Excuse Me, Howard Fineman: I'm Bored!

It's just after 7 a.m. and no doubt HuffPost's Howard Fineman is really glad he woke up at the ass crack of dawn to appear on MSNBC's "Morning Joe" from Washington only to be told that he's boring the host, Mika Brzezinksi. "Well Mika, I agree with you and even though the administration might want to cite civil service rules as it relates to some of those people. I mean, last night they fired the one guy they could fire -- Steve Miller, who is a political appointee -- so they could just summarily fire him. There are rules down there in the thick of the bureaucracy, but if I were the President, I would I would I would [sic] ignore them and try to move quickly, very quickly, to that source. To answer your earlier question about whether we're going to look back on this as a fool's errand or something that changes the nature of the historical view and accomplishments of the Obama administration, I think unfortunately for the Obama people we're now in the situation where the situation is what did they know and when did they know it?" Mika interrupting Fineman, saying, "But see, I just got bored. I just got bored. I'm just, I'm telling you." How does a guest recover from that? In Fineman's case, he continues being toothpick prop your eyes up boring. "Okay," he continued, a little flustered, "but, but if it's true as it said that both the IRS story and actions and the AP story and actions were down there in the bureaucracy and had absolutely nothing to do with and were not known by or managed by or shaped by the White House staff and the President ... if that, in fact, is true,then this is going, in history, is going to seem like a wasted summer and a wasted year." Mika proceeded to awkwardly explain her boredom. Translation: It's not you Howard Fineman, it's me. "The reason why I said I got bored is because going deep into the weeds, this is fine, this needs to be cut out like a tumor what has happened at IRS," she explained. "This presidency, if it's been about anything, it's about President Obama making moral decisions, and taking his time to do the right thing. ... He's seen as someone who is above all this vitriol and all this ridiculous media talk about ideology that goes beyond the pale." A short time later, Donny Deutsch brought Fineman back in, saying that this all could actually goad the Republicans into showing how tone deaf they are. And like a bumble bee who has been slapped down, he snapped back and stung her. "Ahh let's see, I'm limited to yes or no?" Fineman asked to snickers around the table. "Yes, I agree with you ... at the risk of boring Mika again," he said to uncomfortable laughter as she chimed in with an apology laced with slight attitude: "I'm sorry." As if to say, 'I'm sorry, but it's boring." Fineman barreled on. "Let me say that yes, unless it's tied to the President, it goes away, but the problem that Mika raises about the paralysis of government is very real," he said. "The Republicans have not wanted to cooperate with the President. ... Their basic strategy from the beginning has been to slow walk or stall everything. Now they have the perfect ideological narrative that feeds right into their anti-govt sentiments, their fear of Obama as some kind of all controlling force .... this will give them the excuse to do nothing for the rest of the term." Yawn. Big stretch. Is it time to wake up yet?

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Excuse Me, Howard Fineman: I'm Bored!

Betsy Rothstein

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Betsy Rothstein