Via commenter Southern Beale, this says a lot about how the liberal MSNBC network works. There could be some sour grapes here, I’ll admit. I’ll give the lowdown: Cenk Uygur says he didn’t get the 6 pm gig at MSNBC because they didn’t like his tone, despite good ratings.
Reader Interactions
88Comments
Comments are closed.
moe99
It’s the David Broder virus. He’s gone but the pov is still there!!
Mark S.
I haven’t had cable for the last couple months so I haven’t watched any cable news. Does it still suck?
Town
If the WH/Obama didn’t like the “tone” over at MSNBC, then why aren’t Rachel Maddow & Ed Schultz also gone? With all the ranting and raving Ed does, it seems like the WH would want Ed gone rather than some seldom watched dude?
Seriously, you can’t take a vacation for a few weeks and expect to have your same job when your fill-in dramatically raises the ratings.
But I forgot, it’s ALL Barack Obama’s fault.
Martin
Like a black hole.
Mike Kay (Democrat of the Century)
BWHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHHAHAHAHHA
His rating sucked. He consistently lost 20% of his lead in.
Trainrunner
That video was spectacularly short of hard evidence on the crux.
According to the NYT article, MSNBC said that the “Washington” people that Cenk claims was the White House were actually MSNBC Washington bookers who said that Cenk’s combative tone was making it hard for them to book guests.
Good riddance.
Bring on Chris Hayes.
cat48
The “tone” they’re probably talking about only came out on special occasions; discussing SocSec Reform & Medicare & he’d go absolutely ape on anyone who suggested it as an option. That’s my guess because the “tone” & “language” used were sort of shocking since they were being hurled at a “progressive liberal House member.” An older white man who’s name I can’t remember, but he was totally rude to him in a way I’ve never seen a Congress person treated on TV. He was trying to explain his thinking, but Cenk was not having any of that! He did that at least 4x to different people about entitlements. Hard to watch.
I doubt it was the Whitehouse that complained. I would bet on Congress critters who got this treatment b/c they had all been on before & he had never treated them this way before. This is my guess.
Paula
I didn’t enjoy his show.
I don’t watch the opinion shows much, they mostly insult my intelligence.
Mike Kay (Democrat of the Century)
Here’s a sample of his ratings.
It’s from 3 weeks ago, in June.
Tweety’s 5:00 PM show had 619,000 viewers. The viewers for Cenk’s 6:00 PM show fell to 479,000 viewers, which is a whooping drop of 29%.
To add salt into the wound, the minute Cenk went off the air at 7 PM, the viewer returned, with a repeat of Tweety’s show pulling in 705,000 viewers.
http://tvbythenumbers.zap2it.com/2011/06/28/updated-cable-news-ratings-for-monday-june-27-2011/96826/
Once again, this was in late June, after 5 months on the air.
MSNBC viewers just didn’t want to watch firebaggery.
But like a firebagger, he has to lie and say he had good ratings.
wetcasements
Can’t we just dig up zombie David Broder?
kdaug
Disgruntled ex-employee.
Earl Butz
One school of thought has it that he sucks. And takes extreme liberties with facts. And comes off like an asshole.
But no, I’m sure the leader of the free world took time out from dealing with an opposition party trying to crash the world’s largest economy, and trying to manage three wars, to personally call whoever is in charge at MSNBC and
askorder that he be fired. Makes far more sense than MSNBC letting go a no-name blogger who craters their ratings every time someone puts his lens-cracking face in front of a camera.gpleigh
Nobody watched the damn crappy show. Not even the people in the White House. Weak sauce.
PeakVT
I listened to most of the AirAmerica shows back in the day, but never Uygur’s. For some reason I always found him entirely uninteresting as a host.
TBogg
As a person I like Cenk, but he unfortunately comes across as too heavy handed. More stiletto, less sledgehammer…
James E. Powell
I never watched the show, so I can’t say much about it. The ‘tone’ thing, though, sounds plausible. It would not surprise me if they thought he was a little too much. He comes on a like an excited sportscaster.
lol
How did this guy have a TV show? I watched the video for 5 minutes wondering if he was ever going to get to his fucking point.
Bailey
Considering that I loathed Cenk’s show–(what I saw of it, that is)–and his postings at the Great Orange Satan, I’d say this is good news. (For me and John McCain!)
askew
This post is pretty short on facts which is surprising. Cenk’s ratings were not good and Al Sharpton’s ratings as a fill-in host for Cenk were consistently higher than Cenk’s. No wonder MSNBC ditched him. The WH wouldn’t waste the time to get Cenk ousted as so few people actually watched his show.
