Good morning, animals! It’s so great to be back with you this weekend, thanks to the kind offices of Brother Kilgore.
In case you haven’t noticed, we’ve been having, here in your nation’s capital, what is known as a “slow news week,” something reporters are wont to whine about. What this actually means is that there has been none of the kind of news that gets journos’ adrenaline pumping. There has, however been plenty of the kind of news that matters to actual humans.
Women, for instance, might be interested to know that yet another woman, Labor Secretary Hilda Solis, submitted her resignation just as President Obama’s cabinet is looking ever more pale and male.
And it’s not like the appointment of a new Treasury secretary is terribly important in the midst of a recession as great as this one is said to be. Alas, Obama did not take the recommendation of Political Animal’s Kathleen Geier to nominate Sheila Bair, the former head of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation. Instead, he nominated his chief of staff, Jack Lew, which Paul Krugman says might be okay.
Then there was that little kerfuffle about the president having invited an anti-gay preacher to deliver the benediction at his second inauguration. Ho hum.
Not even the subsequent right-wing freak-out over the pastor’s removal from the program, once ThinkProgress outed his queer-baiting quotes, could summon a rise out of the commentariat.
The Drudge report compared Obama to Hitler and Stalin after Vice President Joe Biden had a litte tete-a-tete with leaders of the National Rifle Association. Yawn.
And the leader of the nation in which the U.S. is mired in quag received assurances of a fast-tracking of a promised troop draw-down, even as sectarian terrorism took the lives of 86 people in synchronized attacks in Pakistan. Now where was I?
You see, what Washington reporters mean when they say it’s been a slow news week is that no one who’s career they covered has been fired or caught in a sex scandal. There’s been no big massacre of innocents on U.S. soil, and no one beloved by the press corps has passed away.
And all those stories I’ve listed above? Bo-ring.
Be back once I’ve gotten my coffee.
