It's Monday, and that means unwinding the credit default swap disaster that is weekend political coverage. We all go off to enjoy a few days off, maybe some sports, time with the family, etc., and what happens? The health care web site becomes Watergate, Katrina and New Coke all in one. And if you don't buy that, how about calling it a "political Katrina"? An interesting dodge, but outside of the weather itself (and maybe not even excepting that), what was non-political about Katrina? Greg Dworkin notes the different definitions for everyday words that the political punditry tend to use in describing events, perhaps as part of their toolkit for reducing policy to TV-ready political stories. Adam Serwer raises a flag: "The victor in Virginia's attorney general race stands a chance of losing." How? In a reversal decided by the Republican-dominated state legislature. Yes, such things happen. We provide some additional context. In the wake of the super-typhoon, an LA Times op-ed asks who's a looter? Words have meaning, of course. And words like that, improperly used, can actually make a gigantic disaster even worse. The Cheney sisters have words over marriage rights (and the world was already done talking about it by the time Drudge wrote it up). And whaddya know, Tim Geithner has landed a job with a private equity firm!
