Salon.com > MSNBC http://www.salon.com Fri, 04 Jan 2013 21:15:00 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.2.1 Hack List No. 8: MSNBC http://www.salon.com/2012/12/19/hack_list_no_8_msnbc/ http://www.salon.com/2012/12/19/hack_list_no_8_msnbc/#comments Wed, 19 Dec 2012 19:48:00 +0000 http://www.origin.railrode.net/?p=13149142 This year, my annual list of the worst of political media highlights not just individuals, but the institutions that enable those individuals. The 2012 Hack List will be counting down the 10 media outlets that are hurting America over the next two days -- stay tuned! (Previous Hack List entries here, here and here.)

MSNBC, we're told all the time, is the liberal Fox News. That's reductive and stupid. It isn't. MSNBC isn't the liberal Fox News for two very important reasons: It usually demonstrates a greater respect for the truth than Fox News, and it's not as good as Fox News. It's not as good at being liberal as Fox is at being conservative. Fox is rigidly ideologically consistent, with its "straight news" programs echoing the same talking points and pushing the same slanted stories as its opinion shows. While there's no doubt that MSNBC is more unapologetically liberal than it used to be, it's still all over the place, with a conservative anchoring its flagship morning show, objective Beltway "straight news" proponents like Chuck Todd and Andrea Mitchell dominating in the daytime, and weekends full of ... prison shows. But more important, it's not as good as Fox at being compelling TV, which is why millions more people watch Fox every day. (There are demographic reasons for Fox's advantage, too, but it's still a huge number.)

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2012/12/19/hack_list_no_8_msnbc/feed/ 72 Gun Owners of America hints at armed revolt http://www.salon.com/2012/12/17/gun_owners_of_america_hints_at_armed_revolt/ http://www.salon.com/2012/12/17/gun_owners_of_america_hints_at_armed_revolt/#comments Mon, 17 Dec 2012 23:30:00 +0000 http://www.origin.railrode.net/?p=13148075 Things got real ugly real quick during Chris Matthews' interview with Larry Pratt on MSNBC's "Hardball" this evening.

The reptilian executive director of Gun Owners of America, last seen telling gun control advocates "they have the blood of little children on their hands," argued that we are "less free without automatic rifles," and need to stay prepared.

Matthews, who loves nothing more than hurling himself through cracked-open doors like this, was all too happy to oblige with a "prepared for what?"

Pratt: "To take on our government. [And this] government has gone overboard." He continued that it's time to take action "when elections are stolen."

Does this mean that the Gun Owners of America's 300,000 members are preparing to revolt?

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2012/12/17/gun_owners_of_america_hints_at_armed_revolt/feed/ 129 Time to profile white men? http://www.salon.com/2012/12/17/would_the_u_s_government_profile_white_men/ http://www.salon.com/2012/12/17/would_the_u_s_government_profile_white_men/#comments Mon, 17 Dec 2012 11:00:00 +0000 http://www.origin.railrode.net/?p=13146907 Yesterday, during a cable news discussion of gun violence and the Newtown school shooting, I dared mention a taboo truism. During a conversation on MSNBC's "Up With Chris Hayes," I said that because most of the mass shootings in America come at the hands of white men, there would likely be political opposition to initiatives that propose to use those facts to profile the demographic group to which these killers belong. I suggested that's the case because as opposed to people of color or, say, Muslims, white men as a subgroup are in such a privileged position in our society that they are the one group that our political system avoids demographically profiling or analytically aggregating in any real way. Indeed, unlike other demographic, white guys as a group are never thought to be an acceptable topic for any kind of critical discussion whatsoever, even when there is ample reason to open up such a discussion.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2012/12/17/would_the_u_s_government_profile_white_men/feed/ 183 Chris Matthews attacks Michigan GOPer over Koch ties http://www.salon.com/2012/12/12/chris_matthews_attacks_michigan_goper_over_koch_ties/ http://www.salon.com/2012/12/12/chris_matthews_attacks_michigan_goper_over_koch_ties/#comments Wed, 12 Dec 2012 01:46:00 +0000 http://www.origin.railrode.net/?p=13122270 Scott Hagerstrom, a worker for the Koch-backed Tea Party group Americans For Prosperity, appeared on Hardball on MSNBC to talk about the right-to-work protests in Michigan, and Chris Matthews let him have it over the group's ties to the billionaire conservatives.

