals uniformly mocked behavior like that. Now, behavior like that helps define our corporate cable soul.

Please understand. That silly segment about the madam wasn't the only indignity Kornacki was forced to endure. The cable news program he was guest hosting opened with a segment about an important topic, the 1994 crime bill.

Typing very carefully, the staffers made Kornacki utter the silly/cruel remarks we highlight below. We'll also note a few other points about this part of the poor guy's text:

KORNACKI: On a Saturday morning in January of 1994, a group of policymakers and activists met in Washington, D.C., to discuss a $22 billion making its way through Congress. The crime bill it was called. This was a very big deal back in 1994. It was a plan to deal with to do something about violent crime rates that were making Americans across the political spectrum nervous. But not everyone liked where this was going.

[...]

In theory at least, those [black] leaders were supposed to be on board with the crime bill. At least that's what the Clinton White House wanted. A new poll that had just come out showing that the percentage of African-Americans who listed crime and violence as the number one problem facing the country spiked from 8 percent to over 28 percent. That just in the course of a year back in 1994.

And this huge new $22 billion crime bill, well, it was supposed to be a direct answer to that, to something that all Americans were nervous about but something being felt particularly acutely in lower income, heavily black inner cities. But what many black leaders saw were deal breakers embedded in that bill, deal breakers like mandatory minimum prison sentences, funding also for even more jails. This was some components in the bill.

Nevertheless, the crime bill made its way through Congress and in September of 1994, president Bill Clinton signed it into law. And to this day, many blame that law for the rise in incarceration rates over the years since then, particularly among minorities. And since then, the Clintons have renounced parts of the law and it continues to haunt them politically.

Americans were "nervous" about that era's "violent crime rates!" The staffers forced poor Kornacki to utter that cautious pabulum two times.

Presumably, the staffers had their ears to the ground and their fingers in the wind as they typed that insulting formulation. The phrase comes from the tony, "high privilege" locations where pseudo-liberal corporate cable news staffers dwell.

In 1990, more than 2200 people had been murdered in New York City alone! That was making Americans "nervous," the cable staffers cautiously typed, even as they failed to include any such statistics in their politically cautious report.

(At present, there are roughly 350 murders in New York City each year.)

Just a guess. Because they had their ears to the ground, the staffers knew they didn't want to suggest that there may have been some rational impetus for that 1994 bill, which is now very hot. And so they reported that people were "nervous," not that they were being murdered and felt terrorized, deeply scared.

Might we note a few other points about that part of poor Kornacki's text?

"To this day, many blame that law for the rise in incarceration rates over the years since then, particularly among minorities," the highly-privileged pseudo-liberals made the poor fellow say.

Poor Kornacki! The staffers made him report what "many" say. They made no attempt to tell their viewers if such claims are accurate!

"Many blame that law for the rise in incarceration rates over the years since then?" Are people correct when they cast such blame? This corporate channel's careful staffers made no attempt to say!

Our unpaid analysts couldn't help noting another part of that text. We refer to the place where the staffers made poor Kornacki say this:

"Now in theory at least, those [black] leaders were supposed to be on board with the crime bill. At least that's what the Clinton White House wanted."

That statement followed a piece of videotape from 1994 in which two black leaders were shown speaking about a related topic, not about the crime bill itself.

Only one was a member of Congress. That was Kweisi Mfume, our own extremely impressive member of the House.

"In theory at least, those [black] leaders were supposed to be on board with the crime bill?"

Forget about theory—as a simple matter of fact, Mfume voted in favor of the crime bill, along with two-thirds of black House members and the Senate's lone black member. The cable star's pseudo-liberal staffers never quite managed to work those facts into the text poor Kornacki was forced to read that night.

Our unpaid analysts moped about as they watched the cable star's program that night. "Same old cablecrap," one analyst said, as she watched Kornacki reading the script which scrolled before him on prompter.

Poor Kornacki! As a company man, he'd been forced to read the latest segment about that thrilling sexy-time scandal. His "big update" concerned "one of the great Washington D.C. scandals of modern times," the fellow was forced to say.

That, of course, was just sexy-time piddle, designed to keep us gullibles "watching this space." Governor Bentley hadn't "shtupped" anyone that day, so the staff turned to something equally thrilling and dumb.

That initial segment about the crime bill was more important, and worse. This brings us back to that front-page report in yesterday's New York Times.

Farah Stockman wrote the report. Yesterday, we issued a few approving words, and sure enough—by yesterday afternoon, Farah Stockman had won a Pulitzer prize.

That 1994 crime bill is suddenly very hot. It has become a major point of discussion in evaluations of Candidate Clinton and her noxious racism.

In theory, cable news programs should be providing viewers with basic background information about that 22-year-old bill which is now very hot, and about a range of other substantive topics. Last week, viewers of one major cable star's cable program learned almost nothing about any such substantive topics involved in the White House campaign.

To the extent that such topics were discussed at all, a sagacious viewer could possibly think he saw pseudo-liberal thumbs being placed on the scales. For the most part, though, such matters of substance weren't discussed at all.

Instead, we were handed sexy-time thrills and taught one glorious lesson. When the major star returned to her show, we liberals were repeatedly taught how to loathe.

Presumably, approaches like that will keep us "watch[ing] this space." Presumably, they also keep the cable star pulling in her reported salary, which involved seven million corporate dollars each year at last report.

Such approaches may keep us watching that space; they plainly keep us barefoot and dumb. Our own major star taught us little last week except who and how we should loathe.

Tomorrow: Upon the return of the star