While the rest of us are drinking and snoozing, the television is trying to transmit important information into our homes. Today, our special correspondent for T.V. punditry catches us up on the week in chat shows. Because we totally wouldn't watch that shit if you paid us. Get your tinfoil hats on!

The good people over at MSNBC actually pitch their channel as a middle aged, centrist-Democrat's alternative to the other cable news outlets. Gosh that sounds fun, right? It is not.

The party over at MSNBC rocked on all last week starting with Chris Matthews' celebration of the fourth anniversary of the Iraq War on Monday's episode of "Hardball." Matthews' broadcast featured an interview with human sleeping pill John Kerry who apparently didn't get the message that the whole country is sick of him after seeing both Barack Obama and John McCain make exactly the same dumb mistake that he did without getting themselves kicked off of the campaign trail for it.

Later on "Scarborough Country," squinty-eyed tanning salon victim Joe Scarborough marked the anniversary of the war by having NBC Nightly News Anchor Brian Williams drop by for a thorough ass-kissing. You see, Williams recently returned from a five-day stint in Iraq, so he's able to put this whole Sunni vs. Shi'ite mess into perspective.

Williams said that the one thing that could "sum up all of our time there" was this: "If you want to come with me and go over there and find three reasons to prove why the so-called 'surge' is working, I can take you to at least three places and show you nothing but advances and good news. And at the same time, if you're looking for three reasons to just call it a disaster and say that the US is wasting its time in this war, I can take you to three places and show you three incidents a day that prove that thesis." So basically, despite Scarborough's childlike gushing ("Brian, thank you so much, and thank you for risking your life and leaving your wife and children. I'll tell you what, it certainly did us all a great service."), it seems like the only judgment Williams was able to make after his much-heralded trip to Iraq was, that you can't make any judgments one way or the other about the situation in Iraq. Wow, he makes the whole thing sounds so mysterious. It's kind of like the rules from "Fight Club."

Strangely enough, it seems like the folks who've actually been to Iraq for more than five days don't have any trouble calling the whole thing a "catastrophe." Personally, I'm sticking with Brian's assessment. He's got way better hair.

MSNBC's other prime-time host is Keith Olbermann, who has spent the past two weeks on "Countdown" foaming at the mouth over the Alberto Gonzalez "scandal," which even when accompanied by Keith's seemingly endless selection of loud, poorly-chosen suits, is boring as hell. If Keith wants to constantly focus on the Bushies being unseemly, perhaps he might want to stick to the issues where people are actually dying because of their misconduct instead of a bunch of possibly questionable emails. Or you know, he could talk about something else!

I was planning on making this week's edition of Themtube an MSNBC-only affair, but let's face it—that's just dull. There's only so much John Kerry, old-school news anchorin', and ponderous legal analysis that one person can take. That's why I headed over to "Hannity & Colmes" Tuesday night where Hannity and E.T. impersonator Alan Colmes conducted a hard-hitting interview with noted substance abuser and outgoing Miss U.S.A Tara Conner. At first, it seemed like the recently rehabbed Conner might go all Danny Devito on us when she began the interview by saying, "I'm on a really happy high right now." Sadly, she only meant this figuratively. Even though Conner wasn't loaded, the interview was still amusing as hell, especially when she said, "I was a functioning alcoholic/addict, you would never know when I was using." Oh really Tara? Hate to break it to you, but I think we might have noticed.