“This is pretty much a union-gutting operation,” Matthews said about the state's legislation. “You work for the Koch brothers. They don’t like unions. Why are you working for them?" Hagerstrom replied: “I work for Americans for Prosperity. This is not about the Koch Brothers.”

Matthews fired back: “Who’s paying your salary?" Hagerstrom kept repeating: “I work Americans for Prosperity."

"What’s that?" Matthews asked.

Watch:

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2012/12/12/chris_matthews_attacks_michigan_goper_over_koch_ties/feed/ 9 Laura Ingraham’s newsletter forgets that Laura Ingraham met with Bush http://www.salon.com/2012/12/06/laura_ingrahams_newsletter_forgets_that_laura_ingraham_met_with_bush/ http://www.salon.com/2012/12/06/laura_ingrahams_newsletter_forgets_that_laura_ingraham_met_with_bush/#comments Thu, 06 Dec 2012 17:09:00 +0000 http://www.origin.railrode.net/?p=13117039 A newsletter for conservative talk show host Laura Ingraham attacked President Obama for meeting with MSNBC pundits after the election, but left out the fact that George W. Bush met with conservative analysts -- including Ingraham herself -- in 2006.

"If Fox News hosts and conservative personalities had stopped by the Bush White House to discuss policy" the media "would have been rightly outraged," Ingraham's Dec. 5 newsletter said. "Given MSNBC's history of blatantly promoting the DNC's talking points and spewing left-wing talking points, maybe it's time they just became Obama's official mouthpiece."

As MediaMatters points out, in October 2006, the New York Times reported on a meeting between President Bush and several conservative radio hosts, including Sean Hannity, Mike Gallagher, Neal Boortz and Ingraham.

The Times described the meeting:

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2012/12/06/laura_ingrahams_newsletter_forgets_that_laura_ingraham_met_with_bush/feed/ 8 Tom Ricks: MSNBC isn’t so great either http://www.salon.com/2012/11/28/tom_ricks_msnbc_isnt_so_great_either/ http://www.salon.com/2012/11/28/tom_ricks_msnbc_isnt_so_great_either/#comments Wed, 28 Nov 2012 15:51:00 +0000 http://www.origin.railrode.net/?p=13109135 Tom Ricks, recently seen calling Fox News "a wing of the Republican Party," doesn't particularly care for MSNBC either.

“MSNBC invited me [to appear], but I said, ‘You’re just like Fox, but not as good at it.’ They wrote back and said, ‘Thank you for your candor,’” Ricks told the Washington Post.

Ricks, a Pulitzer Prize winning defense reporter, appeared on Fox News earlier this week to discuss Benghazi, and told host Jon Scott that the network had "hyped" the controversy surrounding Susan Rice, “partly because Fox was operating as a wing of the Republican Party.” The interview was abruptly cut short.

Fox News brass later claimed that Ricks had apologized; Ricks maintains he did not.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2012/11/28/tom_ricks_msnbc_isnt_so_great_either/feed/ 22 Must-see monologue http://www.salon.com/2012/11/08/must_see_monologue/ http://www.salon.com/2012/11/08/must_see_monologue/#comments Thu, 08 Nov 2012 19:42:00 +0000 http://www.origin.railrode.net/?p=13066531 On MSNBC, Rachel Maddow hopes the GOP will return to the reality-based community:

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2012/11/08/must_see_monologue/feed/ 4 Election 2012: Can someone call it a night? http://www.salon.com/2012/11/07/the_elections_long_night/ http://www.salon.com/2012/11/07/the_elections_long_night/#comments Wed, 07 Nov 2012 11:00:00 +0000 http://www.origin.railrode.net/?p=13064957 The presidential election got called for Barack Obama at 11:15 P.M. EST, which is a whole lot earlier than many of us would have dared hope — and it turned into another endless election night in front of our televisions anyway. If you’ve been watching since the first polls closed way back at 6:30 P.M. it already felt like forever when Obama was declared the winner. Then you had to wait for a whole other forever — an hour and 45 minutes — until Romney finally conceded. That amounts to five hours of Chuck Todd and John King fondling their outsize touchscreens and “magic walls," plus another hour of Karl Rove fondling — or was it manhandling? — Fox News.

