Programming Note

Note: I haven't the slightest idea why Olbermann has Howard Fineman on. This is different from asking why Tweety has him on, or why he's considered a pundit, or what his job description is, or why anyone would listen to him. I'm long resigned to living in a world where somebody with enough money to make it happen wants Howard the Suck to impersonate a journalist, and I know will never be able to figure out why. If you were choosing up sides Howard Fineman is the last person anyone would pick. For anything.

But why the hell does he turn up on Olbermann, which if nothing else at least is not Hardball. Is it to make the interminable WaPo contingent seem witty, or informed, or vaguely interesting? Mission Unaccomplished.

Monday night Fineman was in full Bush Ass Covering mode, and it was not at all a pretty sight. Catching Keith's toss of the Bush fish story, Fineman did a rendition of "Melancholy Baby" worthy of its reputation as the Drunk's Lament:

He [Bush] told me once in the middle of the 2000 campaign when things were going badly, he said, y'know, if this doesn't work out I'd be just as happy sitting on my lake in a fishing boat fishing.

And for a guy who was out at Stanford not too long ago talking about setting up his post-Presidential think tank, I think in some ways when you got a 31% approval rating and things aren't going too well you start thinking about what you're going to be doing after you're President, and I think that's sort what he was doing.

Well, what I'd like to see him do after he's President is time, but I'm really glad Howie got to share that personal moment with all of us. We can't bring ourselves to say the guy's an idiot, we can't summon up the balls to say that this is self-inflicted and that no President has ever deserved low poll numbers like George W. Bush. Things haven't been going well for him, and doggone it, George could probably use some cheering up right about now. Never mind the sort of shit that rained down on the rest of us when he was on top. Things haven't been going well.

Maybe you could come up with a new nickname for him, Howard. That sort of thing always used to give you boys a couple of them leg-humpin' doggie boners.