First it was the hair, where they slicked it down and back. Then it was the Larry King glasses, and the suits that make him look like Liz Lemon’s man-child agent on 30 Rock. Now they have him booking wingnuts, I guess to make it more of a spectacle. I don’t even watch his show anymore — the thoughtful discussions that drew me in on his weekend show are reduced to sound bites. (I only watched this because someone sent it to me.)
So last night he has on Jennifer Stephano, former “reporter” (i.e TV microphone-holder) and director of PA’s Koch-backed Americans for Prosperity, and she does what she does: Bullies and yells her way through the discussion. She’s a professional victim, and the woman makes my head hurt. She is exactly the kind of “frequently wrong, but never in doubt” conservative who wingnuts love. She’s an egregious bullshitter, and one of the professional IRS “victims” who was asked to document her teabag group’s 501(c) tax status. (Aww! Poor baby had to fill out paperwork. The horror! The oppression!)
We’ve all met people like this. They use the rhetoric of oppression and all the wingnut talking points, and they are often so very, very wrong. And you can’t have a good-faith discussion with them, because to them, it’s theology, not politics. So they turn on a dime, move the goalposts and throw ad hoc attacks.
(I just want to make one thing clear: Although frequently introduced as being from Philadelphia, she lives in Bucks County.) Upper Makefield, to be exact. I used to work there. It’s a hotbed of Republican assholism.
This kind of traveling circus is not going to save Chris Hayes’ show. People used to watch it on the weekends because they’d learn something. What do they learn now? That it’s time to change the channel.
I totally agree w/you. I happened to be flipping through the channels last night and “saw” a slice of his show. I couldn’t bare it. I used to make a point of tuning into his weekend show, but I rarely tune into his evening show. They’re ruining him. Too bad.
He’s ruining himself. That’s what happens when you begin to worry more about holding onto those fat paychecks instead of why you got into the business in the first place. Maybe Hayes should take a page from CNN and report for a full hour every night about what happened to the airplane? The ‘idiot audience’ will drive his ratings through the roof.
Yeah, Hayes is fucking himself if he continues to allow his producers to invite ‘two sides of the issue’ on his show. The nutcakes will overtake his smartass everytime because his balls shrivel into peanuts whenever the bigmouth T’ folks come on. Hayes is an intellectual; he’s not Ed Schultz.