Gwen Ifill! And Friends
What a stupid twit. I just tortured myself watching Washington Week, for some reason. Keep thinking I might learn something.
That Richard Berke (of nyt) was infuriating enough, trying to build this bogus case for what a nightmare travel was going to be this summer, what with Amtrak troubles, airlines facing bankruptcy, and if everyone switches to cars, what will become of the turnpikes! Thanks go out to Jeffrey Birnbaum of Fortune, so ever so delicately pointing out that none of the airlines were actually being grounded.
Berke just brushed reality aside, though, and continued on about the horrors of American cutting out hot food! (This, leading to gridlock on the turnpikes?) "They’re way cutting down on service!" he squealed--and it really was a high-pitched squeal--in his mellifluous George W. facility with the language. He bolstered his case further with data about job cuts, which are highly relevant an economic discussion, but mere smoke here. (And of course, the core of his Amtrak argument was also economic.) So it all boiled down to some problems with Amtrak trains on the east coast. The lynch-pin of the American transportation system.
Typical of the way a dishonest goofball can assemble a bunch of disparate factoids related to the travel industry, and fabricate a sky-is-falling discussion out of thin air. This guy works for the nyt?
But getting back to Gwen. Because the show has to end with one of Gwen’s mini cutesyisms, that make me want to plow my foot through the set. Oh, there’s nothing in the world quite like Gwen. Except, perhaps Jane Pauley or Stone Phillips, or Diane Sawyer. But what the hell is this little chirper doing on public television?
12:44:37 PM 
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