Keith Olbermann, host of MSNBC’s “Countdown,” will be interviewed on C-SPAN’s hourlong show, “Q&A,” this Sunday at 5 p.m., Pacific time. If you don’t have cable, you can watch of podcast of the interview from the site at www.q-and-a.org.
Chris Matthews is cable TV’s Lady MacBeth. We constantly see him obssessively trying to wash his hands clean of stains that won’t go away — that he was a staffer for the late House Speaker and Democratic Party legend Tip O’Neill and a speech writer for President Jimmy Carter. In other words: he was a Democrat.
On Monday, the new House Majority leader John Boehner, a perpetually tanned, nicotine-addicted Republican Party hack from Ohio, on his show. Boehner, who is probably best known for handing out bribes on the House floor, may be a lot of things but I think even he would admit that “great” is not one of them:
MATTHEWS: Is [Hillary] a socialist?
BOEHNER: Uh, no. I’ve worked with her on a number of issues —
MATTHEWS: Well, on the issue of health care, is she a socialist?
BOEHNER: She would be to the left of most people I know.
MATTHEWS: But not a socialist?
BOEHNER: I wouldn’t go that far.
MATTHEWS: You wouldn’t go that far? What stops you?
BOEHNER: I don’t like labeling of people.
MATTHEWS: You call her a liberal. You called it Hillarycare.
BOEHNER: I don’t want to call her a socialist.
MATTHEWS: Could she carry Ohio in the general?
BOEHNER: I don’t think so.
MATTHEWS: Who could beat her?
BOEHNER: Anybody.
MATTHEWS: Anybody. Strong words. We’ll be right back with House Majority Leader John Boehner. You can see this man’s greatness.
Whoops, they done it again: You’da thunk NBC would have learned its lesson after “The Book of Daniel.” If you recall, the American Family Association brought so much pressure to bear on the network that NBC pulled the show after three episodes with no outside advertisers.
According to AdAge, the AFA, led by Donald “Wildman” Wildmon and his merry band of Bible thumpers, is on NBC’s case for an episode of “Will & Grace” where Britney Spears portrays a conservative Christian talk-show host who does a cooking segment called “Cruci-fixins.”
Sounds damned funny to me, but the AFA ain’t laughing:
“They would not be making fun of Mohammed or Buddha,” said Randy Sharp, director of special projects for the AFA, which is based in Tupelo, Miss. “It’s almost sacrilegious. I wonder who is at the helm of NBC that they are not getting the message. NBC doesn’t seem concerned that they are tanking because they are offending their viewers and running them off.”
AdAge noted that the AFA is taking on a hugely popular program in its final season, not a mid-season startup, and that, given the show’s content (it portrays GAY people — gasp!), few of the AFA’s true-believing constituency even watch the goddamned program.
Crazy like Fox: With the announcement that it has replaced pundit-troll Robert Novak with super-moralist Bill Bennet, CNN is continuing its slouch toward Wingnutland. The radio talk-show host and former Reagan and Bush One administration flunky is the latest conservative pundit hired by CNN, following its recent signing of radio talk-show host Glenn Beck.
The press release contained an strange sentence:
Bennett will be one of CNN’s political commentators as part of the network’s continuing effort to bring a broad range of perspectives to its viewers.
The only perspective Bennett brings is Bennett’s, unfortnately. In the June 2003 issue of Washington Monthly, Joshua Green’s article, “Bookie of Virtue,” painted a portrait of Bennett as an Old Testament preacher of morality and dictator of mores, and a bit of flame at the slots:
For more than 20 years, as a writer, speaker, government official, and political operative, Bennett has been a commanding general in the culture wars. As Ronald Reagan’s chairman of the National Endowment for the Humanities, he was the scourge of academic permissiveness. Later, as Reagan’s secretary of education, he excoriated schools and students for failing to set and meet high standards. As drug czar under George H.W. Bush, he applied a get-tough approach to drug use, arguing that individuals have a moral responsibility to own up to their addiction.
But while bashing wife-swapping and the “Rikki Lake Show,” Bennett was conspicuously quiet on the topic of gambling, for good reason, according to Green:
Bennett has been a high-roller since at least the early 1990s. A review of one 18-month stretch of gambling showed him visiting casinos, often for two or three days at a time (and enjoying a line of credit of at least $200,000 at several of them). Bennett likes to be discreet. “He’ll usually call a host and let us know when he’s coming,” says one source. “We can limo him in. He prefers the high-limit room, where he’s less likely to be seen and where he can play the $500-a-pull slots. He usually plays very late at night or early in the morning–usually between midnight and 6 a.m.” The documents show that in one two-month period, Bennett wired more than $1.4 million to cover losses.
