Just in case you didn’t know it, liberals are a bunch of spineless fucks who have no loyalty at all. MSNBC has fired Martin Bashir for his comment about Sarah Palin. I’m sure the network will claim that he is resigning or whatever, but we all know the truth. As you all know, after the incident, I wrote, Martin Bashir Was Wrong to Apologize. And I noted in that article that Bashir offered the best public apology I had ever heard. That should have been the end of the story.
But MSNBC has always been a terrible network. They have some good people, but the network does not support them. They are also not very smart. It was a bad idea to move Chris Hayes from Up, where he was the perfect host. Steve Kornacki, who now hosts the show, is ill-suited to it. He is much better on a weeknight hour-long show like All In. Then, of course, there was MSNBC‘s unconscionable treatment of Ed Schultz. The firing of Alec Baldwin after five episodes was just pathetic. Meanwhile, they hold onto Lawrence O’Donnell, one of the most self-important and annoying people on cable news. They allow Rachel Maddow to focus on gay and reproductive rights almost to the exclusion of anything else. Not to mention her schoolgirl naivete about sex scandals. Apparently, they are tutoring Chris Hayes to be more combative to bring up his disappointing ratings. And don’t get me started about The Cycle.
I’ve been having problems with MSNBC for some time, but this is the last straw. I simply will not watch the network anymore—ever. And I encourage everyone else to do the same. Al Jazeera America is now widely available on cable. Go to their site and see if it is available for you. It does a much better job than any of the big three American cable news channels. Also, check out Sam Seder’s Majority Report and The Young Turks. These are both excellent resources.
There is another problem with MSNBC. I never learn anything. They just cover stories that I’ve read about earlier in the day. They were fine background noise for the time that I was cooking. But they certainly didn’t present stories that provided new insight. And when there was breaking news, they turned into a slightly more boring version of CNN. Oh! And have you noticed how much they hock all the pathetic books they publish? Most recently it’s been, Tip and the Gipper—a book with the intelligence and gravitas of Sarah Palin’s Good Tidings and Great Joy. Hard hitting journalism that!
MSNBC is dead to me. Maybe Martin Bashir can move to Al Jazeera America.
Afterword
It is also true that since MSNBC changed its website, everything is fucked up. All In can go days before posting shows. No one on MSNBC has any right to complain about HealthCare.gov.
Update (4 December 2013 6:30 pm)
I just found an excellent article by Justin Baragona that said much the same thing I did when Bashir apologized, Did Martin Bashir Really Need to Apologize to Sarah Palin? It makes it all the more ridiculous given that even after a very real apology—the kind we never get from the right—Bashir is fired:
No, the main thing here is to make sure that Palin is treated with respect, even when she never shows any herself. It is perfectly fine for Palin to constantly insult and denigrate POTUS, liberals, Democrats and anyone that just doesn’t agree with her. Why? Because they deserve it, that’s why! However, let anyone truly dig into her and take her to task for the ignorant, hateful a-hole she really is, then out comes the victim mentality. Her and her supporters immediately cry ‘sexism’ and immediately blame the ‘lamestream’ media for allowing this to happen. And then she gets her apologies. It has all grown so tiresome.
Maybe Bashir was right on Friday. Perhaps he shouldn’t have apologized yesterday. Maybe someone does need to take a big sh*t in Sarah Palin’s mouth. At the very least, it would keep her quiet for a bit.
Update (7 December 2013 7:14 pm)
Here is a discussion on Democracy Now! about the firing of Phil Donahue that I discussed in the comments:
What happened with Ed Shultz? I don’t much watch cable news. I listen to Ed Shultz on the radio on the way to and from college some days, but it’s been a while.
It’s sad how blatantly biased supposed "liberal" news media have become. Although all news is inherently biased to some extent, MSNBC is much too "in your face," with their selective stories promoting an underlying agenda (or set of beliefs). Al Jazeera America looks quite promising; I currently have "Dish Network" as my television provider, and they’ve recently been airing commercials on the new channel. With that said, every time I check to see if the channel is occupied, it isn’t. "True" Americans do not wish to go near any network that has a Muslim sounding name; god forbid they open their minds to more angles on one subject/situation than the shit the mass news networks have been shoving down our throats in recent years. We have troops stationed in countless sovereign governments, yet the public wonders why a "Jihad" has been brought upon our nation. How would the average American feel to have foreign soldiers stationed on THEIR soil…I guess ignorance is truly bliss. Oh, and we have the constitutional right to "police" the world as we see fit, this is all very obvious. Where are our founding fathers when you need them?
@David — I don’t have cable, but for years when I’ve been interested in something happening outside of America/Europe, I’ve looked at A-J’s English-language website. In my experience, they do a great job with both straight news and opinion posts. The opinions are clearly stated as such, and there’s a fair range of them. Most are to the "left" of American media but consistent with the rest of the world.
