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The Trouble With MSNBC

Per Roger we learn that Cliff Kincaid has diagnosed the problem with MSNBC: they don't have enough conservatives. The failure of Tucker Carlson? One word -- lesbians:

The problem with the Carlson show is the format, which places too much emphasis on his guests, including a regular named Rachel Maddow, a radio host on Air America who is described as the first out-of-the-closet lesbian to be named a Rhodes Scholar. She is a lesbian with hair so short that she looks like a man.

He then goes on to hip us to the fact that the only reason Maddow is on the show is because Big Fat Homie David Brock at Media Matters threatened to sing show tunes until MSNBC relented.

As if. Anyone who has ever watched The Situation can tell you that Maddow remained after the recent bloodbath not because of her keen fashion sense and peerless collection of Olivia Records but because she is the only one on the show who can form a complete sentence.

Max Kellerman is like a guillotined head severed from all brain impulse whose lips nonetheless keep twitching. Called upon to counter Tucker's argument that violence on TV was bad because some study said it desensitized kids to violence, Kellerman took his best shot:

But do you really want your child, especially if all of his peers are becoming desensitized to violence, to be more sensitive to violence?

(On that same episode, a story on African nations and the Millenium Challenge Account was accompanied by Toto's Africa. Because, you know, they both contain the words Africa.)

And then there's rare wit Jay Severin, he of the Mary Carey "does for a living what Democrats do to the country" fame, who is thankfully a whole lot rarer after he got shitcanned.

I've already kicked Tucker himself around this week, so I'll just say Eddie Haskell in a bow tie and a set of "what about me" ethics do not an Algonquin Round Table wit make.

Fox already has the cable news corner on the pharmacologically challenged. Every time MSNBC tries to launch a budding wingnut it's a disaster. They've already got Congressman Joe as in-house ratings anvil. As Wolcott said, "Don Imus has compared him to the developmentally challenged boy playing the banjo in Deliverance. And Imus is a fan."

Michael Savage? That was some success story, huh?

My solution to MSNBC's woes is to make Chris Matthews permanent bureau chief in Aruba and give his show to David Gregory. I have no idea what effect it would have on ratings but it would surely cut down the bill for Guilt Bourbon.

(graphic courtesy Jesus' General)

posted by Jane Hamsher @ 8/03/2005 09:49:00 PM