What's wrong with MSNBC? (hint: Joe)

By Mustang Bobby

Why are MSNBC's ratings so low? Well, as Alex Parene at Salon suggests, it's not because of Rachel Maddow:

"Morning Joe" is the lowest rated of the big three cable news morning shows in both total viewers and the younger demographic. Fox News' Red Eye — a show Fox airs at 3 in the morning — had more total and 25-54-year-old viewers in April 2013 than "Morning Joe" did. "Morning Joe" in April 2013 was down, from its April 2012 numbers, in total and in young viewers by a greater percentage than the rest of the network as a whole.

I'm not harping on "Morning Joe" because I think the show is representative of everything wrong with contemporary political elite thinking, though it is, but because it illustrates MSNBC's larger problem: It's a political talk show. Every other TV morning show is mostly fluff and weather. "Morning Joe," instead of entertainment news updates, has a former member of Congress wave a newspaper at Mark Halperin for a while. MSNBC's target audience may just be much less interested in listening to people talk about politics in spring 2013 than they were during an election year.

What would you rather wake up to: a perky news anchor shitting rainbows about traffic, weather, and the latest on Justin Bieber, or Joe Scarborough ranting to Mark Halperin about Benghazi! and the socialism of Obamacare? Granted, the morning crew at Fox and Friends isn't exactly Mensa in the Morning, but at least they're sitting on a couch.

MSNBC's biggest problem is that their target audience — progressives or at least those who don't care for Fox's rabid partisanship — aren't a mass communication major market. They don't listen to talk radio unless it's interrupted by a pledge drive:

MSNBC is actually making some good decisions, lately, from the point of view of someone who'd like (talking head) cable news to be better. And anyone who says the network's failing because of liberalism should probably have to account for the fact that the channel's highest-rated show remains Rachel Maddow's. (Followed by O'Donnell, who really is the insufferable smug self-satisfied liberal caricature everyone thinks all of MSNBC is.)

But do you know who watches cable news all day? And at prime time? When there's not an election on, or a war, or some terrorism? Older conservative people. If MSNBC wants better ratings, it'll either have to train a generation to want to pay attention to political years all the time, or it'll have to produce a scripted show about zombies.

Maybe that's why they run "Caught on Tape" all weekend. Add in some undead and you've got a hit.

(Cross-posted at Bark Bark Woof Woof.)

Even Joe Scarborough is making sense on gun control

By Michael J.W. Stickings

Look, he's an irrational blowhard who basks in the supremacy of his gut, and his claim to represent the center with his generally center-right views is ridiculous (if also Broderian Beltway orthodoxy), but he's hardly an ideological extremist of the sort that currently dominates his Republican Party, and his response to the Senate's failure to pass the compromise expanded background checks bill, including a strong critique of the GOP, was nothing if not admirable:

You don't ignore 90 percent of what the voting population wants when you're talking about the safety of Americans, of our families, of our communities, of our schools. The safety that we feel when we send our kids to malls, to churches, to college... I just want to be clear. I said this party is heading towards extinction. Talking about the 2013 version of the Republican Party. A new Republican Party, though, is going to come in its place. This sort of extremism is going to be called out by the 90%. We're the 90% and we are going to win. This is just the first battle.

Well, I hope he's right, though I would note that the Manchin-Toomey proposal wasn't exactly a great bill. Maybe it would have been a start, but a lot more is needed, including reforms that don't have 90% popular support and so require even more "courage" from legislators. (And more than just Obama's proposed executive actions.)

Read more »

Joe Scarborough blasts Ted Cruz, displays characteristic lack of self-awareness

By Michael J.W. Stickings 

ThinkProgress (@thinkprogress) tweeted at 6:00 PM on Fri, Mar 15, 2013: 

Morning Joe blasts Tea Party darling Ted Cruz: "Willfully ignorant," "condescending," "playing to illiterates" (link)

Yes, Cruz is an ignorant goon, but there's a reason he's so popular among conservatives, which has become an ideology of ignorant goonery, not to mention a rising superstar in Joe's own Republican Party, and, what's more, if Joe "my gut is smarter than Paul Krugman" Scarborough really wants to see some willful ignorance, condescension, and playing to illiteracy, he should take a good long look in the mirror sometime, or maybe watch himself on the teevee, because you know what they say about those living in glass houses.

There is no long-term budget problem

By Frank Moraes 

Alan Blinder is a economics and public affairs professor at Princeton. Recently, he got placed in the middle of the argument between Paul Krugman and Joe Scarborough when Scarborough claimed that Blinder was on his side. Blinder didn't like that much. Yesterday, he wrote a short article at Politico, "Morning Joe's Accuracy Deficit." He says that he and Krugman only disagree about some very minor details.

Blinder claims there are three issues regarding the budget. In the short term, we are already doing too much deficit reduction. In the medium term (ten years), we have already done about what we should do. And in the long term, things are going to be very bad indeed. He is right about all this. The problem is that, like most people (including Krugman at times), when it comes to the long term, he is being deceptive.

In his new book, After the Music Stopped, Blinder claims:

The government can cover no more than a small fraction of the projected deficits by raising taxes. Sorry, Democrats, but the Republicans are right on this one. Americans are used to federal taxes running about 18.5 percent of GDP; they will not allow them to rise to 32 percent of GDP. Never mind that a number of European countries do so; we won't.

