I roared like the Olympian gods

TOTALLY WRONG: In a highly unusual move, Atrios gets it totally wrong when he links to Media Matters and says that Klein “melted down” during his segment with Hannity. Let’s get real! Klein and Hannity achieved exactly what they intended in this segment; they played a game of “good cop/good cop” as they spread their steaming-hot tales to the excitable rubes. (They’ll come for Aruba; they’ll stay for the gay tales.) Each man pretended to be deeply concerned with the good, the true and the ethical—and as they pretended, they spent a whole segment trashing Clinton for the rubes. They told the rubes that she was a big lesbo. They told the rubes that Bill may have raped her. And they told the rubes that she had an affair with Vince Foster. In doing so, they mocked the dead and they mocked the sacred, and yes, they made a joke of your lives. It’s true—you have to be a total idiot not to see through such a performance, but the race is full of such rubes—and it doesn’t help when liberals pretend that a segment like this represents a meltdown. We would take a different approach. We would ask when the mainstream press will start to discuss this ongoing process, in which our capacity to conduct a democracy is being deliberately eaten away. Our democracy melted down Tuesday night when the rest of the press corps sat silent—when the millionaire press corps stared into air, as it has done for many years.

By the way: Alan was off in Aruba chasing Natalee, so only Sean spoke with Klein. Last night, Alan showed tape of an “exclusive search” (of a small pond) in which he had engaged that day. An exclusive search! How the Olympian gods must have roared when they first heard that clownish new phrasing!