Last presidential election, CNN got mercilessly ribbed for projecting “holograms” of its staff into its studio. This year the network promised a “virtual Senate,” an effect that all but had its staffers walking around in one of those Taiwanese viral videos. But the “virtual Senate” barely appeared. CNN and the other networks went surprisingly low-tech, sticking mostly with the “Minority Report” walls required on election night. The nets even eschewed the standard social media bells and whistles: Where were the hastily assembled tweets scrolling chaotically underneath every screen? Turns out having to project actual data at the bottom of a set gets @Foxnewsdrools booted from MSNBC’s scroll.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2012/11/07/the_elections_long_night/feed/ 3 Who rocked the hurricane? The Weather Channel http://www.salon.com/2012/10/30/who_rocked_the_hurricane_the_weather_channel/ http://www.salon.com/2012/10/30/who_rocked_the_hurricane_the_weather_channel/#comments Tue, 30 Oct 2012 00:06:00 +0000 http://www.origin.railrode.net/?p=13056855 Hurricane Sandy is just coming ashore, which means we have been living through a 24-hour news cycle that amounts to running-in-place news. Around 5:20 p.m. on MSNBC, a very wet reporter standing down in Battery Park told Chris Matthews that there is for sure going to be flooding tonight— which is exactly what the person standing down in Battery Park said last night, the only difference being that person was not getting rained on. As a public service — like, a service that tells people what they need to know for their health and safety — one TV network broadcasting updates every 10 minutes would suffice. That is clearly not what is happening. Everything else that is happening — the endless chatter, the reporters performing their commitment to their job in increasingly bad, dangerous weather — is just for show.

But once you accept the fact that the 24-hour-news networks — which all of the major networks have turned into for the duration — are not performing a public service, we can begin to evaluate them on a whole other scale. That scale being: Which was the most fun to watch today, while you were stuck at home, carefully heeding all the news networks' advice not to go outside? On this score, there was a clear winner. Let me break down the contenders.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2012/10/30/who_rocked_the_hurricane_the_weather_channel/feed/ 3 Red Lobster, Olive Garden hire part-timers to avoid Obamacare http://www.salon.com/2012/10/11/red_lobster_olive_garden_hire_part_timers_to_avoid_obamacare/ http://www.salon.com/2012/10/11/red_lobster_olive_garden_hire_part_timers_to_avoid_obamacare/#comments Thu, 11 Oct 2012 15:47:00 +0000 http://www.origin.railrode.net/?p=13037040 Darden Concepts, the corporation that owns restaurant chains Red Lobster and Olive Garden to offset the costs of Obamacare. According to a report from Ned Resnikoff at MSNBC, the company is experimenting with an increased reliance on part-time workers:

If the experiment is a success, the company overall could come to rely more on part-time workers. Those new employees would likely not enjoy the same health benefits that all employees currently do. "Today we offer health care to all of our employees," said Rich Jeffers, [a spokesperson for Darden]. But under the Affordable Care Act, which sets minimum standards for the health care being provided, "we can't offer that."

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2012/10/11/red_lobster_olive_garden_hire_part_timers_to_avoid_obamacare/feed/ 35 Jack Welch still thinks the government did some fuzzy math http://www.salon.com/2012/10/05/neutron_jacks_back/ http://www.salon.com/2012/10/05/neutron_jacks_back/#comments Fri, 05 Oct 2012 22:27:00 +0000 http://www.origin.railrode.net/?p=13032121 Prodigious firer of employees and former captain of industry Jack Welch ended his day with some conspiracy-mongering on "Hardball."

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2012/10/05/neutron_jacks_back/feed/ 25 Mika Brzezinski’s erotic dance http://www.salon.com/2012/09/17/mika_brzezinskis_erotic_dance/ http://www.salon.com/2012/09/17/mika_brzezinskis_erotic_dance/#comments Mon, 17 Sep 2012 20:54:00 +0000 http://www.origin.railrode.net/?p=13014377 Vanity Fair’s short profile of MSNBC’s Morning Joe hosts Mika Brzezinski and Joe Scarborough ostensibly depicts them as a dynamic duo reminiscent of the great screwball comedies of the 1940s (the article references The Thin Man’s Nick and Nora). But the sassy journalist heroines popularized by Rosalind Russell and Katharine Hepburn would have balked at a photo shoot like this one—which is both reflective of current attitudes toward professional and political women and jarringly anachronistic. The notion that women exist primarily for men’s amusement (both on and off the job) seems oh so Mad Men, yet the trend toward depicting public women (especially those whose jobs place them in the realm of politics) primarily as sex objects is alive and well in the 21st century. The pornification of political culture (a process in which some women participate willingly and others have foisted upon them after their image is conscripted) has depicted political candidates (e.g., Sarah Palin and Janice Hahn) and women voters (in viral videos like this one and this one from the 2008 campaign) as strippers.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2012/09/17/mika_brzezinskis_erotic_dance/feed/ 32 Tom Brokaw discharged from hospital http://www.salon.com/2012/09/06/tom_brokaw_discharged_from_hospital/ http://www.salon.com/2012/09/06/tom_brokaw_discharged_from_hospital/#comments Thu, 06 Sep 2012 17:30:00 +0000 http://www.origin.railrode.net/?p=13003072 NBC News correspondent Tom Brokaw was discharged from the hospital Thursday "in great health" after he "mistakenly took a half dose of Ambien."

