Friday Night Lights

I've often thought this but never been able to articulate it quite as simply as Atrios does here:

Watching the bobblehead coverage of the Alito hearings - and, frankly, just about everything else they cover - one comes away think that to them it just doesn't really matter. Court decisions don't matter. Policy doesn't matter. None of this stuff matters. It's just a game played between rival high school football teams and they're just happy to go to the homecoming dance.

This has always bothered me, but up until this morning, it seems the only place the idea ever got any play was on The Daily Show. It's never about anything to the blow dry set except who's ahead in the Beltway Shootout. They are so insulated from the people who's lives can be upended by their talking points that they don't bother even glancing at the real impact of the things they are yammering about.

There's nothing substantive to their back and forths and their commentary. If pressed, I suspect better than half of them don't even understand what the real issues, and the consequences, are.

Frustrating, indeed.