Sunday Talking Heads

I don't know how many of you watch the Sunday talking heads shows (and no, none of them involve David Byrne . . . that would be appointment television, indeed). But the general quality of the mainstream shows--and here, I have to admit that I almost never watch Face the Nation on CBS, so my assessment is limited to Meet the Press, This Week, and Fox News Sunday--has fallen so low that I'm this close to, well, finding some other way to spend my Sunday mornings.

Today's shows were a ast wasteland. I watched This Week more than FNS, so maybe the discussion on the latter was worthwhile. The low-light of This Week: the interview with Tom DeLay (!!) in which DeLay was not asked a single question about his own legal problems. He was actually there to talk about the 2006 elections and the Republicans. Egad. The highlight was Howard Dean coming back and giving it to DeLay et al. My favorite lines: When Dean answered a question about what DeLay had said in the previous segment by saying, "I'm not going to answer a question raised by somebody leaving Congress [because of an indictment]." Dean also corrected the first two guests--Sens. Fienstein and Chambliss (egad)--that the CIA "intelligence failures" of 2002-2003 were the fault not of the analysts but of the president and his inner cabal. Dean absolutely rocks.

Meet the Press ended in a mockery of itself. Timmeh actually had on Steve Bridges, the Bush impersonator, as part of his roundtable. If you missed it, well, all I can say is that the show is a joke, but does Timmeh really want to advertise? Btw, who was that guy asking follow-ups of Nancy Pelosi this morning? That couldn't have actually been Timmeh. He never asks Republicans follow-ups.

The one exception, and it pains me to say this, is The McLaughlin Group. I know, I know, how is that possible? Well, Johnnie the lapsed Jesuit has turned against the Iraq War, and against the president, and I mean in a big-time way. So despite the presence of both Pat Buchanan and Tony Blankley on the panel, week after week, this show presents the best discussion of the events that matter . . . or the issue that matters: Iraq.

Little discussion of HookerGate this morning. We're watching for it.