NBC News president Steve Capus said in a statement: “After medical evaluation and a round of tests, Tom was pronounced in great health and has been discharged. We're immensely grateful to the team at Carolinas Medical Center for their excellent care and professionalism.”

Earlier in the day, Brokaw checked into the hospital after he felt "light-headed" during an appearance on "Morning Joe." He later tweeted: “All is well. Early AM I mistakenly took a half dose of Ambien and made less sense than usual. Made a better comeback than Giants ...”

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2012/09/06/tom_brokaw_discharged_from_hospital/feed/ 0 Must-see morning clip http://www.salon.com/2012/08/03/must_see_morning_clip_2/ http://www.salon.com/2012/08/03/must_see_morning_clip_2/#comments Fri, 03 Aug 2012 15:17:00 +0000 http://www.origin.railrode.net/?p=12971587 The host of MSNBC's "Up with Chris Hayes" explains America's housing bubble, elitism and the difference between educational opportunities and outcomes.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2012/08/03/must_see_morning_clip_2/feed/ 2 Joe Scarborough says New York Times is “thin skinned” for correcting his nonsense http://www.salon.com/2012/06/07/joe_scarborough_says_new_york_times_is_thin_skinned_for_correcting_his_nonsense/ http://www.salon.com/2012/06/07/joe_scarborough_says_new_york_times_is_thin_skinned_for_correcting_his_nonsense/#comments Thu, 07 Jun 2012 20:54:00 +0000 http://www.origin.railrode.net/?p=12934322 Joe Scarborough may have been totally, utterly, completely wrong this morning, when he incorrectly argued, based solely on his own general, vague impressions, that the New York Times was treating Mitt Romney fundamentally differently than it had treated earlier Democratic candidates, but, you know, Joe Scarborough doesn't really care. He is still right in his gut.

What happened is that on the "Morning Joe" show this morning, sponsored by the awful burned coffee company, 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. (His neighbors also have complaints about how Mitt Romney wants to ban gay adoption, because many of his neighbors are gay.)

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2012/06/07/joe_scarborough_says_new_york_times_is_thin_skinned_for_correcting_his_nonsense/feed/ 39 Luke Russert, nepotist prince http://www.salon.com/2012/05/24/luke_russert_nepotist_prince/ http://www.salon.com/2012/05/24/luke_russert_nepotist_prince/#comments Thu, 24 May 2012 15:35:00 +0000 http://www.origin.railrode.net/?p=12926399 Tim Russert was not the unalloyed saint of tough journalism that his celebrators describe in posthumous tributes, but he was at least a classic American success story, of the sort that we still enjoy pretending is common: Blue-collar kid from Rust Belt town becomes enormously successful thanks largely to brains and hard work. The story of Luke Russert, alas, is a much more common one in American life: No-account kid of successful person has more success thrust upon him.

Pretty much immediately upon the death of his father, Luke Russert inexplicably had a full-time broadcasting job, supplanting his part-time broadcasting job co-hosting a satellite radio sports talk show with James Carville. (That was a real thing that actually existed. Can you imagine a human who would want to listen to that?)

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2012/05/24/luke_russert_nepotist_prince/feed/ 40 The anti-hate ad MSNBC won’t run http://www.salon.com/2012/03/08/the_anti_hate_ad_msnbc_wont_run/ http://www.salon.com/2012/03/08/the_anti_hate_ad_msnbc_wont_run/#comments Thu, 08 Mar 2012 16:41:00 +0000 http://www.origin.railrode.net/?p=12643191 AlterNetFor the longest time, many of us have been raising hell over the fact that MSNBC hosts hate-group leader Tony Perkins (the Family Research Council) as authoritative voice without asking him about his organization’s history of lying in order to demonize the LGBT community.

