First, GOP entertainment
After weekend news reels of plays and replays from the final GOP debate - the Trumpless one - our verdict is in.
' It was glorious to have a stage devoid of the world's pettiest blowhard.
' The candidates who showed up won, and the debate boycotter nursing his vanity and revenge lost, no matter what lame metrics the boycotter uses to say otherwise.
' Although various GOP pundits have said they didn't learn anything new, most American debate viewers did.
Ted Cruz, aka Princeton champion debater, had his lunch eaten by the other candidates, the debate moderators and the booing audience - all of whom refused to let Cruz skirt questions about immigration or blame the media for legitimate questions and inconvenient video footage that showed him saying something repeatedly that he tried to claim during the debate he didn't say.
' Real debate winners? Jeb Bush - who roundly bested Marco Rubio (also on immigration) - and Rand Paul who (like Bush) brought thoughtful points to almost every other candidate's chest-beating assertions about terror threats and ISIS.
Overall, contrary to pundits' claims that entertainment would be lacking from a bully-deficient debate, this one offered immense entertainment in the form of issue substance.
You could almost think of it as PBS as opposed to a political version of "Duck Dynasty" or Sarah Palin's "Alaska."
Meanwhile, three miles away, the "elephant not in the room" as Fox News described the boycotter, other cable news networks - angling to piggyback on debate ratings - trained cameras on the narcissist's jet sitting at the Des Moines airport.
Pathetic. And here we are now on caucus day in Iowa.
Equally pathetic is that a recent poll from Middle Tennessee State University (a week before the final debate) found Tennessee's Republican primary down to a race between the boycotter Donald Trump and Ted Cruz, with Trump holding an advantage, though many party voters - more than a fourth - said they were still undecided.
When asked to name the one person they would most like to win the 2016 presidential election, 33 percent of self-described Republican voters named Trump. Cruz came in second, chosen by a significantly smaller 17 percent of Republicans.
Apparently most of Tennessee watches reruns of Sarah Palin's Alaska.
Now, Democrat drama
Like Bernie Sanders says: we're "tired of hearing" about Hillary Clinton's emails.
But right on cue just days before Iowa primary voting, along comes another batch.
With this release, the State Department announced Friday that it will not release 22 emails from former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton because they contain what is now being termed "top secret" information - though the information they contain was not deemed secret at the time she sent the emails.
State Department spokesman John Kirby said the documents, totaling 37 pages, are being "upgraded" now at the request of the intelligence community in other departments. Kirby also said 18 emails, comprised of eight email chains between Clinton and President Barack Obama, are being "withheld in full" not because they are deemed classified, but "to protect the President's ability to receive unvarnished advice and counsel." He said those emails "will ultimately be released in accordance with the Presidential records act."
Interesting timing on the part of the "intelligence community." Never you mind that these emails were turned over to state department authorities more than a year ago. But now - this week - other agencies in the government are piping up with "secret" overtones. Not with any indication of wrongdoing, mind you, just with these "secret" overtones.
Clinton has said repeatedly that she wanted all of the emails released to the public to end the conspiracy theories of her political enemies. She has acknowledged that she maintained a private server while leading the State Department, and she has acknowledged that she used her personal email for official business (as did Colin Powell and other high-ranking officials). She herself has said that, in hindsight, the practice was unwise.
Now the State Department's decision to not release 22 emails undoubtedly will provide further fodder for Clinton's political opponents and create distrust issues for her to surmount.
Brian Fallon, a spokesman for Clinton's campaign, called the newest development a case of "over-classification run amok."
"We firmly oppose the complete blocking of the release of these emails," Fallon said. And he told MSNBC that the decision to withhold the 22 emails is "happening at the behest of other agencies in the government who have hijacked the process that's been taking place for the last several months."
Perhaps politics is, in fact, all theater.