Salon.com > The Left

Chris Hayes to replace Ed Schultz in prime-time slot

Thu, 14 Mar 2013 17:35:00 +0000

Chris Hayes is ready for his close-up.

The hip, bespectacled journalist is preparing to take over the covetable 8 p.m. time slot vacated by Ed Schultz's "The Ed Show" — network executives have moved Schultz to Saturday and Sunday evenings. Hayes has hosted "Up With Chris Hayes" since September 2011, and established quite a following in less than two years of carrying a show.

"Chris has done an amazing job creating a franchise on weekend morning," network president Phil Griffin said in a statement. "He’s an extraordinary talent and has made a strong connection with our audience. This is an exciting time for MSNBC."

Griffin is banking on Hayes -- and possible Hayes's morning slot replacement Ezra Klein -- to make MSNBC a household name. Well, a liberal household name, at least. “Our awareness level, people who can define who we are, is much lower than Fox and CNN,” Mr. Griffin told the New York Times. The network president has been building out a brand identity through the steady recruitment of ever-younger, ever-more progressive on-air talent. Of the network's gravitation to the left, former President Bill Clinton remarked, “Boy, it really has become our version of Fox.”

Study: Liberals stereotype more

Thu, 13 Dec 2012 21:04:00 +0000

Those conservatives are appalling: They couldn’t care less if people get hurt. And liberals? They think anything goes, and have no concept of the meaning of loyalty.

Caricatures? Absolutely. But such stereotypes are widely held among Americans, newly published research confirms, with liberals particularly clueless about the concerns of conservatives.

Regarding issues of morality, “people overestimate how dramatically liberals and conservatives differ,” psychologists Jesse Graham, Brian Nosek and Jonathan Haidt write in the online journal PLoS One. Specifically, their research suggests those on the left unfairly assume their counterparts on the right are cold-hearted on issues involving harm and fairness.

Romney’s plan to defund the left

Mon, 05 Nov 2012 14:00:00 +0000

Mitt Romney is not big on specifics. He’s got a fairy-tale five-point plan, tax math that doesn’t add up, and who can tell where he stands on foreign policy these days. So when Mitt is willing to get specific ... we should all be paying attention.

Romney has proposed trillions in new tax cuts, and so far has only proposed one concrete way to offset that budget-busting cost: Capping itemized tax deductions at $17,000, $25,000 or $50,000 (he’s floated several different numbers).

Let’s ignore, for the moment, that this cap could still hit middle-class families. Let’s skip over the fact that the richest folks will still make out like bandits thanks to the massive rate cuts that Romney proposes. Let’s even pretend that capping deductions would come close to paying for those tax cuts. It’s still an incredibly dangerous proposal.

What the election means for the left

Sun, 04 Nov 2012 16:59:00 +0000

When our quadrennial circus finally folds its tents next week (barring another agonizing long count as in 2000), what will the result mean for the fortunes of that contentious, somewhat indistinct creature we call the American left?

The answer obviously depends, in part, on whether Mitt Romney or Barack Obama wins the race. When we elect a president, we are also, in effect, appointing or reappointing thousands of committed progressives or equally avid conservatives to federal jobs where they try hard to carry out policies they support or to block ones they despise. Romney may be a cagy moderate at heart, and Obama may yearn to live up to the bipartisan rhetoric of his 2008 campaign. But most of the people who have the necessary skills and experience to work for a president are determined to move the nation to either the right or the left.

At the same time, what will happen after Inauguration Day raises the question of which parts of the left one is talking about. Four of its largest sections -- the LGBT community, promoters of immigrant rights, environmentalists and organized labor – usually come together at election time, but they do not have similar prospects for growth or success.

Obama opens doors to progress, Romney slams them shut

Wed, 31 Oct 2012 11:45:00 +0000

Progressives who found ourselves inconveniently placed when Sandy collided with two other storms and overwhelmed us are probably in a mood to view with particular seriousness that the Romney-Ryan budget would slash FEMA to ribbons while Obama's doesn't; and that not so long ago Mitt Romney was denouncing federal disaster relief as "immoral" (“Every time you have an occasion to take something from the federal government and send it back to the states, that’s the right direction. And if you can go even further and send it back to the private sector, that’s even better”).

Still, we are at that point in the election cycle when some progressives have been busily listing what they despise about Democrats, going on to remind us how tired they are of lesser evils and how weary their hands grow from holding their noses. In 2000 we were told how bad a campaign Al Gore ran, how soft he was on corporations, how little he did about climate change when he had the chance, and how pure of heart Ralph Nader was. This year we are reminded that Barack Obama failed to close Guantánamo, kept the stimulus too small, hired Tim Geithner, dispatched drones, made up a kill list, and, like Mitt Romney, supports oil drilling and collects corporate dollars.

Ill Doctrine on secret tapes

Mon, 24 Sep 2012 19:40:00 +0000

Ill Doctrine: The Tale of the Tapes from ANIMALNewYork.com on Vimeo.

Whereas Romney's video exposes the callousness of his vision for America, the Obama tape offers a pleasant reminder for lefties why they voted him into office.