Friday, July 31, 2015

More Axes Fall At Comcast's Red-Headed Stepchild Network



As the Republican Party sheds the last tattered scraps of ersatz respectability to let its Inner Brownshirt run nekkid and free...



...and as the direct connection between the rise of Conservative Hate Media, the calculated derangement of the Conservative rank-and-file...



...and the collapse of our capacity for self-government is drawn more clearly and plainly than ever before...
Over at the Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy, where she was a fellow this spring, longtime New York Times political reporter Jackie Calmes has released a long, fascinating discussion paper on the role of the conservative media in this state of affairs: "'They Don’t Give a Damn about Governing': Conservative Media’s Influence on the Republican Party."
...the last freehold of opposition to this avalanching catastrophe on television is getting Another!Exciting!New!Makeover! (h/t Alert Reader Kathleen O'Neill):
MSNBC Confirms Change Is Hard, Chuck Todd In, ‘The Cycle,’ ‘Now With Alex Wagner,’ ‘The Ed Show’ Out
The Rosetta Stone you need to understand why in the name of Sweet Steamboat Jesus clowns like Squint and the Meat Puppet and their entire menagerie of Beltway hacks and buffoons are keeping their sweet, sweet jobs, but Ed Schultz is being handed his walking papers is to be found here (emphasis added):
...
Alex Wagner will stay with MSNBC and play a key role in our political coverage as we head into the 2016 election. And Ari Melber will continue in his role as Chief Legal Correspondent. But we will be parting ways with some friends – Ed Schultz, Krystal Ball, Abby Huntsman and Toure will be leaving MSNBC. Please join me in thanking them for their numerous contributions over the past several years, and in wishing them great success.

Beginning in a few weeks, Chuck Todd will bring his unmatched brand of political insight and analysis back to MSNBC with a daily one-hour program. That show will air weekdays at 5pm.
...
Yeah, if you still have room on your  Wall of Beltway Media Shame, you can mount that giant "Fuck You!" to whatever is left of sentient American right next to the lovely pairing of the very-nearly-pubescent Jonathan Greenberger (ABC's Washington Bureau chief, vice president and executive producer of “This Week with George Stephanopoulos”) sacking a bunch of staffers at ABC just a few months ago  --
Starting today, we launch a new approach to the way we operate, unifying the Bureau into a single team serving every platform within ABC News. As part of this transformation, we will unfortunately have to redefine some jobs and say goodbye to some of our colleagues, as we’ll need fewer people in some operations, engineering and general assignment editorial posts. This decision did not come easily, but we feel it is necessary for the continued strength of our Bureau in a rapidly changing landscape.
-- with the very same Jonathan Greenberger announcing just a year earlier that he had hired Bill "Always Wrong" Kristol because Kristol is a "brilliant, original thinker"


It has never been more obvious that there are certain topics which Organized Money does not want us talking about.  Which means that even as we watch the remnants of "liberal" MSNBC being bagged up and tossed into the same grave as Air America, we are obliged to talk about those things even louder.

13 comments:

Unknown said...

Chuck Todd has political insight? When did that happen?

D. said...

"Tomorrow Belongs to Me" is still a damn scary song.

We're having something of a heat wave here, and I'm shivering.

dinthebeast said...

chaos comin', keep strummin', louder & louder & louder & louder,
whatcha gonna do about it? whatcha gonna do about crazy crazy? whatcha
gonna do about it? whatcha gonna do about dark ages? whatcha gonna do
about nite time? whatcha gonna do about Walter Cronkite? whatcha gonna
do about romance? whatcha gonna do about the economic price index?
whatcha gonna do about llluuuuuv? whatcha gonna do about tense moments?
whatcha gonna do about crazy crazy crazy crazy?
whatcha gonna do about it? (7 times)
War & toxic chemicals and mister Rogers n' true love n' the end of
civilization n' muzak n' the ptl club n' Ronald Reagan n' guns n' the
draft, b52's n' nuclear fission dc-10's n' cancer science fiction brain
control drugs n' sex n' buddha n' 714s 45s eight billion people jesus
krishna n' everybody n' rock and roll surrealism - everything
everything everything everything!
fuck you! we do what we want!

-Jefferson Starship "Stairway to Cleveland"

Unknown said...

Thanks for the acknowledgement, DG. I appreciate it. I realized after I hit "Publish" I referred to Grifter, er, Griffin - as Griffith. Maybe I should become a right winger. This making shit up stuff sure beats the Googles!

Chan Kobun said...

I think they mean insight as in the "sight" he has from "in"side his own colon.

Ivory Bill Woodpecker said...

Meanwhile, in the Corporate Media, Donald Trump shot a lion fetus.

Or something like that.

Lions and fetuses and Trump, oh my!

Belvoir said...

Holy shit, this Jonathan Greenberger at ABC you mentioned is barely 32 years old. And he's running the whole news division? How the hell did that happen? He was appointed at 29! What the freaking hell? Why does ABC News expect children to know about world events etc? What's the opposite of gravitas?

Unknown said...

@Belvoir

Perhaps his superiors think he is the key to growing audience in the all holy and sacred 18 to 39 demographic.

Unknown said...

Shorter MTP as of 10:23 EDT:

Chuckles tells Trump he looks forward to a "deep dive on policy issues".

Tweety, Botox Parker and Guy With Beard: Trump appeals to working people who feel betrayed - not just angry white males. Trump will surprise everyone at debate and offer substantive policy issues (Tweety).

Why am I listening to this (I'm catching bits and pieces while doing laundry and cleaning).

Unknown said...

Chuckles criticizes Debbie Wasserman-Schulz for not better defining Democrat vs Socialist and not being mean to Bernie and this is a problem for Democrats.

Helene Cooper, NYT Pentagon reporter, calls St. MoDo, Patron Saint of the Perpetually Petulant, an "outstanding reporter".

ifthethunderdontgetya™³²®© said...

Thanks for thinking of me, Chan Kobun. You're so cute!
~

Procopius said...

I probably should be ashamed of this, but I find that "Tomorrow Belongs to Me" clip very moving, incredibly powerful. I know the hate, the paranoia, the meanness, the insanity that's under the surface, but at the same time I see people who have been beaten down who were hopeless, and who now are seeing hope again. My first tour in Germany, I worked with a German civilian employee who had been lucky; he was assigned to the occupation forces in Norway and through some oversight never got sent to the Eastern Front. He said one day that Hitler had fooled them, had taken advantage of their youthful idealism. I see that in the blond kid singing, just as I can imagine him forcing prisoners to dig a mass grave for themselves and then shooting them. I keep meaning to watch the whole movie, but can never get started on it. I guess the difference between him and our right wing is that, at least at this point, he's displaying some heartfelt joy. I never see that from any current American right winger.

Ivory Bill Woodpecker said...

Roger is not alone. I also can enjoy the song, if I refrain from thinking about its context.

IIRC, at least one of the writers of "Tomorrow Belongs To Me" was Jewish, which would make the song an amazing display of the empathic ability to "get inside the head" of an enemy, to recognize how he feels and thinks.

However, I've also read that the real Nazis likely would have considered that song too soft, if it had existed at that time, despite its obvious German patriotism.