Leslie Savan | The Nation

Joe Biden compliments Joe Scarborough on Morning Joe.

Consider it a weird preview of an unlikely Joe vs. Joe 2016 presidential race: In a blast of blarney, Joe Biden gave Joe Scarborough an ego boost (and a possible campaign ad) that almost made Joe S’s already swelled head pop off.

Richard Perle, the former chair of the Pentagon’s Defense Policy Board. (Courtesy of the American Enterprise Institute.)

The war hawks are holding their breath: If they can just get through this week—the tenth anniversary of when they lied us into invading Iraq—without answering any “unreasonable” questions, they’ll be home free. And much of the press, in a small reprise of the obsequiousness that allowed the war in the first place, is proving them right.

This Week with George Stephanopoulos.

The thing that most frustrates me about political speech as a form of marketing—and that’s what most mainstream media Sunday talk shows are, marketing to corporate management—is that it’s always slamming the door on its own logic. Hosts discuss controversial subjects, of course, but they’ll only go so far. This strikes me as, at best, ineffective marketing. It makes me want to see what’s behind the curtain, rather than take the hint that this is as far as polite discussion is to be taken among right-thinking people.

Florida Governor Rick Scott, who recently shocked fellow Republicans by agreeing to the Medicaid expansion in the Affordable Care Act. (AP Photo/Steve Cannon.)

Last night, I underwent an unintentional thought experiment: My husband noticed there was no clock in my home office and offered to buy me one as a gift. That would be great, I said, just please don’t get one of those battery-driven clocks with their annoyingly loud tick-tock. No sooner had I said that than I heard the battery-driven tick-tock that had been pounding away in my office for a couple of years.