This diary at Daily Kos highlights a Broder answer in his chat today that exemplifies what shallow unthinking empty vessel he is:

Chaska, Minn.: As a political pundit how do you calibrate your perceptions on mainstream America? The reason I ask this is based on your recent columns. My guess is your views (as a lot of the Beltway punditry) is very skewed. Poll after poll validates that American values align with progressive positions on such issues as the Iraq war, abortion, Social Security and even health care. . . . So why keep insisting on bipartisan compromises when those views don't reflect the wishes of a large majority of Americans? . . .

BRODER: . . . This first letter from Minnesota challenges the conventional wisdom by asserting that the country overwhelmingly supports the liberal agenda, both at home and abroad. I have to disagree. I think the country is closely balanced, with a controlling group in the center that rejects extreme positions and seeks practical solutions drawn from the agendas of both liberals and conservatives. Most Americans I meet are not ideologues of any sort; they are practical people seeking practical solutions to real challenges.

Broder seems so incapable of thinking that he can only argue by label. To wit, the Democrats hold one extreme position and the Republicans another. Of course the question challenged that very assumption and instead of addressing the point, Broder is only capable of falling back into his shallow mindset.

Not pretty:

Like any close reader of The Wall Street Journal, Rupert Murdoch has his opinions.

“I’m sometimes frustrated by the long stories,” he said, adding that he rarely gets around to finishing some articles.

The editorial pages? He likes them but would like to see more political coverage in the news pages. “I might put more emphasis on Washington,” he said.

Oy. And Murdoch seems intent on getting it:

This is a tour de force evisceraton of Politico by Glenn Greenwald, exposing lies, conceit, stupidity, hypocrisy and incompetence, all in one column. Read the whole thing. But, I want to take the main Politico players Glenn skins:

(1) (non-Pajama) Roger Simon - Glenn proves him untruthful, hypocritical, and rather stupid. Here's how - Simon wrote about John Edwards' haircut. Now we all expect that from people like Roger Simon because he is shallow fool. But Riger Simon has gotten wind that we think of him as a shallow fool and thus wanted to provide a justification for his vapidity. And thus he describes why he is wrting about Edwards' haircut again:

This is bad: When you go to Google and enter "Edwards haircut," the first item that comes up is a story by Bill Wundram in The Quad-City Times of Davenport, Iowa. . . . The article got 324 comments from readers. When people inside the Beltway are talking about your haircut, it doesn't matter much. When people in Iowa are talking about your haircut, you may have a problem.

Simon's first mistake was to think that Glenn Greenwald did not know that he lifted the item from Matt Drudge, not that he actually did a Google search, and that since Drudge linked to the Iowa newspaper story, that explains the 324 comments. So, Simon is demonstrated to be not truthful about (1) why he is writing the story, the Iowa newspaper piece had nothing to do with it, and (2)the enormous amounts of comments the piece got - both because Drudge linked to the Iowa article.

So what do we know now about Roger Simon in addition to the fact that he seems vapid and foolish (which we knew already)? That he does not tell the truth either.

So I'm reading the new biography of Iggy Pop (Iggy and the Stooges) because I knew him a little back in Ann Arbor when I went to college and worked at the Discount Records where all the cool rockers stopped by on a regular basis (Iggy, Alice Cooper, the MC5, Commander Cody, Bob Seger and so on) and because drugs were so much a part of life back then (no surprise I later became a drug defense lawyer) as were protests against the Administration and the Vietnam War, and I spotted this passage, which was news to me.

A few days later, on Memorial Day weekend, Dave, Scott and Steve flew back to Detroit. Jim (Iggy) and Ron followed a few days later. When Jim returned, he looked healthier than anyone could remember, tanned and relaxed.

But according to several denizens of the Fun House, when Jim hit Ann Arbor, so had cocaine, almost as if it was planned. (In some respects it was; Nixon's Operation Intercept, launched in late September of 1969 to cut down the supply of marijuana, had inspired Michigan grass-smokers to seek out alternatives: at first, opiated hash from Canada, then cocaine and finally heroin.)

More....

Usually when I write about tv shows, they have something to do with crime, like the Sopranos or 24.

I have no excuse for writing about tonight's American Idol, which will feature Bon Jovi's music and Bon Jovi, except as I've mentioned a few times on TalkLeft, I really love looking at him.

Here's my you tube video of him that has gotten more than 12,000 views -- I grabbed it off of Larry King Live.

Ann Althouse blogged about Bon Jovi and last night's American Idol, so if you watch the show and have some thoughts, you can join in.

Update below:

Don Imus isn't slinking off into obscurity as many hoped. Nor does it seem he has a new gig yet.

Instead, he's hired First Amendment Lawyer Martin Garbus to sue for him.

I'd rather watch Garbus on TV defending him than Imus pal Bo Dietl, but my main feeling is Imus is so last week.

Grounds for the suit seem to be contract provisions...although one would think CBS poured over them before taking decisive action.

Prediction: This will never see a trial. There will be a settlement.

