Obsession over the DC Reflecting Pool is a sad symbol of our times

The furor over President Donald Trump’s renovation of the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool has turned into a civic bloodbath.Longtime liberal commentator Paul Farhi has touted the “massive symbolic/metaphorical power” of the narrative war playing out over the National Mall mainstay, pointing to the contrast between Trump’s “triumphant claims” and “visible failure.”Namely, the algae blooms and already-peeling coating floating on its surface.Farhi is right about it being emblematic of our age, but hopelessly myopic about how.In their rush to put points on the board against the president, the Democrats and their reliable friends in the Fourth Estate have developed a telling obsession with the project.A NewsBusters analysis found that between June 14 and June 22, CNN, MS NOW, ABC, CBS, and NBC have spent almost seven hours covering it.CNN alone devoted three hours and 35 minutes to the topic, while MS NOW chipped in another two hours and 40 minutes.And while the “big three” broadcast networks spent far less time on the nontroversy, that’s only because they run 16 and a half fewer hours of news programming per day.The coverage was as qualitatively bad as it was quantitatively astounding.At CNN, cameramen zoomed in on Brianna Keilar’s tablet as she asserted the body of water looked like a “patch of grass” from above.And over at MS NOW, Chris Hayes gleefully deemed its hue “Kermit the Frog green.”The newly established “Democrats Against Public Works” coalition is also up in arms.Sen.Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) declared the $14 million renovation a “bottomless pit of expense and failure,” while his colleague Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.) called it an “embarrassing waste of resources.”Bear in mind: Former President Barack Obama spent $34 million on renovations to the same structure during his time in office.And since when are Democrats opposed to expenses, failures or embarrassing wastes of resources?The Reflecting Pool craze is a reflec...