Agreed that the name will be problematic for most Americans. But not all. I like Frank’s idea of hiring Bashir. He’s erudite and entertaining and would be a good pickup. It would be a feast day for the right-wing noise machine, but nothing A-J does will avoid their vitriol anyway, and it might provide some good publicity.
Thanks, I’ve never heard of this website.
Just to clear things up, even when I did watch [i]MSNBC[/i] I was constantly yelling at the screen. It wasn’t so much the liberal bias, but a particular kind of DNC liberal bias. I don’t mind bias, because everyone has it. But I want it to be interesting. I don’t want to hear talking points.
I always thought that [i]MSNBC[/i] was better than [i]Fox News[/i] because [i]MSNBC[/i] didn’t claim to be something other than what it was. [i]MSNBC[/i] advertises about the liberal way of looking at the world. [i]Fox News[/i] advertises that they just provide the facts and let you decide. That’s offensive coming from any news outlet.
It is interesting, however, that the political climate over the last five years was one that should have worked to the advantage of [i]Fox[/i] and the disadvantage of [i]MSNBC[/i]. This is because it allowed [i]Fox[/i] to hold Obama and the Democrats accountable. But they haven’t done that at all. It’s been nothing but RNC talking points and fake scandals. (For the kind of journalism the likes of [i]Fox News[/i] has to offer, I highly recommend reading [i]Blinded By the Right[/i] by David Brock.)
[i]MSNBC[/i] has gone [i]way[/i] too easy on Obama–especially on foreign policy. But they’ve still managed to be a news organization. And [i]Up with Chris Hayes[/i] really was a great show.
All I’m saying is that when you look at the three cable news networks, [i]MSNBC[/i] is the best and that will be far more true if the Republicans take the White House in 2016. Not only will it get better, but [i]Fox News[/i] will get worse. And [i]CNN[/i] will continue to be the choice of airport lobbies everywhere.
The biggest problem with [i]MSNBC[/i] is that the owners really don’t feel comfortable with a "liberal" channel. [i]Fox News[/i] is committed to conservatism. Of course, even there, when Glenn Beck’s ratings fell, he was fired. But he was [i]not[/i] fired when he said that the president of the United States had a deep-seated hatred of white people–that the president was a racist. If an [i]MSNBC[/i] host had made a similar statement, he wouldn’t have made it to the end of the week, much less the end of his contract.
So there is no equivalence here. But there is also no question that [i]MSNBC[/i] was better five years ago than it is now.
@Mack – Sorry for the delay. Ed Schultz was forced out of his 8 pm time slot onto some weekend show. Chris Hayes took over (a bad fit for who he is–he should have stayed on UP). As far as I know, Hayes’ ratings have been consistently worse than Schultz’s were. I’m not a big fan of Schultz, but it was great to have a guy in prime time whose focus was unions and working people. It was a welcome contrast to Maddow’s focus on gay rights and abortion. Eventually, Schultz was brought back to weeknights, but at the worse 5 pm slot. The point is that [i]MSNBC[/i] showed little loyalty to a man who really helped build their brand.
Meanwhile, nothing seems too good for Chris Matthews who was a conservative on the network until Keith Olbermann dragged it kicking and screaming to the left. Now suddenly Matthews is a liberal. You could send him off to [i]Fox News[/i] and he would fit right in–probably better than Joe Scarborough would. Matthews is, by most accounts, the man that got Phil Donahue fired from [i]MSNBC[/i]. He’s just terrible. I hate to see him. He has nothing to offer the public discussion and his new book might as well be titled, "Times just used to be better!" Pathetic.
Thanks for filling me in on what happened to Ed Shultz, but what was MSNBC’s reasoning for relegating him to a weekend timeslot?
@Mack – I think they were going for a younger demographic. Chris Hayes was doing really well on the weekends. I suspect the mistake was thinking that the same people who watched him weekend mornings were going to watch him at 8:00 pm weeknights. The younger demographic have things to do at night. But I’m just guessing. They did move Ed Schultz around a lot anyway. He was at 10:00 before they moved him to 8:00. But the move to weekend seemed like a slap in the face and I suspect a lot of his fans decided not to watch Chris Hayes just because they were pissed off.
I always go back to that scene from [i]All The President’s Men[/i], "These are not very bright guys."
[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=paJcWUBQ3P8[/youtube]
That’s what really bugs me about America’s obsession with the rich: it’s 90% birth, 9% luck, and 1% skill. When Obama does something that looks stupid, it isn’t because he’s playing 12-dimensional chess; it’s because he isn’t that bright. And he’s one of the brightest!