The Bobblespeak Translations

One of the most powerful generators of Beltway conventional wisdom are what Duncan Black calls the Sunday Bobblehead shows: Meet the Press, This Week, and Face the Nation. However, watching the three shows involves the surrender of two and a half hours of your life that, as the saying goes, you'll never get back.

The solution has been presented to us by a blogger known only as Culture of Truth, who has mastered the art of reducing an hour of brain-pummelingly bad punditry into several hundred words of masterly snark, posted on his blog The Bobblespeak Translations. A sample from the August 23, 2009 edition of Meet the Press, in which host David Gregory interviews Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral Michael Mullen (aka General Mullen):

Gregory: General I love your epaulets

Mullen: thanks Greggy

Gregory: have the American people lost the stomach to conquer Afghanistan?

Mullen: maybe but lets not forget the guys in the caves still want to kill lots of Americans

Gregory: do we need more troops to defeat these crafty Afghans?

Mullen: could be

Gregory: but President McCain says we do

Mullen: actually Obama won the election

Gregory: what?!? [ starts sobbing ]

So, if you want to keep up with the conventional wisdom and preserve your precious brain cells at the same time, go look up The Bobblespeak Translations.