Read more »

Unreasonable reasonable Republicans

By Frank Moraes 

(Ed. note: See also Chait's follow-up, after Scarborough threw a tantrum at him yesterday morning, "Joe Scarborough Hates Moms, PowerPoint." -- MJWS)

Do you know who is a real Reasonable Republican? Joe Scarborough. And that pretty much explains why the search for the lauded Reasonable Republican is such a foolish errand. When you find them, they simply have all the stupid policy prescriptions of other Republicans but don't think that rape victims ought to have to carry their pregnancies to term.

Of course, in Scarborough's case, since he isn't in office, his thinking has been heavily influenced the Very Serious People in Washington. This was fully on display a couple of weeks ago when Paul Krugman came on Morning Joe to discuss the economy. Scarborough just could not understand what Krugman was talking about. How could the budget deficit not be the most important issue facing the nation when everyone Joe knows thinks it is?!

You think I'm kidding? After the show, Scarborough took to Politico to write a column, "Paul Krugman Vs. the World." In it, he wrote: 

But maintaining calm was not as easy for Council on Foreign Relations president Richard Haass, who agrees with former Joint Chief chairman Michael Mullen, that longterm debt poses the greatest threat to America's national security.

In other words: "I've talked to other people who know nothing about economics and they agree with me!"

Read more »

Wishful thinking

By Mustang Bobby

David Brooks sees a glimmer of hope for the Republicans: 

Over the past month, the Republican Party has changed far more than I expected. First, the people at the ideological extremes of the party have begun to self-ghettoize. The Tea Party movement attracted many people who are drawn to black and white certainties and lock-step unity. People like that have a tendency to migrate from mainstream politics, which is inevitably messy and impure, to ever more marginal oases of purity.

Jim DeMint, for example, is leaving the Senate to go lead the Heritage Foundation. He is leaving the center of the action, where immigration, tax and other reforms will be crafted, for a political advocacy organization known more for ideological purity and fund-raising prowess than for creativity, curiosity or intellectual innovation.

Second, politics is being reborn. For a time, Republican candidates like Richard Mourdock of Indiana proudly declared that they didn't believe in compromise. Political activists spent more time purging deviationists than in trying to attract new converts.

But that mania has passed. There are increasing signs that House Republicans are willing to unite behind Speaker John Boehner so he can cut a deal to avert the "fiscal cliff." There has been an epidemic of open-mindedness as Republicans try to win minority votes and create a version of their party that can be competitive in states like Connecticut and California.

[...]

The Republicans may still blow it. If President Obama is flexible and they don't meet him partway, Republicans would contribute to a recession that would discredit them for a decade. But they are moving in the right direction and moving fast. These are first steps, and encouraging ones.

In other words, when you've had the snot beaten out of you with a sockful of horse manure by an electorate that is tired of your demonization, racism, and xenophobia, it might be a good idea to rethink your business plan. 

Read more »

Tarnishing Silver

By Mustang Bobby

I'll bet Nate Silver predicted this, too: 

The New York Times' Nate Silver has created a model to predict the outcome of the presidential election that's watched by just about every pundit, and yet Silver's model refuses to perfectly reflect the conventional wisdom spouted by just about every pundit. The pundits do not like this! Silver's FiveThirtyEight model uses math to show that President Obama has a 74.6 percent chance of beating Mitt Romney, even though Romney has unmeasurable things like "momentum" as well as newspaper endorsements, plus a lead in several national polls. Obama's chances remain high, Silver explains, because he has a significant lead in enough swing states to win the needed 270 electoral college votes. The latest pundit outraged that Silver's model doesn't feel right is MSNBC's Joe Scarborough, who ranted Monday morning:

Nate Silver says this is a 73.6 percent chance that the president's going to win. Nobody in that campaign thinks they have a 73.6 percent — they think they have a 50.1 percent chance of winning.

...Anybody that thinks that this race is anything but a tossup right now is such an ideologue [that] they should be kept away from typewriters, computers, laptops, and microphones for the next ten days, because they're jokes.

Scarborough is very committed to defending what feels true to him, even when it's not true.

I have no way of affirming or refuting anything Nate Silver has stated, and even he has said that he's only putting out what his algorithms are coming up with. But his track record in 2008 and 2010 was close enough to the actual outcome that unless someone comes up with actual proof — as opposed to Joe Scarborough's guts — that Mr. Silver is wrong, they should clam up and let the guy do his job.

Obviously, the people who don't like what he's writing are the ones who are complaining, and if it was Mitt Romney with the 73.6% chance of winning, the Republicans would be calling Mr. Silver the Oracle of Delphi. They sure loved him in 2010.

Mr. Silver seems to be shrugging off the attacks:

He acknowledges that his reputation, made as it was in the last election cycle when he correctly predicted 49 out of 50 states, could just as easily be tarnished this time.

"I'm sure that I have a lot riding on the outcome. I'm also sure I'll get too much credit if the prediction is right and too much blame if it is wrong," he said.

There are a couple of reasons why I hope he's right. Obviously I take comfort in his prediction of an Obama win, but I also think that it lends credence to the simple but powerful idea that I first learned at the hands of the late Margaret Cahill in Grade 5: math doesn't lie.

(Cross-posted at Bark Bark Woof Woof.)

Morning Joe on yet another embarrassing Romney moment: "Sweet Jesus."

By Michael J.W. Stickings

Mustang Bobby put this up at his place yesterday. If you missed it, it's well worth watching, not just for the pathetic Romney embarrassing himself yet again but for Joe Scarborough's telling reaction of incredulity and resignation.

Which raises the question: Romney is the worst major-party presidential candidate since _______ ?