Well now Faithful America has come out with an awesome ad which best speaks to the point. Only MSNBC rejected this ad. Therefore, I guess it’s up to us to spread its message:

My guess is that Perkins will whine about how supposedly the left is trying to silence him and other people of faith. In actuality, I don’t want him silenced. I want there to be a conversation about the entire issue.

And the first place we should start is with the charges in the ad.

PLEASE spread it around. Let’s make this thing very viral!

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2012/03/08/the_anti_hate_ad_msnbc_wont_run/feed/ 76 Irin Carmon talks GOP birth control drama on “Up With Chris Hayes” http://www.salon.com/2012/01/09/irin_carmon_talks_gop_birth_control_drama_on_up_with_chris_hayes/ http://www.salon.com/2012/01/09/irin_carmon_talks_gop_birth_control_drama_on_up_with_chris_hayes/#comments Mon, 09 Jan 2012 14:56:00 +0000 http://www.origin.railrode.net/?p=11999921 Over the weekend, Rick Santorum pushed back at Salon's story about his opposition to birth control, and the moderators at the ABC News debate Saturday night took note: They asked Mitt Romney what his stance was on states banning contraception. (Unsurprisingly, they did not get a straight answer.)

Salon staff writer Irin Carmon appeared on MSNBC's "Up With Chris Hayes" on Sunday morning to discuss the week's news in general and this story in particular. In the excerpt below, Carmon stands by the coverage and explains what Santorum and Romney's positions on contraception and reproductive rights really mean. Watch the full show here.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2012/01/09/irin_carmon_talks_gop_birth_control_drama_on_up_with_chris_hayes/feed/ 3 1. Mark Halperin http://www.salon.com/2011/12/16/1_mark_halperin/ http://www.salon.com/2011/12/16/1_mark_halperin/#comments Fri, 16 Dec 2011 18:30:00 +0000 http://www.origin.railrode.net/?p=10435641 What more is there to say about Mark Halperin? He certainly hasn't gotten any better since last year, when a panel of experts (me) named him the world's second biggest hack. He's still wrong about everything. He's still shallow and predictable. He's still both fixated solely on the horse race and also uniquely bad at analyzing the horse race.

Halperin spent 2011 gearing up for the presidential elections by parroting transparently lame spin from Sarah Palin and Donald Trump, insisting that Palin was really going to run for president and taking Trump's farcical vanity "campaign" seriously as anything other than a time-wasting stunt. He still takes Mark Penn seriously as a wise campaign sage and not an amoral grifter. And he got in trouble for calling President Obama a "dick" on "Morning Joe," because the president criticized the GOP at a press conference. (This after Halperin spends years writing columns calling him a weak-willed wimp, because he is a Democrat.) The worst thing was not that he called the president a dick, it was that the president hadn't even been dickish. (Well, the worst thing was the whole "Morning Joe" team giggling like stoned teenagers that Halperin said a bad word.) Halperin is so dedicated to being wrong about everything that, upon his return to the airwaves, he actually made a point of mentioning that, had he been on TV during his suspension, he would've been wrong about something. Plus he did a "Morning Joe" appearance from an airplane bathroom which is surely illegal.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2011/12/16/1_mark_halperin/feed/ 35 14. Joe Scarborough http://www.salon.com/2011/12/15/14_joe_scarborough/ http://www.salon.com/2011/12/15/14_joe_scarborough/#comments Thu, 15 Dec 2011 17:00:00 +0000 http://www.origin.railrode.net/?p=10325771 Nothing sums up everything hatable about cable news and politics and possibly America itself better than "Morning Joe," MSNBC's daily extended advertisement for Starbucks products and Joe Scarborough's odd belief that he is funny and charming.

The former Florida congressman and possibly attorney of some kind followed up his unremarkable political career by becoming a wildly successful moderate TV talker. ("Wildly successful" in terms of monetary compensation and publicity -- his show is watched by less than half the number of people who watch Fox's daily televised morning train wreck "Fox & Friends.") Joe's supposed to be some sort of maverick because he's not a doctrinaire Republican (anymore), but what he is is a totally doctrinaire member of the moderate Beltway political establishment.

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