MSNBC did the same thing to David Shuster when his ratings sucked. There is no need for Cenk to resort to conspiracy theories and definitely no need for the blogosphere to fall for his nonsense.
different church-lady
He’s an annoying nitwit. He seems to have not considered this.
Then again, so is Matthews. I’m at a loss to explain why it works for him but not Cenk.
Oh well, in his heart he’s got to be happy — ranting about shit is what he lives for, and now he’s got even more shit to rant about.
cckids
The few times I watched him, I found him overly impressed with himself & generally lacking in facts. Can’t watch the video to listen to him whine. Life’s too short.
FlipYrWhig
Who knew that being a fat-headed dickface, albeit one with a pretty solid radio voice, was not a recipe for success on the TV machine?
Rome Again
I have thought and still think it was a bad idea to give a Kossack a show on MSNBC. Furthermore, I really used to think that Wesley Clark was a good military analyst on CNN (even though I hated the wars, he helped me to understand more about what was going on) – but, Wesley Clark screwed up when he discovered Cenk. UGH!
middlewest
Where the hell did this guy come from anyway? Cable access?
Rome Again
@Mike Kay (Democrat of the Century):
This should be a warning shot to Ed Schultz. Ed is very good when he’s dealing with injustice and the Middle Class (his Wisconsin broadcasts were great) – but I can’t listen to him anymore because of his firebagger stance.
Joel
I don’t like Cenk Uygur… but that’s basically because everytime I looked for a speech or some politically related clip on Youtube, the only ones I could find were ones where he was commenting. Very annoying. Got in the way of original sources.
Other than that, I couldn’t care about his beef with MSNBC. Nothing about the crappiness of that or any other news organization would surprise me. I don’t watch.
Rome Again
@middlewest:
He was a Daily Kos blogger who caught Wesley Clark’s eye and through that exposure, Cenk started The Young Turks, which apparently gave him enough attention that MSNBC decided to give him a shot.
scarshapedstar
Damn, am I the only person who always liked Young Turks and really liked seeing Cenk on the air? Sure he’s kind of a jerk, but he seems like the kind of guy I could have eight beers with and complain about how goddamn stupid the Republicans are and say fuck a lot.
Now I can understand the argument that he pissed off Republican guests (I love Rachel, and I love watching Republicans wither under her smoldering gaze right after they realize she’s eviscerated them, but you gotta admit, it would be awfully cathartic to see her break down and shout “YOU’RE LYING! YOU’RE FUCKING LYING! STOP LYING TO ME!” like Cole Phelps just one time) and it’s probably the case that he’s better suited to the same internet rants he’s always done.
Don’t really get the hate, though. BTW, Ed Schultz looks and talks a lot like Rush Limbaugh and I don’t think I’ve ever seen them in the same room together. Just throwin’ that out there.
boss bitch
I never understood why anyone thought like him in the first place. Even when he was just on the radio.
Joel
My exposure to Cenk is from his ubiquitous Young Turks clips on Youtube. My primary reaction to his clips is usually annoyance; annoyance at the fact that the only clips I could find of an important political event were ones where he was commenting. Other than that, nada.
different church-lady
I could buy a case of those for $1.69
FlipYrWhig
@ middlewest : I think he had a radio show somewhere. And he was one of the big-name Kos diarists in the heyday of the Great Orange Satan. I didn’t understand how his name was pronounced (it sounds like “Jay” rather than like “Senk”) and didn’t put two and two together when I first saw him on MSNBC. From his face, voice, and demeanor, I just thought he was one of the second-tier broadcaster-pundits that the 24-hour news networks shove out there when it’s a holiday weekend in the summer.
FlipYrWhig
That sounds like the kind of thing it’s not very hard to outsource to day-laborers and volunteers.
Dollared
Help me out, Balloon Juice Conventional Wisdom Meisters: How is Ed Schultz firebaggery? He’s Jane Hamsher? Did I miss his show in Wisconsin with Grover Norquist? Did he *gasp* say nice things about Glenn Greenwald?
O-b-a-m-a said “make me be more liberal,” alluding to FDR. Ed’s doing exactly that. What is wrong with that?