Is it Dukakis? (I think Romney's worse, but it's close.) Mondale? (At least he had some gravitas.) McGovern? (Maybe, but at least he had a ton of progressive credibility.)

So how far back do we have to go?

After all, the only thing keeping this race even somewhat close is the struggling economy, and that has nothing to do with Romney. Imagine how far ahead Obama would be if the economy were even just a tiny bit stronger at the moment.

So maybe Willkie in 1940, a business-oriented moderate who had to secure the support of right-wing isolationists in the GOP (yup, sounds a bit like Romney). But no. He, at least, was respectable out on the campaign trail, even if he stood little chance against FDR.

I'll go with Landon in 1936, another business-oriented type and by all accounts a terrible campaigner and generally inept politician. But even then, he didn't constantly embarrass himself, unlike Romney. He just didn't campaign for long stretches at a time, including for two months after he won the Republican nomination, and FDR crushed him in the election. He won only Maine and Vermont, losing the Electoral College vote 523 to 8.

Perhaps he was worse than Romney. Perhaps.

Self-righteousness, thy name is Joe (Scarborough)

By Richard K. Barry 

The show is named after me, and
the facts are what I say they are.

As I wrote recently, Joe Scarborough, of MSNBC's Morning Joe, went on a tear about coverage in The New York Times's Home section of Mitt Romney's ostentatious California dwelling. He claimed, incorrectly, as it turned out, that the Times was treating Romney fundamentally differently than it treated earlier Democratic candidates. 

As Salon.com described it:

Morning Joe Scarborough angrily rambled at length about a Times Story – on the front page of the Home section — about Mitt Romney's big, tacky house, and how his neighbors hate him and he is always calling the cops on people who smoke weed on the beach. The main problem is, Romney bought a big, expensive house by the beach, and then decided to quadruple its size, and predictably his neighbors have complaints about this.

As Alex Pareene continued:

This made Joe Scarborough mad for about 20 minutes, that this story was published, because in his imagination the New York Times would never publish a story like this about a liberal. That is false, obviously, as the Times pointed out a bit later in a statement that linked to four separate 2004 stories about... John Kerry being super rich. You and I may remember a veritable sea of coverage of Kerry’s prodigious wealth, from basically every source imaginable.

The fact that Scarborough was simply wrong about the bias didn't slow him down a bit. He continued to argue that he is right because has a general impression that he is right. Wouldn't want to confuse Joe with the facts.

To compound the absurdity of this, Scarborough added that The New York Times was "thin-skinned" for taking offence. It's a news organization being accused of bias by the host of a popular public affairs program based on nothing but his gut. I don't think a push-back says anything about the relative thickness of their skin.

I can only say that I saw the program on which all this happened. Scarborough was at his self-righteous worst. He was clearly bullying other panelists, some of whom were not agreeing with him.

Just say you were wrong, Joe. Give it a shot. It's a skill that would come in handy for you.

(Cross-posted at Lippmann's Ghost.)

Mitt Romney chose to make his own wealth a campaign issue

By Richard K. Barry

I know we are supposed to be impressed that MSNBC, the "liberal network," has a morning show hosted by a former Republican congressman, Joe Scarborough, who doesn't always agree with the more insane ramblings of his party. How nice.

Time was that someone like Scarborough would have been seen for what he is, a rigidly partisan conservative. Now that the Republican Party has moved so far to the crazy right, we are supposed to see Morning Joe as reasonable. Not for me, thank you.

Today's rant from Scarborough was all about how The New York Times is doing a full-court press reporting Mitt Romney's wealth in a way that they did not, for example, criticize John Kerry's wealth during the 2004 campaign.

Joe went on and on about this. The other panelists tip-toed around Joe, who must have hiring and firing discretion on the show, and everyone missed the point.

Romney is the one making his business success an issue. He is the one saying his excessive wealth makes him the best choice to lead the country. He's the one who is saying his career choices and experience make him better able to understand the economy and what people need to succeed. He's the one peddling the old discredited theory of trickle down economics, suggesting that we only need to make the rich richer and everyone will benefit. He's the one saying, in other words, that excessive wealth is a wonderful thing, implying that we should look at him for proof.

Romney has made his own wealth, his own success, the centerpiece of his resume. The press have every right to ask what manner of man he is and how well he would, in fact, relate to the middle class or even less well-off citizens.

Scarborough's problem seems to be that he doesn't want the press reporting the facts.

Who Romney is, what manner of man he is, is important because it tells us what kinds of decisions he might make in office. This is equally true of Obama to the extent that his experience and attributes relate to how he might govern.

If John Kerry had suggested that his personal wealth and success were an important reasons to vote for him, the press would have, I suspect, made more of it.

When Romney makes his own success in business an essential issue, too bad that he can't control how everyone in the press reports it. Not everyone is Fox News or Joe Scarborough.

(Cross-posted at Lippmann's Ghost.)

Joe Scarborough says progressives didn't really want to take out bin Laden

By Richard K. Barry

Could Joe Scarborough be a bigger idiot? I have my doubts.

Each day after breakfast I turn on Morning Joe because I enjoy MSNBC's evening lineup and I assume, incorrectly, that the morning show will begin to approach the same level of discourse found on the network after 6:00 p.m. I am almost always disappointed, but I never seem to learn.

One of my favorite moments ever on the show was when Zbignew Brzezinski, National Security Advisor under Jimmy Carter, once referred to some choice analysis by Scarborough as "stunningly superficial and embarrassing." That pretty much sums up most things that come out of Joe's mouth.