Bennett claims his style of gambling is “moral”:
“I play fairly high stakes. I adhere to the law. I don’t play the ‘milk money.’ I don’t put my family at risk, and I don’t owe anyone anything.”
Well, that’s a comfort, and something viewers should keep in mind as Bennett carries on about how the rest of us should behave and whose values we should emulate. Seems to me that CNN is taking a big gamble, not only on Bennett and Glenn and the new rightism of its broadcasts, but that its viewers want more Fox and less balance in their TV punditry.
Another talking bobblehead: According to Variety, CNN’s Headline News division has hired conservative radio talk-show host Glenn Beck to host an hour-long primetime program beginning in April.
While the network is counting on Beck to lure tube drones from Bill O’Reilly and Joe Scarborough, his style is supposed to be less rabid than those two dogs.
“Glenn’s style is self-deprecating, cordial; he says he’d like to be able to disagree with guests and part as friends. It’s conversational, not confrontational,” said HLN’s Ken Jautz.
Beck apparently already has a huge following. Variety noted he is tied for eighth with a national radio audience of 2.75 million, according to “Talkers” magazine. More importantly, however, Beck is third in the 25-54 demo (advertisers’ fave demo), according to Arbitron, behind Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity.
“We didn’t look for a conservative, a liberal or anyone of a particular ideology. It was about getting the best talent that would resonate with the most viewers,” Jautz said.
Christian bullies, TV wimps: AdAge is reporting that an Indiana NBC television affiliate has caved to American Family Association pressure not to run the network’s mid-season replacement, “The Book of Daniel.” The irrepressible and reprehensible Donald Wildmon, chair of the cross-carting, Bible-thumping AFA, is oozing pride over his band of bullies’ latest victory for Jesus.
The program was slated to premiere Jan. 6, but at least in Terra Haute it won’t:
Mr. Wildmon’s group was crowing that NBC affiliate WTWO in Terre Haute, Ind., has decided not to air the show. The group’s beef against the show is how it depicts Christianity. The AFA’s press release describes the show as having a main character who is a drug-addicted Episcopal priest with an alcoholic wife, a gay son, a daughter caught selling drugs, an adopted son having sex with a bishop’s daughter and a lesbian secretary.
Recall that the AFA mounted an impotent boycott of Disney for nine years due to the company’s gay-friendly policies. That boycott ended last spring only to be replaced by a boycott of Ford Motor Co. for its gay-friendly policies and advertising. That boycott was suspended in June and rescinded in December after Ford dropped its advertising in several gay publications.
“The Book of Daniel” is a situation comedy, of course, and I’ve seen a couple of previews where Jesus hisself appears to the priest, played by Aiden Quinn, and other oddball family situations arise. Here’s what “Wildman” Wildmon has to say about it:
“We are tired of NBC’s anti-Christian bigotry,” Mr. Wildmon said in a statement. The group has organized its members to call other NBC affiliates to pressure them to follow WTWO in not airing the new show.
WE are tired of your group’s un-Christian bigotry, Mr. Wildmon.
I’m a long-time “Hardball” viewer, and after all these years, I’m still not sure what to think about Chris Matthews.
Before he got his own slot on MSNBC, Matthews was a center-left newspaper columnist for the San Francisco Chronicle. He moved to television just in time for the Clinton wars, when, like a lot of other DC Kool Kids – Maureen Dowd, Christopher Hitchens, Andrew Sullivan, to name a few – he apparently took the Clintons’ flaws and foibles as a personal betrayal.
Today, five years on, he is still mad at them – spittle flies anytime Hillary’s name comes up.
Matthews was idealistic in his youth. He joined the Peace Corps and was a speechwriter for Pres. Carter and a staff member for House Speaker Tip O’Neill. Now he treats his early resume as a liability. Like the class brainiac who plays dumb so he can hang out with the jocks, he over-compensates for his liberal past by toadying up to Republicans, and regularly spouts their propaganda and talking points as fact.
Making nice with rightwingers is a smart career move. He obviously sees himself as next in line to host NBC’s once-vaunted “Meet the Press” on Sunday mornings. The show’s reputation has been so compromised by Tim Russert – another journo with a liberal background who is overweaningly pliable to the right – that replacing Russert with Matthews would be, at best, a lateral move.
Whatever happens with MTP, Chris Matthews’ GOP butt-kissing has already won him at least one accolade. Media Matters, the left’s leading news-bias watchdog organization, has named him “Misinformer of the Year.” (Last year’s winner was Bill O’Reilly.)