Need I point out how much more he’s done to stop the Kochs and their state-by-state Texasification Project than our president has?
JWL
“Liberal media”?
You’re fucking joking, right?
Redshift
@middlewest:
Yes, actually, but not directly; he had other gigs in between. I recently found out that some friends knew him when he had a cable access show and they were stunned to hear that he’d gotten an actual network show. Apparently in his access days, he more than once had a guest on and ranted on for thirty or forty-five minutes without even acknowledging their presence, much less given them an opportunity to speak (even though they were on camera.)
Comrade Kevin
My one in-person exposure to Cenk was at Netroots Nation, when he gave the intro speech for the last night of the convention, and all he did was SHOUT AT THE TOP OF HIS LUNGS AT EVERYONE, through an already loud PA system.
Just Some Fuckhead
@Dollared:
He was mean to Obama. Do you really not know how this shit works?
OzoneR
he had horrendous ratings
FlipYrWhig
Didn’t he go through a phase of urging his listeners and viewers not to vote in 2010?
Suffern ACE
@flip – yep. very into civic responsibility he was.
Kane
MSNBC provides a handful of hours of progressive commentary and sane conversation for an entire week. For this, MSNBC is deemed a liberal news outlet and we are reminded often by outside sources that MSNBC represents the liberal point of view and that they are left leaning.
And yet, the conservative MorningJoe provides fifteen hours a week. Self-professed conservative Dylan Ratigan does five hours a week as does Andrea Mitchell. Republican commentators Pat Buchanan, Peggy Noonan, Michael Steele, Ron Christie, Mike Murphy and a long list of other GOP loyalists are paraded in throughout the day while stories are often presented with republican narratives. In addition, roughly 48 hours of the week or more are devoted to the neverending Doc Block series of sensational and titillating aspects of prison life, teen runaways, and the punking of sexual predators.
The notion that MSNBC is a liberal news outlet is nothing more than a fabrication designed to convince liberals that they are provided an alternative. MSNBC is not a liberal alternative, rather it a corporate news source that provides a mere few hours of the week to a progressive viewpoint.
Glix
I was never crazy about Cenk but I think Al Sharpton is doing a pretty good job filling in. I’ve actually started watching the show sometimes.
Elie
Kane;
You are Right on my friend…. preach it!
Martin
I think this is very much a matter of the personality of the viewer. I don’t find Shultz, Cenk, LOD (50/50), Olbermann productive. I do find Maddow, however, and I don’t consider her any more or less liberal than the rest of the lot.
I don’t need to be cheerled. I don’t need to be fired up. I don’t need to feel like I have allies or that someone is working for me. I need to be convinced that the liberal position is the right position, and you should realize that the way to do that for me is with facts and numbers and charts and evidence. Maddow does that, and leaves out the cheerleading. The others do a lot more cheerleading and a lot less wonk. O’Donnell is probably the runner up there. I like Chris Hayes.
My argument against the other folks isn’t a strong one. My assertion has always been that voters should be better educated, and pundit journalism simply doesn’t have that as its main goal. It might be second, but its main goal is advancing an opinion, and I don’t fucking care what your opinion is if there’s no fact there to shape it – so that needs to go along for the ride – and IMO Ed and Cenk are pretty bad at that. I think Maddow gets the balance quite good, overall.
Odie Hugh Manatee
Good riddance to Cenk. Listening to him is about as pleasant as listening to a dentist’s drill. From the dentist’s chair. He’s a bombastic ass who prefers to rant, rave and berate.
Rev. Al’s commercial breaks probably get more views than Cenk the Crank’s show ever did.
James E. Powell
@Dollared:
A few comments don’t represent consensus. Schultz is okay, though sometimes he talks out his ass.
FlipYrWhig
One thing that I noticed about Maddow is that she used to do the “Talk Me Down” segment… which was even in her promos as a recurring bit… and at a certain point she stopped. That suggests the possibility of _some_ management concern about something like “tone.” But not a tone of insufficient support for Obama; more like a tone that it may be time to panic and welcome our new ant overlords.
Phil Perspective
OzoneR @ 39:
And what were the ratings for the person Cenk replaced? That’s the real tell. Maybe that time slot is a black hole.
Kane
Cenk Uygur and Ed Shultz are both former registered republicans who didn’t vote for a Democratic candidate until 2000. I’m sure that their hearts are now in the right place, but is it that difficult to find lifetime democrats who have always had the Democratic priniciples in the marrow of their bones?