The latest is Scarborough's opinion that Obama's successful mission to eliminate Osama bin Laden runs counter to the ideology of the president's base and even goes against the president's own ideological leanings.

Here's his statement:

Here, you know, I think Republicans should stand up and certainly salute Barack Obama for making some - again, for making some very tough choices that his own base did not want him to make. That takes courage, that takes leadership, and we saw the results of that courage and leadership saying no to his own base yesterday.

[These are] decisions that he probably did not believe as a candidate, he didn't think he'd have to make. Going against his own ideological leanings to do what he believes he has to do. 

What the fuck is he talking about?

The conceit of the right is so frequently that only they are capable of making hard choices and difficult decisions rooted in reality - that the "real world" is not a place in which progressives comfortably reside. And when progressives do make difficult decisions, it's somehow surprising.

Unlike Mr. Scarborough, I am not going to speak for all those who may consider themselves a part of Obama's base. As for myself, as a member of the club, I'm pretty proud of my president. I suspect a lot of other progressives feel the same way. The thing had to be done.

Having the ability to do the difficult tasks required as Commander-in-Chief is not a "right" and "left" thing. It's a leadership thing.

In the event that you want to be as annoyed as I am at the moment, here's the full clip:

(Cross-posted at Lippmann's Ghost.)

No labels? No thank you

By R.K. Barry 

When I find myself agreeing with conservative pundit George Will, it might be time to walk away from the computer. What can I say? But we do seem to agree about one thing and that is that this new group of moderate conservatives, calling themselves "No Labels," who have come together to give us all a good tongue-lashing for our hyper-partisanship, is a goofy bunch. 

Here is the mission statement for the group:

No Labels is a 501(c)(4) social welfare advocacy organization created to provide a voice for America's vital center, where ideas are judged on their merits, a position which is underrepresented in our current politics. No Labels provides a forum and community for Americans of all political backgrounds interested in seeing the nation move not left, not right, but forward. No Labels encourages all public officials to prioritize the national interest over party interest, and to cease acting on behalf of narrow, if vocal, special interests on the far right or left. 

Here is what Mr. Will has to say about them: 

People have different political sensibilities; they cluster and the clusters are called parties. They have distinctive understandings of the meaning and relative importance of liberty, equality and other matters. Politics is given weight, and motion is imparted to democracy, by intensely interested factions composed of people who are partisans of various causes. 

Yup, there it is. I agree with George Will. That, all on its own, may be proof that left and right can work together. (Just kidding.) But Will's point is that these people have no understanding of what politics is and that the kind of agreement that they think exists at the vital centre of American life, isn't there – and that is not a bad thing. Political partisanship is what makes democracy work.

To add a bit more clarity, I draw your attention to a comment made by MSNBC political commentator Joe Scarborough, one of the principles of No Labels, who offers this:

We govern in the middle. We always have. With apologies to Arthur Schlesinger, there’s not a pendulum swing ideologically in America. America stays in the middle, and we saw it. When you go too far left, they slap you back and when Republicans go too far right, they slap you back as well, into the center. 

What Scarborough seems to be suggesting is that there is a true and identifiable "general will" of the American people that is politically centrist and that Democrats and Republicans would do well to focus their energies on keeping it happy. He also seems to suggest that this general will has a clear idea of what public policies it would support and those it would reject and politicians need only work together, as good technocrats, to give effect to its interests.

George Will, as a trained political philosopher, probably has a pretty good idea that Joe Scarborough is full of crap. Hence Will's comment that people have very different ideas about the meaning of some extremely important ideas like liberty, equality, justice, fairness, morality, etc., etc. Politics is, as he says, all about "intensely interested factions composed of people who are partisans of various causes."

If Scarborough and his "No Label" friends only mean to say that we should try harder to understand each other to see if we can reach a working and reasonable accommodation about things where absolute agreement is unlikely, then okay, fine. I don't think we need a new 501(c) (4) social welfare advocacy organization for that, but fine. Knock yourself out.

But if he thinks that those on the right and left are simply conspiring to thwart the clear will of the people for the sake of narrow partisan and illegitimate interests, he and his friends are not serious people.

Speaking only for myself, I am on the left and will never stop trying to convince people, through legal and generally civil means, that wealth and power is concentrated in America to an extent that makes real democracy difficult; that equality is impossible if the rules of the game are rigged; that liberty is empty if we don't share the resources needed to make our desires effective; and that justice has far too much to do with how much money you have in your pocket. 

This also means that I have a lot invested in challenging the status quo. And I doubt that the "No Labelers" would consider a challenge to the status quo, at least in any meaningful way, acceptable. My guess is that the status quo is what they mean by the "vital center," and making the machine function in a more amicable way is about as ambitious as they intend to get. 

What they also mean is that the vital center should be defined by the values that the "No Labelers" hold. It wouldn't be the first time that the particular values of those holding power in society were represented as the universal values of everybody. Whenever I hear someone trying to tell us what the American people, taken as a whole, believe, I know it's time to run for cover.

This is the oldest trick in the political play book. Everybody else is biased in their political views and values, but the views that I and my friends hold define the good itself. No thank you.

At a minimum, labels are, as Will notes, a shorthand for how people feel about some pretty important issues, for which there may be little basis for agreement. The "No Labels" movement, and every other "beyond left and right" movement wants to gloss over this important fact.

To repeat, politics is not a technical exercise among like minds to implement in policy the values that we obviously share. There is no such agreement. There is no "general will." Politics is the fight over whose values will prevail. Labels are simply a useful shorthand for telling us who our potential allies and opponents are. If we stopped using the ones currently in vogue, we would need to invent others to replace them.

