Britney Spears, William Blake, and Voting With My Dog

The nonsensical election coverage of the cable news networks.

By Troy Patterson
Posted Tuesday, Nov. 7, 2006, at 11:15 PM ET

Tuesday, Nov. 7, 2006

"I feel like Tucker's gained a few pounds." This was my fiancée—generally a perceptive lass—cocking an eyebrow at our TV around 1:25 p.m. ET. Tucker Carlson's smirk was firmly in place behind the anchor desk on MSNBC. He was interviewing Sen. Rick Santorum, R-Pa., who, despite being a self-described "Italian kid from a steel town" and all, might have put on a necktie for the occasion. Carlson—nicely despicable as a pundit, hopelessly afloat as an anchorman—asked Santorum the same question that Fox News' Martha MacCallum had put to him 10 minutes earlier: Why, unlike so many of his fellow Republicans, had he not tried to distance himself from President Bush? Santorum answered. Meanwhile, the graphic at the bottom of the screen read, "Santorum tried distancing himself from Pres. Bush." The control room did not quite seem to be in touch with the control room, and that's what it was like in the afternoon and early evening: Much heat, much noise, no light, no action.