I blame Golf Digest

Frank Rich gets paid to write one weekly column. One. And the best he could do (I no more link to him than I do to his fellow Heather, Mo. Dowd) was rehash a gossip story that's nearly a month old. And, of course, ties it back to the notion he's been waiting since 2000 to visit, that a Democratic candidate for president was some kind of offensive poseur.

Well, I'll let Mr. D.H. Riley explain it more colorfully then I ever could.

Now look: I'm no historian, but I'm pretty sure that by most reckonings The Naughts were more than a year-and-a-half old when 9/11 Changed Everything, and that much of that time had been given over to a Presidential campaign which was decided on the pressing issues of Al Gore's make-up, Al Gore's sighing, Al Gore's choice of suits, and Al Gore's outlandish claims that he 1) invented the Internet; 2) personally cleaned up Love Canal; 3) wrote, directed, and starred in that Love Story piece of shit, which was based on his cleaning up Love Canal while in college; and 4) did not enlist in the Army, and go to Vietnam, just to show George W. Bush up. And even though there is as yet no historical consensus on whether these matters were Total Fucking Bullshit or simply So Mother-Fucking Trivial as to Bugger Belief, there is no question that among their most ardent champions was one Frank Rich, Times Opinionator.

So do go on, Frank, with that "the television press has rarely owned up to its failure" routine. I can't tell you how fascinating I find that observation, coming as it does in the middle of a piece which ignores your own responsibility for setting this piece of shit decade in motion.

Because, fuck, Frank, teevee news is nothing more than a less-popular version of So You Think You Can Sing Like a Fifth-Grader? It may not have apologized for wrapping Bush's Iraq Adventurism in Old Glory, but then the worst War Whoredoggery on FOX can't have measured one-third the way up Judith Miller's contribution. Print media has a helluva lot to apologize for, Frank. And furthermore, I don't recall authorizing anybody to accept those apologies in my name. And, what's more, I don't.

Look, I'm sorry Frank Rich had a man-crush on Tiger Woods and is hurt that he's done something that no one other than his wife and, perhaps, his sponsors, should really give a rat's ass about. Similarly, I'm sorry that, oh, I don't know, a stimulus package or a health care reform bill that required the assent of 60 senators all of whom with their own agendas and political calculations, somehow is evidence that all the Hopey and Changeyness was an Obaman ruse to separate the rubes from their moneys. Scrawls Rich, suddenly turning the page from Bonds and Woods to Obama:

This can be seen in the increasingly urgent political plight of Barack Obama. Though the American left and right don’t agree on much, they are both now coalescing around the suspicion that Obama’s brilliant presidential campaign was as hollow as Tiger’s public image — a marketing scam designed to camouflage either his covert anti-American radicalism (as the right sees it) or spineless timidity (as the left sees it). The truth may well be neither, but after a decade of being spun silly, Americans can’t be blamed for being cynical about any leader trying to sell anything. As we say goodbye to the year of Tiger Woods, it is the country, sad to say, that is left mired in a sand trap with no obvious way out.

By the way, a stimulus package that saved the U.S. economy from plunging still deeper and a health care bill that's the biggest piece of quality of life legislation since the 19 fucking 60s.

Is Rich not paid to read the news and analysis on which he prattles on and on, covering the most important real estate in opinion journalism each week? No, apparently not, because despite all available evidence to the contrary, he's convinced that Obama done him wrong and campaigned as something he is not. Like Al Gore's brown suit, that's a much easier and more compelling factoid than actually going back to see if Obama's campaign rhetoric over-promised or not. Easier still than attempting to inform and educate his readers.

Frank Rich is a lazy hack. Like his colleague Gail Collins who feels put out at having to learn the names of a few senators, the hard work of legislating (or golfing for that matter), bores him. All that's left is how shiny the surface can be kept polished.

Somewhere in journalism hell, whatever Sulzberger that decided a theater critic would make a superb liberal political columnist, is slowly being turned on a spit.