Again, if this is all about the fact that we should have more respect for good process, that's fine. But please stop saying that moving beyond left and right is necessarily the same as moving forward. It isn't. It's just an argument for de-clawing political opposition and for embracing business as usual.

I'll bet partisans on the left and right can agree at least about that much. 

(Cross-posted to Lippmann's Ghost.)

Scarborough slams Palin

By Michael J.W. Stickings

Far be it from me to heap any praise on Joe Scarborough -- I generally consider him a slimy creep -- but sometimes, you gotta admit, he's right:

Republicans have a problem. The most-talked-about figure in the GOP is a reality show star who cannot be elected. And yet the same leaders who fret that Sarah Palin could devastate their party in 2012 are too scared to say in public what they all complain about in private.

Enough. It's time for the GOP to man up.

I hate the phrase "man up," but otherwise this is a solid assessment of the current state of the GOP. For all the anti-Obama obstructionism and right-wing ideology, it's basically the party of Sarah Palin (and "Sarah Palin"). She's become the de facto leader of the party, and, while I do think some of us (yes, I include myself) spend too much time on her, it's important not to give her, or her party, a free pass.

And, actually, I would prefer that she remain a prominent, if not the most prominent, Republican -- because I think Scarborough is right. She could very well "devastate" the party. I still don't think she'll run for president, but even being a prominent player -- a kingmaker, of sorts, the one will anoint the 2012 nominee -- could be enough to derail the party (as if its extremism isn't enough).

This is the woman, after all, who backed such utterly un-electable candidates this year as Sharron Angle and Christine O'Donnell, not to mention Joe Miller and John Raese. Some of her chosen candidates won, like Rand Paul, but they probably would have won anyway. Her record, simply, has been poor, largely because she gravitates towards those like her, bitter, resentful, extremist outsiders who resonate with the Tea Party but not so much with the GOP establishment, let alone with independents or conservative Democrats.

Anyway, Jonathan Chait is right to note that some Republicans have already challenged/criticized Palin: Karl Rove, Peggy Noonan, Barbara Bush (for what that's worth), and The Weekly Standard's Matt Labash. The "manning up," in other words, has already begun. Other than Rep. Spencer Bachus, though, who blamed the Republicans not winning the Senate on Palin (which is a bit of a stretch, but not much), "elected Republicans, and especially Republican presidential candidates, have shied away from attacking Palin on the record." That presumably was part of Scarborough's point.

And as long as Palin remains so popular with Republicans, specifically with the two main components of the base -- social conservatives and teabaggers -- elected Republicans, particularly those in the House who may want her endorsement in 2012 (whether she runs or not) and those eyeing the presidency, won't dare come out against her in any significant way. Her wrath, channelled through Facebook and Fox News, is enough to scare any self-regarding Republican into submission.

And there, if you're a Republican who actually cares about the future of your party as something other than a repository of right-wing insanity, is the problem.

L'affaire Olbermann

By Michael J.W. Stickings

UPDATED HERE: Olbermann will be back on the air on Tuesday.

**********

I don't really have much to say about MSNBC's suspension of Keith Olbermann for contributing money to Democratic candidates. Obviously, it's ridiculous. Here are a few points:

1) As Think Progress has noted, MSNBC, as part of NBC, may soon be taken over by Comcast. The deal is currently awaiting regulatory approval from the FCC. Comcast's COO, Steve Burke, who will be in charge of MSNBC (along with other NBC companies), was a Bush fundraiser.

2) Olbermann supposed broke NBC rules in doing what he did. As Think Progress has also noted, however:

[C]onservative MSNBC host Joe Scarborough has donated to Republican candidates for Congress while promoting the same candidate on air, but has never been disciplined. Moreover, Gawker notes that MSNBC has been exempt from the formal NBC ethics rules for years. It is still a mystery why MSNBC selectively applied NBC's ethics rules to Olbermann.

3) Scarborough is hardly alone. Another major MSNBC figure, Pat Buchanan, has donated to Republican candidates -- and was, of course, a leading Republican.

4) As Politico has reported, what Olbermann did is pretty common on the cable news networks, whether it's Hannity on Fox News or Begala on CNN. And, of course, Fox News is unabashedly partisan. (Obviously, it behooves MSNBC to hold itself to higher standards than Fox News, but Olbermann is an opinion journalist, a pundit with a TV show, not an anchor or reporter, and we all know where he's coming from politically. We don't expect non-partisanship from him, we don't want non-partisanship from him, so who cares if he donates to political candidates? How does this impact his credibility? (It doesn't, at all.)

5) Suspension -- and, worse, suspension without pay -- seems awfully harsh, not least given what others at the network have done? Why is Olbermann being made an example of? Why is he being treated more harshly than others? One cannot help but suspect some ulterior political motive. As Steve Benen writes, "an indefinite suspension without pay seems way over the top under the circumstances. We are, after all, talking about three checks -- one each for three candidates. As we talked about earlier, the MSNBC host's donations were made in his personal capacity; he disclosed his contributions; and he never encouraged others to support these campaigns." Furthermore, Steve continues, MSNBC claims that such rules are necessary "because political activities may 'jeopardize [employees'] standing as an impartial journalist.' But therein lies the point -- those who watch Olbermann are well aware of his politics. Psst -- no one considers him 'impartial.'" No kidding.

