Reading Bob Somerby's critique of Dana Milbank's column this morning, I was really struck by these two paragraphs in Milbank's piece:
Next up in Obama's insomnia treatment was an acceptance speech by the previously unknown nominee [Arne Duncan], followed by the president-elect's own blend of convoluted and passive answers to questions: "We're going to have to work through a lot of these difficulties, these structural difficulties that built up over many decades, some of it having to do with the financial industry and the huge amounts of leverage, the huge amounts of debt that were taken on, the speculation and the risk that was occurring, the lack of financial regulation, some of it having to do with our housing market, stabilizing that."
The whole thing might have ended in snores if McCormick hadn't piped up about Blagojevich. After upbraiding the reporter for his first two attempts at a question, Obama dispatched McCormick's third try -- whether there should be a special election to fill Obama's Senate seat -- with a no-comment. "I'm going to let the state legislature make a determination," he said.
The entire column is about how boring Obama's press conference was. I understand that Milbank's job is to write a funny, newsy column, but if you're totally uninterested in the details of governing, you find education policy so terribly boring that you don't even feel obligated to know anything about the "previously unknown" person you're covering who was head of the school system in one of the biggest cities in the country, why don't you just find another job and end your suffering? I mean I just don't get it.
-- A. Serwer
