Matt Taiibi has a great piece that punctures the hand-wringing about Biden's reactions last night.
What [Biden] got absolutely right, despite what you might read this morning (many outlets are criticizing Biden's dramatic excesses), was his tone. Biden did absolutely roll his eyes, snort, laugh derisively and throw his hands up in the air whenever Ryan trotted out his little beady-eyed BS-isms.
But he should have! He was absolutely right to be doing it. We all should be doing it. That includes all of us in the media, and not just paid obnoxious-opinion-merchants like me, but so-called "objective" news reporters as well. We should all be rolling our eyes, and scoffing and saying, "Come back when you're serious."
Taibbi is absolutely correct. Not only Biden, but everyone should
laugh, because Romney and Ryan are not serious:
Think about what that means. Mitt Romney is running for president – for president! – promising an across-the-board 20 percent tax cut without offering any details about how that's going to be paid for. Forget being battered by the press, he and his little sidekick Ryan should both be tossed off the playing field for even trying something like that. This race for the White House, this isn't some frat prank. This is serious. This is for grownups, for God's sake.
. . .
The proper way to report such a tactic is to bring to your coverage exactly the feeling that Biden brought to the debate last night: contempt and amazement. We in the press should be offended by what Romney and Ryan are doing – we should take professional offense that any politician would try to whisk such a gigantic lie past us to our audiences, and we should take patriotic offense that anyone is trying to seize the White House using such transparently childish and dishonest tactics.
Emphases added.
Ryan's nonsense, Biden's perfect reactions and the media fainting are the perfect microcosm for the disease that has afflicted this country for 12 years:
Bush should have been derisively laughed out of Congress with his Iraq war lies.
Powell should have been eye-rolled out of the UN for the same.
Sarah Palin should have been laughed off the Republican ticket when the depth of her ignorance was revealed.
The Tea Party should have been eye-rolled out of existence the first time someone carried a "Take Your Government Hands Off My Medicare" Sign.
Romney should be laughed out of the election when he refuses to produce his tax returns.
Instead of blaming Obama, Bob Woodward should snort and laugh derisively at the Republicans who took the government hostage in the debt ceiling crisis.
Real journalists should throw up their hands when they are asked to sit on a panel with Luke Russert, Newt Gingrich or Ann Coulter.
To quote Sen. Moynihan, "Deviancy has been defined down" by a media that seriously reports outrageous lies.