6) MSNBC suspends Olbermann but has no problem putting Buchanan on the air? It's not just that the guy's a crazy pitchfork populist of the far right, it's that he's a WWII/Holocaust revisionist, a racist, a nativist, and a Hitler apologist. How is this acceptable?

7) Even Krazy Bill Kristol thinks MSNBC is in the wrong:

MSNBC's suspension of Keith Olbermann is ludicrous.

First, he donated money to candidates he liked. He didn't take money, or favors, in a way that influenced his reporting.

Second, he's not a reporter. It's an opinion show. If Olbermann wants to put his money where his mouth is, more power to him.

Third, GE, the corporate parent of MSNBC, gives money to political organizations. GE executives and, I'm sure, NBC executives give money. Why can't Olbermann?

Perhaps Olbermann violated NBC News "policy and standards." But NBC doesn't have real news standards for MSNBC -- otherwise the channel wouldn't exist. It's a little strange to get all high and mighty now.

But there's now a Republican House, and perhaps GE is trying to curry favor by dumping Olbermann?

Republicans of the world, show you believe in the free expression of opinion! Tell the crony corporatists at NBC -- keep Keith!

I can't remember the last time I agreed with Kristol -- except for his jab at MSNBC for not having "real news standards." Surely, even as a mostly opinion-oriented network, it can have "real news standards" for some of its programming/content, whatever "real" means. Besides, it is also ludicrous to suggest that there is equivalency between MSNBC and Fox News. Yes, MSNBC is generally liberal in terms of its opinion programming, but it's not nearly as partisan as Fox News, which is effectively an organ of the Republican Party.

Of course, Kristol has a partisan agenda. He always does. As Steve M. of NMMNB explains:

Yeah, right. More like: Republicans of the world, don't let MSNBC actually fire Keith -- what if that starts a media-wide craze for holding political talking heads to higher standards? How do we then keep Karl Rove, whose organization basically replaced the RNC as a fund-raising arm of the GOP, on the air at Fox, not to mention practically all the A-list Republican presidential candidates? How do we justify everything else Fox and its hosts do to enrich the GOP and Republican-linked groups, including the tea party movement (which, last time I looked, was 99% Republican, if not 100%)?

I think Kristol's worried about nothing -- no one ever holds Republicans to standards like this. But I'm sure he's doing this out of group self-interest, not out of any sense of fairness or generosity of spirit.

I agree, but that doesn't make him wrong about Olbermann.

Basically, I have no problem with Olbermann giving money to Democratic candidates, but we should also expose everything Fox News does to support Republican and conservative causes -- remember, for example, when News Corp. gave $1 million to the Republican Governors Association? (As Steve Benen wrote prior to the suspension, "[t]here's a reasonable debate to be had over the propriety of media professionals donating to political candidates," just as there is, I would add, over the partisanization of journalism generally, but let's not start by making Olbermann a scapegoat while this sort of thing goes on all the time, especially at Fox News.)

Anyway, if CNN knew what was good for it, it would try to hire Olbermann and Maddow away from MSNBC as quickly as possible and reinvent itself as a reality-based alternative to Fox News. But it won't, of course, and ultimately, I suspect, Olbermann will be back on Countdown sooner rather than later. This is not just a terrible and hypocritical move, after all, but a possibly suicidal one for MSNBC. Thankfully, there are many voices of reason, including some that are usually so unreasonable, rising up in opposition to the suspension and in support of one of our mow important political commentators.

MSNBC blacklists Kos: A tale of murder, Twitter, and media double standards

By Michael J.W. Stickings

Did you know that in 2001, around the time Chandra Levy, an intern at the Federal Bureau of Prisons, disappeared and media attention focused on Democratic Rep. Gary Condit, with whom Levy, who was from Condit's district, had had an affair, there was another serious incident, if one that received far less attention, involving a young woman, one Lori Klausutis, who worked for then-Rep. Joe Scarborough, now a big-shot MSNBC host?

I didn't either, until I read about Markos "Kos" Moulitsas being blacklisted from MSNBC.

It's still not clear what happened, but the 28-year-old Klausutis died at Scarborough's office in Fort Walton Beach, Florida. The mystery surrounds how she died, and if anyone else was involved. Conspiracy theories abound that Scarborough himself was involved, but nothing, it seems, has ever come of them. Kos wrote about the incident back in 2005.

Well, as Kos writes, Scarborough was all over the Joe Sestak "scandal" (the allegation that the White House offered Sestak a job to keep him from challenging Republican-turned-Democrat Arlen Specter in this year's Pennsylvania Senate race. (Sestak challenged and won the nomination.) Scarborough accused the media of neglecting to give the story, such as it was one, its due. In response, Kos tweeted: "Like story of a certain dead intern..." Scarborough fired back, accusing Kos of having "a long history of spreading lies" and of calling him a murderer. Kos replied that he had never called Scarborough a murder, noting that the issue was "media hypocrisy": "But he was Dem. You aren't."

Maybe there's nothing to the conspiracy theories, but Kos certainly wasn't pushing them. Rather, all he did was bring up the lack of media coverage of Klausutis's death. But that was enough to send Scarborough over the edge, and the upshot is that Kos has been blacklisted from MSNBC. As MSNBC head Phil Griffin put it in a statement reprinted (in full) by Kos:

Yes, after I became aware of the ugly cheap shot  you  took at Joe on Twitter, I asked the teams to take a break from booking you on our shows for a while. I found the comments to be in poor taste, and utterly uncalled for in a civil discourse.

