Washington Sketch Live: Czar of snark Dana Milbank goes rogue

Post columnist Dana Milbank serves as the capital's foremost critic of political theater.

He was online Friday, Oct. 23 at Noon ET to take your questions and comments about the things politicians say -- and the absurd ways they find to say them.

A transcript follows.

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Dana Milbank: Good afternoon, dear reader.

First, this breaking news. Just in! Happening now! Congressman Joe Wilson's wife has H1N1. I do not lie! The CDC will undoubtedly be taking a very close look at this case because it was previously believed you could not contract the virus from close proximity to pigs.

It has been a colorful week in the capital, and therefore a happy one for the Sketch. The Yes Men made my Monday with their hoax in which they convinced much of the world that the Chamber of Commerce supported a carbon tax. The next day they rolled down the Capitol steps in inflatable Survivaballs. Harry Reid, meanwhile, has been losing control of his caucus, and Mitch McConnell has been losing control of his verbiage.

But I think this week really has belonged to Richard Nixon. Lamar Alexander started us off on Wednesday when he said Obama's "enemies list" reminds him of Nixon-- and Lamar should know, since he worked in the Nixon White House. Then yesterday, at the Czar hearing I covered, Sen. Bob Bennett protested that the Obama Czars are Nixonian -- and Bennett should know, because he worked in the Nixon administration.

So tell me what's on your mind.

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MN: I nominate you to be Czar of Snark.

Dana Milbank: Thank you, Commissar of Minnesota. And because Czar nominations do not need to be confirmed by the Senate, I think we can consider my appointment official.

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Bellingham, Wash.: Commissar Milbank,

Wouldn't one simple solution to Czargate be for Republicans to acknowledge that Obama won back in 2008 and approve at least some of his appointments in a timely fashion?

PS- I hear Michael Bay's "Czargate II, The Appointening" will be in movie theaters this Christmas...

Dana Milbank:

This would probably be simpler than rounding up all the czars and shooting them. On the other hand, the shooting solution would give the death panels something to do while we wait for health reform to pass.

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Washington, DC: I am trying to figure out how Mitch McConnell giving the same speech 50 times is "news".

I realize the GOP sent out a press release, but I don't understand why you would echo all the GOP talking points without rebuttal. Are you now competing with Fox News to be the local print affiliate, aka, "Fox on 15th St."?

Dana Milbank: Oh, dear. Every now and then some poor, earnest, irony-deprived person happens upon a Sketch and completely misunderstands the genre.

Read this paragraph from the column, which I'm republishing below to make it easy for you, and see if it answers your question:

"Albert Einstein had an unkind label for those who do the same thing over and over again expecting a different result. Yet that has been the strategy of McConnell, and congressional Republicans generally, as they have labored over the past several months to defeat any health-care plan proposed by the White House and congressional Democrats. Higher taxes. Medicare cuts. Government takeover. Rationing. Closed-door negotiations. Dangerous experiment. Higher premiums. Canada. Lather and repeat. The phrases have become less a form of rhetoric than a collection of verbal tics."

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Arlington, Va.: I wish people would stop with the Nixon reference. Not even remotely close! Thanks, too, for pointing out the hypocrisies of those who use it.

Dana Milbank: Still, let us agree that it's better than all those Nazi/Holocaust references we've been treated to this fall.

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Montclair, NJ: The Death Panels have been impaneled?! Did the senate confirm them?

Dana Milbank:

Only for purposes of shooting czars. This is an advisory role, and not an official government function, so Senate confirmation is unnecessary.

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How many Rubes..: ..will have to fall for the Yes Men before the whole planet knows who they are and what they're about?

I mean, some of these "victims" of their shenanigans are media types, yes?

Actually, I love them. Saw their movie. More fun than Cirque de Soleil. More spot-on than Cirque de Congress.

Thanks.

Dana Milbank:

I think the great part is their stunts are so varied -- going from the New York Post spoof to the fake Chamber of Commerce press conference -- that people don't suspect. Also cable news is permanently vulnerable to this because of the need to get the "news" first. When I bumped into the phony chamber spokesman ("Hingo Sembra") at the Tuesday event, where the Survivaballs were tussling with Capitol police, I asked if he could make a living at this. He told me he was a teacher in New York in real life.

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Freedom Du Lac, Wherefore Art Thou?: Dana: for Dylan I can go to Cillizza, for Springsteen I can go to Kane. What Post chatter covers Bowie? I assume that management has assigned each of you some cornerstone figure in popular music, should I also assume that yours is Meatloaf?

Dana Milbank: Raffi is more my speed. Though apparently even my five-year-old daughter has advanced beyond my tastes. She's been listening to a radio station in the car that the au pair has tuned in, and I have just discovered she has learned some lyrics that cannot be written in this family web chat. I've got to get her back to NPR...

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Springfield, Ill.: How well will the Nation's "Going Rouge" do in its first week? #2 on the best sellers list? I wish I thought up that idea.

Dana Milbank:

A clever idea, but I also have high hopes for my new book, "Going LaRouche."

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Satire U.: The tone deaf post about your column got me thinking: are there college courses on political satire? You should look into teaching one at Georgetown. If you got tenure you would have a great deal more job security than at the Post. Just saying...