Don't believe me? Well, allow me to retort. On January 31 I wrote:

Iraq CAN be the key to a lasting realignment in favor of the Democrats. . . . we can stride with great confidence into 2008 knowing that we may achieve the permanent political realignment we all dream of - Obama, Edwards or even Hillary, can then be our FDR.

Via Drum, Sunday, George Will said:

George, it took 30, 40 years for the Republican Party to get out from under Herbert Hoover. People would say, "Are you going to vote for Nixon in '60?" "No, I don't like Hoover." The Depression haunted the Republican Party. This could be a foreign policy equivalent of the Depression . . .

Just sayin' Of course Dems are currently in the process of kicking the issue away.

In a good Media excoriation piece, Eric Boehlert features Brian Williams, he of the perfect hair, discussing his hair cuts and how much he pays for them:

NBC anchor Brian Williams appeared as a guest on David Letterman's show last week where discussion soon turned to Edwards' haircut. Asked what was the most he'd ever paid for a trim, Williams responded, "probably $12."

Really? I have to pay $16, plus tip, for a trim at a little barbershop on Valley Avenue in the New Jersey 'burbs. But Williams, who lives in a restored farmhouse in Connecticut where he parks his 477-horsepower black Porsche GT2 (that is, when he's not decamping on the Upper East Side), gets his haircut for just $12. And remember, that's probably the most he's ever paid.

Williams enjoys a $10 million salary. He's a celebrity journalist and recent Men's Vogue cover boy, who, up until just a few years ago, was probably known as much for his perfectly coiffed locks as he was his reporting skills. Yet, eager to project himself as one of the guys, Williams insists his trims cost chump change.

This is scary:

The News Corporation, owner of Fox News and The New York Post, has made an unsolicited $5 billion bid for Dow Jones, publisher of The Wall Street Journal. . . . The acquisition of Dow Jones would broaden the reach of News Corp, owned by Rupert Murdoch, into business reporting and American media in general.

In running The Times (UK), Murdoch's record has received mixed reviews. But Murdoch in England is not Murdoch in the US, where his media properties are nothing but GOP propaganda vehicles. If Murdoch acquires the Wall Street Journal, will we lose the Wall Street Journal news operation, one of the best in the business (as opposed to the editorial pages which Murdoch could not be happier with one imagines) to Fox like bias?

File this under Dog Bites Man. Via Atrios, NYTimes reports that Citizen Stengel has hired a Wannabee Hugh Hewitt's BFF:

Mark Halperin, who stepped down last month as the political director of ABC News, is moving to Time magazine. Mr. Halperin, a pioneer of online reporting who founded ABCnews.com’s political memo, The Note, will join Time as an editor-at-large and senior political analyst effective next Monday, the magazine said.

At Time, Mr. Halperin will report to Richard Stengel and Josh Tyrangiel, the managing editors, respectively, of Time magazine and the Time.com Web site. Mr. Stengel said that he started talking to Mr. Halperin, a longtime acquaintance, after the ABC announcement last month, with an eye to preparing for Time’s coverage of the 2008 elections.

. . . “Everybody wants to be ahead of the curve in this area, and Mark is the curve,” he said.

He is the Concern Troll Curve. You think Time will call Halperin's blog, "Why Karl Rove Is The Greatest" or "Matt Drudge Sez?" O'Reilly will no doubt be a fan.

In the much, and rightly, acclaimed Bill Moyers program on the Media and Iraq, while Moyers hit all the high notes, I think folks have failed to emphasize a critically important part of the story. Some are missing the fact that the Media stopped doing fact gathering long before the post 9/11 period. In fact, as Tom Shales reports, Moyers shows us then CNN head Walter Isaacson saying just that but seems not pursue the matter:

Former CNN president Walter Isaacson tells Moyers: "One of the great pressures we're facing in journalism now is, it's a lot cheaper to hire thumb-suckers and pundits and have talk shows on the air than actually have bureaus and reporters."

But Isaacson understates the case. His reporters, as do almost all reporters, print or electronic, simply do he said/she said journalism. How many times do you hear "the Republicans say, but the Democrats say" without even a nod at considering what the ACTUAL FACTS are? Every single day in virtually every report. and this was hardly a phenomenon developed in the post-9/11 era. As I have written, it is something that became the norm in the 1990s:

This post by Paul Begala on David Broder is good and important:

Broder, of course, is a gasbag. The Hindenburg of pundits.

. . . Mr. Broder has been foaming at the mouth these days. A man generally given to soporific prose, Broder has been downright venomous lately. And what has put the Benzedrine in Mr. Broder's Ovaltine? Not the fact that President Bush continues to lie about "progress" in the war in Iraq. Or that Dick Cheney continues to lie about pre-invasion links between al Qaeda and Iraq. Or that the Bush Administration has neglected our wounded warriors, ignored the victims of Katrina, potentially obstructed justice by firing US Attorneys who were pursuing GOP wrongdoing. Not even that the Bush Administration lied to the families of Pat Tillman and Jessica Lynch, cynically using their blood to distract from their own incompetence and dishonesty.