Every Monday morning, C&L's own Nicole Belle joins me on my Radio or Not show for a segment we call "Fools on the Hill". We watch the Sunday shows so you don't have to, and we two Nicoles bring you the best of the best (or as is often the case, the worst of the worst).
Today, Nicole Belle brings us this:
There’s a famous phenomena in psychology known as “Flashed Face Distortion”. When a pair of perfectly attractive faces are flashed in front of a viewer, aligned at the eye level, all their dissimilarities are heightened and distorted to the point of being perceived as grotesque.
There’s a similar parallel in politics. When liberal ideas are merely flashed out to audiences, they appear distorted and unnatural, because we never get a good look at them. I blame the media in this, because for all their talk of “both sides doing it,” they rarely give us any more than a cursory glance at liberal ideas, thus distorting them completely to their viewers. I’m convinced that if most Americans got to take a nice long look at them, they wouldn’t find them grotesque at all.
But there is no shortage of conservative ideas given full coverage on the Sunday shows. Would that they appear as distorted as the short shrift they give liberal ideas.
Speaking of liberal ideas, Paul Krugman was on Up with Chris Hayes, which is enough for a liberal fangirl to start squealing in delight. But as if to reiterate the point I made above, Krugman reminds Hayes that nothing that he advocates is that radical. It is literally Macroeconomics 101. But they are completely alien concepts to the insulated Beltway Bubble.
On the other end of the spectrum, Eric Cantor tells David Gregory that he doesn’t know what the DREAM Act is any more, but he thinks we need to work on a pathway to citizenship for children. Psst….Cantor, that is *exactly* what the DREAM Act addresses.
To hear Republicans talk about immigration at all is an exercise of “Who do you want to believe? Me or your lying eyes?” Case in point: John “Build the dang wall” McCain challenging Republicans to not block giving undocumented workers a pathway to citizenship: “What do you want to do with them?”
McCain’s BFF Lindsey Graham never misses an opportunity (or a Sunday, come to that) to play partisan politics and criticize the president. Ignoring completely the infamous 7 minutes that George W. Bush read “My Pet Goat” while the worst terrorist act on our shores occurred, Graham accuses President Obama of being “disengaged” on the anniversary of 9/11 and therefore, personally responsible for the deaths in Benghazi.
And finally, the Rand family is feeling quite testy of late. While Daddy Ron is now appealing to the UN (which he doesn’t believe in) to help him take away the RonPaul.com domain name from his supporters, baby Rand is feeling that Ashley Judd hasn’t got the gravitas of a self-certified ophthalmologist to run for the Senate for the state of Kentucky.
The Nicole Sandler Show airs live Monday through Thursday mornings from 10-noon ET and is always available for listening via podcast at RadioOrNot.com. Nicole Belle joins in for Fools on the Hill every Monday morning at around 11:20 ET.