Dana Milbank:

There is such a position, but unfortunately it requires Senate confirmation, so I'm pretty much out of the running.

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Where is he?: If we have a plethora of czars, where is Rasputin? He has to be lurking nearby?

Dana Milbank:

True, we need a new Rasputin. For years it was Karl Rove (I've written all about this in my forthcoming best-seller, "Going Rove") but now I believe it is David Axelrod. Because of the moustache, mostly.

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St. Petersburg: Who's Rasputin? Dick Cheney?

Dana Milbank:

Cheney prefers to be thought of as the Stalin figure in this drama, I understand.

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McLean: Dana, In today's column, Charles Krauthammer writes that Rahm Emmanuel once sent a dead fish to a live pollster. Do you think that Dr. Krauthanmmer might be jealous of the pollster? Have you ever been honored with such a gift? If so, was the fish wrapped in a copy of the Sketch?

Dana Milbank: What a fresh and interesting anecdote!

Okay, so this particular story, apocryphal or not, has been around for years, repeated ad nauseum, most recently in my illustrated book of rhymes, "O is for Obama" (on the R is for Rahmbo page).

I have never received a fish, dead or alive, from Rahmbo, but I have eaten fish with him. The fish was dead. It was at a steak restaurant, but I'd like to pretend it was an Irish bar, in which case I could describe the whole thing in my new book, "Going Brogue."

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Boston, MA: Are we stuck with the 'czar' spelling? If 'cz' sounds like 'z' then why don't we pronounce the country of which Prague is the capital 'Zeck Republic?' I prefer 'tsar.' Maybe we need a Tsar of Slavicisms.

Dana Milbank: Consider yourself appointed.

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NYC: When Michael Jackson died CNBC decided it needed to get you on the air. What does that say about you?

Dana Milbank: It says that he died too late in the day for them to cancel my segment and find a guest who knows pop culture.

But now that I am a commentator on pop culture, I plan to publish a book about this, titled "Going Vogue."

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RE: Washington DC: Okay I am a Dem, but that piece on McConnell was great, great journalistic insight into the ways of the Senate. I hope I would say the same if it was liberal Dem you were skewering (emotionally I'm all for skewering ConservaDems too).

Dana Milbank:

Well, let's try this test. The day before the McConnell column, I wrote a column on the Senate Democrats' "gimmick" of trying to make the health-care bill look deficit-neutral by shifting $250 billion in costs to a separate bill. Lots of wailing and gnashing of teeth on the left side of the blogosphere. So let's see if that piece gave you tsuris, and we'll have an answer.

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Speaking of Nixon: I watched "All the President's Men" last night and did a little research on Donald Segretti. I read one article that stated that Karl Rove was part of Segretti's Dirty Tricks team. Is this true or just more internet mis-information?

Dana Milbank: If I were writing a column, I would have to research the truth of the matter. But since this is the internet, let's just run with it and assume it's true.

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Fish, dead or alive: Even if you received such an offering, wouldn't the gift policy at The Washington Post preclude you from accepting it? In your case, I assume they waive this rule if the offering is Purell.

Dana Milbank: Post gift rules would require me to donate the dead fish to charity.

I donate the Purell to Joe Wilson's family.

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Evanston, Ill.: Hey Dana, I really liked your "The News is broken" piece. Will the instant media ever be conditioned to restrain itself or is it too deep of a congenital defect? I called the balloon boy hoax after about five minutes. Is the media really that stupid or just that cynical?

Dana Milbank: Some are cynical, some are stupid. I am both. But in this case I think it's a structural problem caused by the accelerating news cycle. The only solution is to turn off your TV and your computer (after this chat, of course) and wait to get the facts in tomorrow's paper.

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MN: I'm looking forward to your book profiling Dubya's college/party years, "Going Togue."

Dana Milbank:

Thank you, Party Czar. And be careful there in Minnesota, with those sleeping airline pilots overhead.

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Chicago, Ill.: What do you make of my main man Roland Burris's threat to only vote for a health care bill with an immediate public option? After all the ostracism and rebuke he has suffered from closeted Senators I love seeing him give them the middle finger.

Dana Milbank: You should have seen Lieberman's face in the hearing room yesterday as poor Burris tried to say something sensible about the separation of powers but couldn't get beyond how "fascinated" he was by the whole thing. I suspect "constitutional scholar" will not be added to the mausoleum.

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You were in my dream: the other night. You took me to a WaPo picnic where there were hot dogs and potato chips. You wore a tropical shirt and drove us in a station wagon. What czar does this make me?

Dana Milbank: Afraid we already have a drug czar.

I'm thinking this was caused by Mouthpiece Theater withdrawal. Common condition.

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Progress: First Nazis, then Nixon . . . do you think Obama misses the innocent days of colluding with Bill Ayres?

Dana Milbank: I miss Jeremiah Wright.

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Washington: Free Stroking - If you leaned left a little more often, you could have been invited over to Barack's house the other night for some loving stroking along with Olbermann, Maddow, Dionne, Dowd, etc. Aren't you sorry you missed that?

Dana Milbank: I will take that under advisement. But I think in these days of swine flu, when even poor Mrs. Wilson is not safe, the best policy for all of us is social distancing.

I've had a fine time Going Rogue with you, dear reader. Speak to you next week.

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