Here I am, still struggling to know how to deal with a government that lies as casually as this one, and now I have to deal with the media as an adversary, too.

i watched Chuck Todd on Meet the Press.  So you don’t have to.  I wanted to follow that with, “You can thank me later,” but honestly?  Y’all still owe me for that one.  Excruciating!

The lowlight was Chuck’s interview with Vice President Mike Pence.  Chuck was clearly suffering from a cold, so maybe I can blame his drugs.  He was mostly sitting back.  When he asked any question, Pence instantly dropped into campaign nonsense like it was his first language.  You know how silly that gets.

Sorry for the example, but here’s the very first question and Pence’s instant waffle:

CHUCK TODD:
The president made that remark that this was more work than in his previous life and he thought it would be easier. What has the president found harder than he expected so far?

Yes, Trump’s ineptitude was highlighted when he blurted that out.  Chuck’s question was as obvious as it was impossible to answer.  I don’t blame Pence for dodging a long discussion about how Trump hadn’t really admitted he’d been unprepared.

Remember: he works for Donald Trump, a man so inadequate he can’t get through a paragraph without claiming a superlative.

I’m mildly pissed that Pence thinks we’re that stupid, but I’m really torqued at Todd, who let him drivel on that way for far, far too long

VICE PRESIDENT MIKE PENCE:
Well, I don’t know that he’s found it harder, I think he has found the range of issues as president of the United States at home and abroad, given path of the last administration, to be particularly challenging. In so many ways as the president has said the world is a mess. He spent an awful lot of time in the first 100 days re-engaging the world. He sent many of us around the globe to re-engage with our allies and strengthen America’s ties around the world. We’re rebuilding our military, we’re rethinking trade agreements that have been costing American jobs.

I’m stopping for breath, but Pence didn’t.  Even though he’s clearly off the rails, Todd just sits there, nodding and smiling.  So Pence kicks it up into third gear:

And then here at home, the president has rolled his sleeves up. Literally, not just 100 days, Chuck, but since the day after the election the president has been out there fighting for American jobs. In 2017 alone more than 500,000 jobs have been created. You see optimism among job creators in America, enthusiasm among consumers across the country. It’s just I think we went through a difficult time the last eight years but America’s back under President Donald Trump.

“World is a mess” I might give him, although only to be polite.  “Re-engage with our allies and strengthen America’s ties around the world,”?  The guy who’s been threatening our allies and starting trade wars? “We’re rebuilding our military…”  Trump hasn’t donated time, or money, or attention, or….  “And then here at home, the president has rolled his sleeves up.  Literally….”  I’m pretty sure that’s not literally true.

This took as long on TV as it looks on the page here, but Todd still didn’t interrupt.  With nothing in his way, Pence shrugged and accelerated:

…Since the day after the election the president has been out there fighting for American jobs. In 2017 alone more than 500,000 jobs have been created.

Pence is claiming that he personally caused those half-million new hires?  It’s the result of Trump’s… um… what has he done for jobs?  Maybe I missed it.  Remember that business hiring is really slow, so most of the half million positions were started when Obama was still President.  Maybe Trump thinks businesses hired tons of people because they knew Trump was taking power soon?  Has to be the massive force of the Trump personality.

It’s just I think we went through a difficult time the last eight years but America’s back under President Donald Trump.

Everyone was so tired from all that hiring?

And with that last impossible claim, Pence demonstrated why his day job is Trump’s fluffer.  He smiled contentedly, and Todd looked back, seriously, fiddling with his reading glasses.

And Todd moves on to his softball question.  Later, Todd characterized a similar stream of hogwash as ‘atmospherics’.  Apparently, that make it’s all right for his guests to spout endless lies.  Maybe because none of the ‘real people’ take it seriously?  Did Todd think he was giving Pence enough rope to hang himself?  That’s not where the loop went.

It’s easy.  When Todd let Pence spool out obvious nonsense, that leaves the impression that it wasn’t what it sounded like.  Either Pence is somehow making sense, or maybe he just shouldn’t (can’t?) be challenged.

