CNN gives Obama top Marx as madness spreads

Mere days to the election and Murdoch's Fox News now appears to be broadcasting from inside Hitler's bunker, frantically transmitting the code-words Joe the Plumber to the nation's as-yet undecided. Meanwhile, over on the now explicitly pro-Democrat CNN, it's like that scene in Die Hard when Bruce Willis arrives at his wife's office during the Christmas party to find everyone blind drunk and staggering around trying to find rooms to shag in.

CNN's 'non-partisan' gloves came off last week during a panel discussion with the Texan political strategist Paul Begala and the Republican Alex Castellanos. Begala, leaning forward in his seat as though cracking open a beer under the table, goes "If the Democrats lose, we're gonna sit in a yurt and smoke pot and try to work out what happened. But if the Republicans lose - the knives will be out! It'll be like the steel cage death watch! It'll be great!’ And Castellanos just laughs and shrugs good-sportishly and goes, "Aw, look, I'm gonna get in some scotch and some good cigars and just hope someone can make Arizona bigger..." (McCain, remember, comes from Arizona.)

‘OK, go on then, let's have a look at Fiona Bruce making a twat of herself again’

Anderson Cooper was mediating this. Cooper is America's news hottie, the 41-year-old son of the heiress Gloria Vanderbilt, with prematurely white hair shorn all over in a way that catches the light like the pelt of some exotic animal bred by Lee Marvin to make a hat worth murdering for in the movie Gorky Park. Even the usually fairly inscrutable Cooper began from that moment to allow his delight at the Democrats' apparent lead to slip out. "Do you think Sarah Palin is bad luck?" he said the other night. "I mean she opened some hockey event recently and someone fell over the puck and broke their leg."

And then he introduced a clip of the Republican newscaster Barbara West on WFTV9 in Orlando saying to Joe Biden, "You may recognise this famous quote: 'From each according to his ability to each according to his needs.' That's from Karl Marx. How is Senator Obama not being a Marxist if he intends to spread the wealth around?" To which Biden gives a slow surfer smile and says, "Are you joking?" Oh how CNN loved that clip! They played it four times in one hour. Kind of the equivalent of Trevor Macdonald saying. "OK, go on then, let's have a look at Fiona Bruce making a twat of herself again." And then there are the commercials for Viagra every six minutes, as though the advertisers themselves are foreseeing the mother of all lock-ins.

Of course, the madness is taking its toll. CNN correspondent John King - usually as dull as a syndicated chess column - has skin breaking out into spots around the chin, and goes off on little rambles ("Sure, sure, sure there is tension, but we've seen this since the beginning of time. My first campaign was with Dukakis. And then the Texans with Lloyd Bentsen. But I kind of thought the people in Massachusetts were nuts, frankly. And this sort of thing just goes on and on and on in every cycle...")

‘They've got Joe the Plumber opining about Israel? Give us a break!’

Meanwhile, former White House adviser David Gergen, CNN's most beloved and regular pundit, now appears actually close to death (I should add that most of the time he looks like the one college professor decent enough to not feel you up. I am in love with David Gergen.)

Last night: Gergen: "They've got Joe the Plumber opining about Israel? Give us a break!"

Fellow panellist radio host Roland White: "He even said, 'I know so little about foreign policy I'm dangerous.' I mean dude, shut up!"

Cooper: "You know, a Republican insider called Sarah Palin a whack-job today? More on this later."

PS: On Tuesday I watched Obama on CBS speaking for 40 minutes at a rally in Pennsylvania in the hard rain without wiping his face once. There aren't that many actors with such poise - possibly Steve McQueen circa Bullit. Some of the greatest movie stars have been known not to budge, to let the camera come to them, which is precisely what CBS's did at the rally, mesmerised, like the camera in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof gorging itself on Paul Newman not moving in his duck-egg blue pyjamas whilst in the background Elizabeth Taylor makes a show of adjusting her hooters. George Clooney doesn't move much either. Neither did Bogart. I'm talking about the icons capable of separating cool from youth, who look like time is not the most important thing happening to them. Not one wipe. Can you imagine?