I'm hoping this will be only temporary and that the situation can be resolved in a mature fashion, but until then I just don't know how one could reasonably expect to be welcomed onto our network while publicly antagonizing one of our hosts at the same time.

The DailyKos community has been among the most supportive of MSNBC, and we continue to appreciate that support.

Well, a lot of people antagonize MSNBC hosts. Are you not welcome on the network if you've ever criticized Chris Matthews or Rachel Maddow or Keith Olbermann? And, again, it's not like Kos called Scarborough a murderer. All he did was bring up a subject that Scarborough finds uncomfortable, one for obvious reasons he would rather consign forever to the dustbin of his own sordid past, far away from prying eyes.

What Kos is getting at here is that there appears to be a double standard, just as there was with the coverage of Levy/Klausutis, one driven by partisanship and ideology. And it's all about the media giving conservatives a free pass. It may not be clear-cut, and there may be exceptions to it, but that doesn't mean it isn't there.

Meanwhile, the Kos-Scarborough flare-up probably could have been handled more maturely, but it's really only Kos's first tweet that went a bit too far (if anything, he could have been more tactful). After that, it was Scarborough who lost it, throwing a "temper tantrum" and complaining to his boss (who "lets Scarborough call the shots" and so who was bound to side with his low-rated morning host).

Regardless, it's pretty stupid for MSNBC to blacklist a major progressive voice and new media icon like Markos Moulitsas. It would do well to rethink its priorities, and to think through its double standards.

Uncivil war

By Mustang Bobby

Media Matters totes up the number of Republicans and moderate conservatives who are worried that the public might get the wrong idea about them because of the likes of Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh:

As Eric Boehlert pointed out earlier today, a significant fissure is opening up on the Right. The increasing influence of extremists like Fox News' Glenn Beck and radio host Rush Limbaugh has shaken more mainstream conservatives who are searching for a new set of leaders -- and the conservative establishment is lashing out. Consider some of the recent comments from prominent conservative media personalities and elected officials:

* Conservative New York Times columnist David Brooks describing Beck, Limbaugh, and radio talker Mark Levin as "loons" who are "harmful for America."

* Former Bush and McCain adviser Mark McKinnon denouncing Levin's "jaw-dropping hate language about the president."

* MSNBC commentator and former Republican Congressman Joe Scarborough blasting Limbaugh's cheers after Chicago lost its Olympic bid: "Republicans have gone off the deep end"

These are just a few examples of a serious trend. Right-wing media figures are now routinely attacking each other's tactics and relevancy. On Friday, Brooks (nonsensically) dedicated an entire column to explaining why conservative media leaders like Beck and Limbaugh are not worthy of attention. He argued that we are once again witnessing "the story of media mavens who claim to represent a hidden majority but who in fact represent a mere niche -- even of the Republican Party." It's a point he made several weeks earlier, when he said that "[i]f the Republican Party is sane, they will say no to these people."

Much as I would like to agree, I think it's a little much to describe this as a "serious trend" for the conservatives; not that they're not over the top on their attacks on President Obama (and I'm still not buying Joe Scarborough's usual tactic of saying that the Democrats were just as bad to President Bush), but that this sort of distancing by the more grown-up members of the conservative community of their misbehaving miscreants is a sign of a fissure in the right wing. It's both a little tepid and a little late, and leaves the impression that they're doing it more out of a sense of obligation rather than a real sense of revulsion for some of the more hateful stuff that gets out there. Of course they're going to say that neither Mr. Beck nor Mr. Limbaugh speak for the party; that would affirm that they don't have anyone in the party that does. But they were all too happy to welcome Rush Limbaugh as an honorary Member of Congress when it suited them.

What I think is really going on here is typical CYA so that when either Glenn Beck goes completely off the deep end or some viewer of his takes up the notion that it is his God-given duty to do something evil to the first black man elected as president, they will be able to say "Hey, we warned you about this and we had nothing to do with it." It's not that they really care about how rotten and uncivil the discourse has gotten; they just don't want to get blamed for it when it leads to an inevitable and tragic climax.

(Cross-posted from Bark Bark Woof Woof.)

Joe Scarborough's self-righteous bull

By Creature



Joe, I can only hope that high horse you are riding throws you head first into a puddle of mud real soon.

Hey Morning Joke, Cheetos are made by a successful unionized company!

By J. Thomas Duffy

Morning Joke, and the Sergeant Demetrio López García-like sidekick, Mika Brezninski, to Morning Joke's "Zero" (along with NYT's Andrew Ross Sorkin), were really bucking today for a Garlic's "Instant Ignorant Dolt" designation.



Apparently, their Morning Joke Show got into a discussion about labor, and unions, and then displayed their challenged mental capacities.

From Jamison Foser, at Media Matters: "Morning Joe journos can't name a successful unionized company, even though one signs their paychecks":

The Morning Joe crew was on an anti-union tear this morning, claiming the union label on a company means "sell." Mika Brzezinski went so far as to say of unions: "They cripple the system that makes a company work." Collectively, the journalists on Morning Joe couldn't name a single "successful" unionized company.

[snip]

Oh, what the heck, let's take one more example. GE is one of the world's largest companies; in 2006, its revenues were greater than the gross domestic products of 80 percent of UN nations. The company made more than $18 billion in 2008 -- again, billion with a b, and again, those are profits, not revenue. All that despite (or, perhaps, because of) the fact that 13 different unions represent GE workers.

Oh, and GE owns NBC-Universal, which owns MSNBC, which pays Joe Scarborough a handsome salary (and the unionized workers who help get his show on the air considerably less.)

