The Worst Show on Television

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11:08 p.m. CNN calls control of the House for the Democrats. Cheering and orgiastic glee in Washington; correspondent Dana Bash, at Dem HQ in Washington, looks like she's having a flashback to some long-gone Girls Gone Wild: Sarah Lawrence Nights days.

Wolf Blitzer, Dana Bash... where do these CNN newspeople get their names? I keep waiting for the next standup: From the Pentagon, this is Cunt Millstone reporting...

Meanwhile, Jeff Greenfield on the Democratic talking points (change, new direction, Baker-Hamilton): "They look to be very focus-group-tested for maximum appeal." He says this approvingly. An ancient fantasy rises from my subconscious: I start looking for the "Instant Leatherface" button on the TV remote that will trigger the entrance onto the CNN news set of a crazed chainsaw-wielding figure...Would pay any amount of money to see Greenfield drop his earpiece and run off the set away from a screaming Leatherface, loafers sliding on the studio floor as he races away in panic. No luck, though.

A friend of mine a few weeks ago wrote me a letter suggesting that reporters come up with a list of press behaviors worth banning before the 2008 elections. One good one, I think, would be commending candidates for successfully manipulating voters and the media with crude fakery and bullshit. In other words, anytime a panel expert like Greenfield says something like "McCain's handlers have clearly done a great job at getting their man to sound more genuine in rural areas," he should have to do thirty hours of community service, ladeling out soup somewhere to paraplegics or something. "They look to be focus-group-tested for maximum appeal" seems worth a double sentence. Anyway, anyone who has ideas for other press traits worth canning, please drop me a note -- maybe some of us reporters can draw up a voluntary treaty to sign.

Just before midnight Candy Crowley weighs...well, let's not ever use the phrase Candy Crowley weighs in, if we can avoid it. Let's say Crowley chimes in on the "new direction" issue:

"You still have a government that is divided," she says. "So I think if people think that they voted for change and suddenly there's going to be this new direction will be disappointed come January."

11:58 p.m. Rahm Emmanuel, who has seemingly been on six channels simultaneously since about 8:30 p.m. (an impressive magic trick: Is he trying out for Criss Angel's Congressional Mindfreak?), is back on CNN. I've stopped filling in some of the specific nouns in my notes, leaving only the essential gist, but it turns out you don't lose much in translation. "The old era of something is over," says Rahm, "and the new era of something else has just begun!"

12:09 a.m. Exit Rahm Emmanuel, enter Harry Reid, who says: "All across America, from the deserts of somewhere to the streets of somewhere else, there is in the air the winds of change!" Roars, cheers from the crowd. "We're headed in a new direction!"

12:16 a.m. Nancy Pelosi on CNN: "Never have we made it more clear that we need a new direction...Mr. President, we need a new direction!"

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