sitting in church ... you might be thinking about playing the ponies or how that woman in the third pew would look with her dress pulled up over her head or what a droning bore the pastor is

Listen, I only go to church once every twenty years or so. It isn't polite for you to sit there in the row behind me reading my mind.

Seriously, is there any episode (this one is still an intro, it's been a commercial and a trailer, but I suspect it's about to blossom into an episode and maybe a mini-series) that reveals more fully how manufactured is the 'suspicion' and 'outrage' ordinary people allegedly feel about Obama, with whom they 'cannot connect', than this whole thing about whether he does or does not sufficiently love America?

I think this one is top of the charts, even beyond all the other silliness about his name, his alleged madrassah education, flag pins, bowling scores and Wright, because either a) those have insubstantive novelty value, which does play in a news cycle, or b) they aren't manufactured by the media, only passed on slavishly upon receipt from their overlords. Obama does or doesn't love America enough? Are you serious?

If Noonan actually talked to some of those fine folk at Gate 14, representative or no, she would probably find quite a few who, at the moment, do not sufficiently love America either, at least insofar as the test is written by her. There are a lot of people who are pissed off, for a dizzying array of reasons; in fact, anyone who isn't pissed off is not paying attention.

Those people ... like a lot of us ... would probably be very receptive to a message that acknowledged that they aren't just imagining things, that they might have reasons to be pissed off and those reasons are not things that are occuring for the first time in our history; it's about the least likely time in human memory that people are going to be reaching for their LovesUsSomeAmerica meters and taking the speaker's stats.

Don't let me break down your resistance, but ...

Over at Williams' blog there is an entry, some months back, acknowledging the death of Gen. William A. Downing ('The Wad', as he was sometimes known to us).

http://dailynightly.msnbc.msn.com/archive/2007/07/19/278621.aspx

There is much here to further illustrate Williams' sense of himself, such as it is, as he attempts to conflate his character with Downing's by way of the 'experiences' they shared. It also illustrates why nobody at the outlets did their job w/r/t the 'military analysts'.

The sycophancy with which military officers (esp officers, because they are the educated alter-egos, the alleged leaders of brave men and strategists who win the crucial battles, and not NCOs or enlisted) are treated by the journos is in proportion to how vacuous and insubstantive the journos themselves are. It's plain when you see them meet in person: even in very mediocre officers, military bearing, command voice, the confidence that comes from command, are unmisteakeable. Whether it means anything ... it usually does not ... about their actual competence, their expertise in the areas they are supposed to comment on, is irrelevant.

In TV especially, a medium which selects and encourages a level of ADD as reporters, producers and everyone is always half-listening, reactive, thinking ahead to the next question, thinking about how it looks, how to make the source keep talking, how not to make them look bad and screw up your piece, the relative calm and centeredness of the officer, who has had to make decisions the journo cannot even fathom, it's bound to be unsettling.

The journos may have anticipated this in advance, when they read the bios, about what the officers may have done or where they'd been. The gulf between how the journos regard and market themselves, and their actual achievements, is a secret they can keep to themselves ... in imposter syndrome that might well inspire sympathy, in other circumstances ... except when they are confronted with the evidence, in the form of someone who is not the blow-dried empty suit they are. In the face of this, they project their fantasy image of themselves onto the military 'hero'. By sucking up, by making the general his buddy, he reassures himself that they are not so different, that they are of a kind, men among men, warriors who will make the hard calls, who will fight the good fights.

I see this dynamic play itself out not only with military officers, but with politicians who possess a certain demeanor. McCain is an obvious example. But he's not the only one who has cowed reporters by playing a kind of alpha-dog dominance game that works much like this one does. Its the mirror image of the right-wing war cheerleaders, the 'chairborne rangers' who imagine that it is they who are actually doing the fighting. They bask in reflected glory.

If only they understood that by simply doing the jobs we expect them to do, they would gain and deserve an even greater share of all that glory.

they're not underwater on their loans, they're not afraid of losing their jobs, they're not coping with a blown-off limb from an Iraq tour of duty. They're in their candy-coated bubble, their own little world, separate from ours

Damn, sounds pretty good.

Tell me, where can I join this 'media' thing?

First, Reilly is mindbuzzing me in church, and now you're parked next to me at the Sonic.

This place is getting very creepy.

And the diet coke isn't for the calories. I just happen to like the taste of chemicals. And I have some nails I need to melt by tomorrow.

It hasn't happened, don't worry.

There are some on here who are convinced that Joan Walsh, Alex Koppleman and others are part of some vast conspiracy to bring down Obama and that they will now unsheath their knives and do away with Glenn. That's all.