Does Joe Scarborough think NBC and GE are not "successful" companies? Does Mika Brzezinski think the unionized workers she no doubt interacts with every day are crippling her ability to do her job, or her employer's ability to be successful?

[snip]

If Andrew Ross Sorkin's name sounds familiar, that's probably because he's the reporter who started the myth about the average GM worker being paid $70 an hour. MSNBC's Keith Olbermann named him "Worst Person in the World" for that bit of blatantly false anti-union, anti-worker propaganda.

WHAP! ... Headslap!



Brian Beutler, over at TPMDC, with "Hoffa: Sorkin and Morning Joe Show Complete Failure To Understand":

Unions are aghast. "Sorkin and the Morning Joe crew just showed their complete failure to understand how unions contribute to the success of the American economy by blindly assuming that unionized companies haven't been profitable in the last year," said James Hoffa, General President of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, in a statement to TPMDC.

Off the top of my head I can give you several Teamster-represented companies who continue to thrive, despite the economic downturn, but there are thousands more: UPS, Eight O'Clock Coffee, Coca-Cola Enterprises, PepsiCo, Anheuser-Busch and MillerCoors. The Morning Joe team really should be embarrassed for showing their lack of knowledge on the subject.

Not only that, but jumpin' Jesus, for Morning Joke himself, this should have been a gimme.

Cheetos are made by Frito-Lay, which is owned by PepsiCo, one of the successful union companys named above.

Morning Joke sure should have remembered Cheetos:

Scarborough Defends McCain, Criticizes Bloggers ‘Eating Cheetos’ In Their ‘Underwear’

As for Mika, well, just company for Morning Joke, I guess ...

She should be listening to her daddy.


Bonus Morning Joke Riffs

Matthew Yglesias: Morning Joe Crew Can’t Name a Single Successful Unionized Firm

Steve Benen: UNION-BASHING GONE AWRY...

David Kurtz: Your Corporate Media

Top Ten Cloves: Things Joe Scarborough Likes To Eat and Wear When Sitting At Computer

Get A Shovel! ... Olbermann Disses Scarborough, On-Air

Morning Joke Teachs Thousands of Kids To Swear! ...Or: Blame It On The Cheetos, Joe ...




(Cross-posted at The Garlic.)

Why doesn't anyone really talk health care?

By Edward Copeland

What I'm about to say may strike some as heretical, but I believe it must be said and the moment for it being said is way overdue. First, I'll admit that it is outrageous that so many lack health insurance or are underinsured. I'll also recognize that there are many insurance horror stories to be found concerning pre-existing conditions and rising premiums. Now, here comes my sacrilege: A great deal of the time, for those lucky enough to have health insurance, the insurers are the good guys. The bad guys? Hospitals. Doctors. All other aspects of the health care industry.

My first-hand experience could be dismissed as anecdotal but I've heard so many nitwits speak out their ass about the subject that I feel I have to speak up. One morning on MSNBC, Joe Scarborough said that people are going to have to accept that they can't have a second CAT scan just because they want one. Ask yourself: Have you ever known anyone who wanted a second medical test, especially one they just had? Other than hypochondriacs that is. What a ridiculous comment. Last year, during three-and-a-half-months I had to spend in the hospital, I had to have an ultrasound on my right leg two days in a row. Was it because I loved the test so much I had to have it again? No. It was because a clerical error had them do it on my veins the first day when they were supposed to it on my arteries. It took months of fighting with the hospital and the separate billing unit that performed the test to get the cost of the incorrect test taken off. The insurance would have paid anyway, at no cost to us, if we hadn't fought, but we'd built up a good relationship with our insurance case manager.

I have primary progressive multiple sclerosis. Following bladder surgery last year, I ended up with a pressure wound that hospitalized me for three and a half months and continues to keep me bedridden. Because of careful recordkeeping by myself and my father, we discovered duplicate billing, overcharges, charges for things that didn't have, etc. by various health care sources that came to a whopping total of more than $24,000. In a local newspaper story here, the CEO of a hospital here, a not-for-profit, religious-affiliated hospital mind you, openly admitted that if he had three patients in adjacent rooms using the same equipment, he would charge them based on their insurance i.e., the better they had, the more they charged. For the same equipment.

If you have medication you take every day, you can't bring them from home. No, the hospital has to supply them so they can make sure they get no generics, at a higher rate that they can stick you for.

I spent 27 days in the first hospital where they did essentially nothing for the wound. There was talk of moving me to a speciality hospital for specialized care, but the hospital lied and said you couldn't do it until after a 27-day mark. Of course, the hospital was lying and could have transferred me within two weeks, but they wanted to squeeze more money out while my wound grew worse in the interim. Profit comes before patient care at most hospitals, where they purposely understaff nurses and support staff, blame the nursing shortage, but save money and let patient care suffer.

I've vented enough. Just remember. Having insurance doesn't solve the health care crisis. Someone needs to crack down on the health care industry, you know, the way they should have done on the banks and Wall Street.

Blue dogs in the Senate

By Creature

Putting aside the matter that Evan Bayh refuses to out some of his Senate colleagues who are joining his new "moderate" coalition in the Senate, what really disturbs me is that upon hearing the news of such a moderate collation Joe Scarborough calls it "great." If an inteluctually dishonest conservative like Joe is on board we know were in for a mess of watered down, ineffectual, status quo loving, center-right legislation. Moderation for moderation's sake may be good politics for some, but it makes for crappy legislation.