Talk/Talk: I Like the Mashed Potatoes

Sunday, June 29, 2008




Below are excerpts from this week's Talk Talk, I Like the Mashed Potatoes. Every Sunday CUIP's president Jacqueline Salit and strategist and philosopher Fred Newman watch the political talk shows and discuss them. Here are excerpts from their dialogue on Sunday, June 29, 2008 after watching "The Chris Matthews Show" and "This Week with George Stephanopoulos".

Salit: Going back to the Left. The Nation has to sell magazines and The Huffington Post has to keep people coming to its website and Nader has to run because he thinks he's the only pure person in America. There's a certain notion of purity operative here, that there are certain hard and fast definitions of what it means to be progressive and if you don't stick by those things no matter what, then that says something about your integrity.

Newman: That sounds like a comic book version of American politics. Nobody really believes that. Nobody really acts that way. It's funny. The critics say, often with a lot of attitude, 'You know how the game is played. Everyone just puts out what's most expedient.' And then these same critics say, 'A terrible thing happened. Obama put out something that was expedient.' Well, wait a second. There's a disconnect there. If you acknowledge that's what people do in these situations, then all you're pointing to is people doing it in these situations.

Read Talk Talk in its entirety here.