Quote(s) of the Day

"When Bush first appeared on the political scene, and especially during the apparently successful first couple of years of his presidency, his defenders swatted away questions about his mental acuity by pointing to his success. If he’s so dumb, how has he achieved so much? Well, he didn’t. He oversaw a disastrous administration for precisely the reason his critics always grasped: Bush was an intellectual simpleton, a man who made up his mind in absence of the facts, who swatted away inconvenient realities as annoyances."

"The core of (Jennifer) Rubin’s defense is that Bush was terrific if you exempt him from any blame for the disasters that occurred during his presidency, and credit him entirely for the non-disaster periods. This sentence is a particular masterpiece: 'Unlike Obama’s tenure, there was no successful attack on the homeland after 9/11.' In fact, it is not true — there were small terrorist attacks on the United States, both abroad and at home, after 9/11. But exempting the most disastrous attack on the United States from Bush’s record of avoiding terrorism is a feat of propaganda that, while common, continues to boggle the mind. Emperor Honorius Kept Rome Safe, except that one time it was sacked by the Visigoths."

"The failures of Bush’s governing method — the staffing of hacks and cronies, the disdain for evidence — was perfectly reflected in the outcomes. The Bush presidency was a full disaster at home and abroad, and whatever small accomplishments that can be salvaged barely rate any mention in comparison with the failures. The general reckoning of Bush is not too harsh. It is too kind."

-- Excerpts from Jonathan Chait's essay, "Yes, George W. Bush Was a Terrible President, and No, He Wasn’t Smart," in New York Magazine online today, the day of the official dedication ceremony for the George W. Bush presidential library

George W. Bush was easily the worst president of my lifetime -- and I was born during the Nixon administration -- and may very well be the worst president this country has ever seen. The revisionists can try to spin him all they want, he was an unqualified, unmitigated disaster and that's how he'll be remembered.

Now Barely Conscious

A couple of weeks ago, New York Magazine's Vulture section published a pretty good little piece asking whether NBC had passed the point of no return when it comes to ratings. The gist of it was that with all the damage Jeff Zucker, Ben Silverman and the rest of the staggeringly incompetent NBC entertainment brass did during the first decade of the new millennium, not just programming failure after failure but ignoring shows that could have been nurtured into a solid foundation for the network, NBC may not ever be able to fully recover.

Now it's true that the TV business is much like the movie business in the sense that, as William Goldman famously said, nobody knows nothin'. But it's not crazy to look at the massive shift in viewing habits and the growing dominance of cable, subscription and DVRd TV entertainment and understand that clawing its way back to the light might not just be difficult for NBC -- it may be damn near impossible. Things are only going to get worse the the major broadcast networks, and NBC is now so deep in the hole that it may never be able to fully get out and stay out.

The Vulture article starts with this line: "It's impossible to exaggerate just how bad a 2013 NBC is having."

That was two weeks ago.

And NBC's year just got much, much worse.

Read it and weep.

The Huffington Post: NBC Falls To Fifth Place, Behind Univision/2.21.13

Quote of the Day

"He thinks Palin is an idiot. He thinks she’s stupid. He helped boost her up. People like Sarah Palin haven’t elevated the conservative movement."

-- Anonymous person close to Roger Ailes on the Fox News chairman, who reportedly believes that the GOP he so loves is in serious danger of losing the 2012 election and that he personally doesn't seem to be able to stop the downward slide

Quote of the Day

"I am a loon. I'm on the Canadian dollar bill. It's awful...but you, however, are also a race-baiting fuck."

-- Rachel Maddow, responding to Bill O'Reilly's comment that she's a loon, in the excellent cover story in this week's New York magazine.

If you ever thought that the cable news business had devolved into the playground of a bunch of narcissistic children, consider yourself proven correct.

DXM/NYM

Like I said, world domination.

New York Magazine: Andrew Breitbart Identifies with Kevin Bacon in Footloose/2.24.10