So I’m wondering how this works.  From the natural way this floor show rolled out, nobody was surprised, I’m guessing that this is just the tail-end of an existing agreement.

Yes, I’m sure that if I asked, both NBC and Mister Chuck might swoon, deeply and tragically offended at any suggestion they’d traded their integrity for conditions and restrictions on what they’d ask.  They’d huff about how there are never preconditions to any interviews.

I’m also just as sure that powerful people like the Vice President don’t come to your show without at least in implicit quid pro quo.  Something like: “I’ll show up on your set and let you ask me questions.  In return, you don’t make me look too bad, and if I’m especially important, I get to run off at the mouth and you don’t treat me like a common pol.”  With an implicit ‘or else’.

Imagine that Todd had interrupted Pence at, say, the fifth whopper, then at each third lie after that?  Things might have been different.  First and most important, the people watching wouldn’t have assumed that Pence’s derp was unassailable.  Second, we might have accidentally learned something.

But there would have been a price.  I doubt Pence would have stalked off the set the way Trump did in his Face the Nation fiasco; Pence isn’t as miserably unfit as his boss.  He’d probably be polite, misdirect like always, and keep moving.  He was a successful politician, after all.

And Pence would never come back to Meet the Press again. They hold that power.  Don’t forget, because they never do.

I don’t believe that apex entertainers like Chuck Todd have that many illusions about the deal they made.  Every year the big networks get free broadcast spectrum worth billions, an oligopoly so limited and so broadly received, it’s only open to the richest advertisers.

The networks were built under restrictions that have long disappeared, and only continue in their full power because of a complex web of dispensations and indulgences.  It’s an oddly delicate business model.

They made Todd one of their top guys, and in return, Todd lives or dies by his ratings.  It doesn’t matter whether he’s right or wrong, or whether he makes us smarter or dumber.  It only matters how many people watch him.

If Todd can’t get important guests, nobody will care about his show.  His horrifically for-profit NBC network will politely move Todd to some quiet midday block of MSNBC or CNBC or some other ‘basic cable’ weed-field, then get someone less… objectionable to host the next Meet the Press.

Sure, there’s nothing really new about the distortion of network ratings, but match that with rising Internet power, and now throw in an unscrupulous administration that’s nothing if not determined to jigger the entire system for their own benefit.  That’s the only thing that motivates them, and they’re really good at it.

So there’s poor Chuck, balancing how much honesty his guests will allow him.  I feel bad for him.

But I feel worse for us.  This inherently dishonest relationship is like any ‘free’ service.  Remember the GMail truism: if you aren’t the one paying the bills, then you aren’t the customer.

I’m just saying that we’re not about to get the full story here.  Worse, network news has become the defacto ‘official’ news source.  But it’s not full, or accurate, or even informative.  It’s just a truncated, corporate-approved version of entertainment designed to leave us with the illusion of knowledge.

It leaves me wondering why Trump’s appointees are working to crank down innovation and choice to something that’s close to the old broadcast networks of a few decades ago.  A few more consolidations, and no net neutrality, and your company only gets on the Internet through AT&T, Comcast, TWC, Verizon, or RCN.  Just like your customers.  My first assumption was that this was simple greed, driven by mega-corporation ‘donors’ buying the most compliant government they could afford.

But maybe this is a back-door attempt to throttle down those annoyingly uncontrolled secondary news sources that aren’t intimidated into self-censorship.  It might work.  Force them to use controlled Internet connections, make those sources responsible for content, and now every Internet company will have to kowtow to easily intimidated corporate overlords.  Then the government can control content the same way they use Visa and MasterCard to cut the money out from under disruptive social groups. (One letter from a Senator to Visa, and bang, your company is out of business; no oversight and no appeal.)

Funny.  The most reassuring thought in this mess is that I don’t believe Trump’s appointees are smart enough for that.  They’re venial and wildly self-serving, but Trump is only fully comfortable when he’s hiring people even further down the competence curve than he is.