The CNN Panels

Jon Lovett talked about the typical CNN news panel (on CNN!), and I did not take notes. This is my faulty memory of what he said.

The usual CNN panel of talking news-heads consists of seven people. The first member is a smart but dowdy old journalist, a woman with sharp insights into which party has scored a small point. She will never say anything profound, but she might say something interesting. Sitting next to her is a moron. The third member is a venal party hack who has never uttered an honest word in his life or felt a genuine emotion, other than avarice.  The fourth is the moderator, a conventionally handsome man or pretty woman who is adept at contradiction. If someone on the panel says, "I am a Republican," the host or hostess will jump in with, "Are you really? Not according to a majority of real Republicans.You've seen the polls." (This is proof of aggressive journalist integrity.)

The fifth member of the panel is a drooling idiot in a bib. The sixth is some old guy who was a liberal congressman during the Presidency of Jimmy Carter, and the last member is a retired  Bloomberg writer, slumped in her chair, dead.