There is a thorough list of his mis-statements at Media Matters, but here are Matthews’ recent statements about Dear Leader that could have been scripted by Karl Rove:
Shameless: If his lips are moving, Bill O’Reilly is lying:
O’REILLY: Plano, Texas, north of Dallas. Students were told they could not wear red and green because they were Christmas colors. Let me repeat that. Plano, Texas. Students can’t wear clothing that have red or green colors because they were too close to Christmas colors. Can you believe this? This is fascism. In addition, it’d be grossly disrespectful.
The facts:
On December 9, Bill O’Reilly falsely claimed on both Fox News’ The O’Reilly Factor and the nationally syndicated The Radio Factor with Bill O’Reilly that the Plano Independent School District (Texas) “told students they couldn’t wear red and green because they were Christmas colors.” He labeled the alleged ban “fascism.” On December 12, the school district released an official statement by Superintendent of Schools Dr. Doug Otto refuting O’Reilly’s contention:
“The school district does not restrict students or staff from wearing certain color clothes during holiday times or any other school days,” noted Dr. Otto, who said that the school district’s attorney has requested that Mr. O’Reilly retract the statement.
Unbalanced: Here in the West Coast wing of Pensito Review’s electronic garret we start our day seven days a week by watching “Washington Journal” on C-SPAN. (Yes, it starts at 4M.) It is a great source of news about the goings-on in the Capitol, and one gets the sense that they try hard to prevent pros and cons for each side of every issue. But one also gets the sense that they tilt to the right.
Now Extra, a service of FAIR (Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting), has done an analysis that quantifiably proves just that:
To test C-SPAN’s claims of fairness, Extra! studied Washington Journal’s guestlist, tabulating all 663 guests that appeared on the show in the six-month period from November 1, 2004 to April 30, 2005. Guests were classified by gender, ethnicity, party affiliation (if any) and occupation. The study also looked at the think tanks most prominently represented on the show.
Despite C-SPAN’s stated goals, Extra!’s study found Washington Journal skewing rightward, favoring Republican and right-of-center interview subjects by considerable margins over Democratic and left-of-center guests. The study also found that women, people of color and public interest viewpoints were substantially underrepresented.
Overall, people of European ancestry made up 85 percent of Washington Journal’s guestlist—563 out of 663. (Extra! was able to identify the ethnic background of more than 99 percent of guests.) People of African (26) and Asian (24) heritage accounted for 4 percent each, while those of Middle Eastern (22) and Latin American (18) descent represented 3 percent each. No Native Americans were identifiable on the guestlist from November 1, 2004 to April 30, 2005.
Regular readers of this news and opinion website know that we are big fans of Keith Olbermann, whose show “The Countdown” on MSNBC is the closest the MSM gets to offering news that is truly fair and truly balanced. In other words, it is the only news show that dares to present news that is not fully vetted by the White House message machine.
On Monday’s show, in the wake of news of the death of Peter Jennings from lung cancer, Olbermann confessed that he had a bout with smoking-related cancer and encouraged everyone who smokes to quit. But the manner in which he did this infuriated his boss, Rick Kaplan, MSNBC’s president.
Details of what Olbermann said on-air will follow but first let’s take a quick look at his boss. Here’s what USA Today wrote about Kaplan when he took the reins at MSNBC in 2004:
For the past year, Kaplan has been an ABC News senior executive, but he spent nearly 20 years there before being tapped to run CNN in 1997… Under Kaplan, CNN’s ratings dropped 23%. And his signature nightly newsmagazine, NewsStand, failed to draw audiences after a disastrous start: CNN apologized — and later retracted — after the premiere edition charged that the United States had used nerve gas during Vietnam.
In recent months, Kaplan hired the truly awful rightwing propagandist Tucker Carlson away from CNN and gave him an hourlong show that has bombed – which is not a surprise to anyone (with the possible exceptions of Kaplan and Carlson). Now he has moved Tucker to 7PM and given the 6PM show to Rita Cosby, an avowed rightwing Christian whom he hired from Fox.
Call us cynical but there’s reason to suspect that Kaplan’s wrath at Keith on Monday was over than his concern that talk of tumors might’ve turned off viewers. If Kaplan gets rid of Keith, he’ll can give the 5PM slot to some O’Reilly wannabe, and have a full evening of Fox light.
Trump’s renaming of Lake Ontario has created a litmus test —
Yield, and rename it Lake America, at Donald Trump’s behest,
Like Google and Apple, which already capitulated,
Changing the name just like Dear Leader stipulated,
But there’s one defiant holdout — the original mapping site, Mapquest.
