Category Archives: Media Criticism

Nominating Hagel

Whose terrible idea was it, anyway? Jonathan Chait is starting the circular firing squad. I have to agree with this:

As it turned out, the Hagel nomination has been a fiasco. (Clemons’s chins-up take that Hagel “met expectations” is the most optimism any Hagel backers can muster.)

He certainly met my expectations. I fully expected him to be the hapless fool and tool he always is. And I love this understatement: “Hagel himself does not appear to be especially brilliant.”

You don’t say.

[Update a few minutes later]

Obama advisor: Hagel’s conduct was “somewhere between baffling and incomprehensible.”

It’s only baffling to people so stupid that they thought he was smart.