RosiesDad
@Kane 42:
Ratigan is hardly a conservative and I think he probably played a big part in getting Cenk the gig at MSNBC–Cenk was a regular guest on his show and he has guest hosted TYT.
That said, I’m a regular listener the The Young Turks podcast and I didn’t think Cenk was great on MSNBC. The format of having a host moderate contrived arguments between a Republican guest and a Democratic guest, day in and day out just gets tired and irritating and it didn’t work as well for him as the format of his podcast. (And as far as I can tell–because I often have MSNBC playing in background in my office–it ain’t working all that well for Rev. Al.)
RosiesDad
@Kane:
Sounds a lot like our host here, doesn’t it?
Mike Kay (Democrat of the Century)
“I consider myself a conservative … the social [stuff] I could care less.” ~ Dylan Ratigan
Dennis SGMM
This thread is strange to me. I haven’t watched MSNBC, or any other cable news outlet, since 2008. The media will do as is its wont. Turn the sonofabitch off and do something. Doing anything (Short of murder) other than being spoon fed what the media moguls deem fit for our consumption will avail you more than mulling over the shortcomings or strengths of the talking heads.
Mike Kay (Democrat of the Century)
@Dollared: “How is Ed Schultz firebaggery?”
———————–
In my opinion, Ed’s not a firebagger. But this is gonna hurt, he highly praised Obama for bombing of Libya and killing of bin Laden, and Ed supported the tax extension.
“President Obama just came out and took a well-deserved victory lap. The wins, well, they just keep piling up. You have to respect his fight. His strategy has paid off.” ~ Ed Schultz.
Not only is he an Obot, but for good measure, he also put the screws on Weiner to resign.
“Now, I want to be very clear tonight. I am not trying to be a member of the moral police squad on this story. But the fact is, if Weiner used his time, energy, and resources to help a porn star, along with phone sex from his congressional office, I think this violates the public trust. He wasn‘t hired to do that.” ~ Ed Schultz.
Sleeper
I actually like The Young Turks quite a bit. I think that Uygur works best in that format. He never quite gelled as part of MSNBC’s “politely liberal…but not TOO liberal” brand. (Part of that was that he didn’t actually have the show to begin with. No name and no overall identity.) Do I think this video is self-serving? Yeah, a little bit. We’re all human and getting passed over is probably embarrassing. But MSNBC obviously wanted to keep him on in some capacity, so he probably did walk away from a big paycheck in order to keep from being muzzled, which is admirable.
Unlike a lot of people here (going by the comments, at least), I value someone who’s NOT going to bite their tongue and “be the better person” and rise above and all that crap. I think Rachel Maddow does some good work, but I also think she’s got a bit of an ivory tower sense of self-regard and a condescending tone more often than not. I mean there’s a reason that Fox News has utterly steamrolled all competition. They don’t talk down to their audience. (They lie to them, but they don’t talk down to them.) And I think Maddow does that quite a bit. And O’Donnell too. I think if there’s ever going to be a liberal counterpart to Fox News – not with regards to their level of dishonesty, but with their unquestioned success in stirring emotions, shaping and propelling a narrative, and bringing viewers back every day – then we need fewer wonk hosts and more firebrands. That’s just the dominant model for cable news these days. If the host looks timid and embarrassed by their own positions, and sits there and lets conservative guests spout bullshit without unambiguously telling them to their face that they’re liars, if they don’t seem convinced, UTTERLY convinced, that they’re right and that contrary opinions aren’t just honest disagreements, but DANGEROUS…then all they’ll ever be doing is preaching to the choir. Reasonableness is not a valuable trait in unreasonable times.
And if anyone’s still reading this dead thread, I’m sure I’ll be called a Naderite, a firebagger, etc., etc. But we can’t get along with the Right, and we shouldn’t try. They’re not decent people with bad ideas. They’re lunatics at best, and wicked people at worst, and we shouldn’t try to meet them halfway or compromise or give their rancid ideas the slightest figleaf of credence. We’re not politicians. We do not need to extend olive branches or “be grownups” about things. It’s our fucking job to be the unreasonable ones in the room.
zattarra
We consisently watch MSNBC from 5:00-11:00PM in my house. Except at 6:00PM I would either walk out of the room or change the channel when he came on. He was consistently wrong, ill informed, rude to his guests on either side of the aisle and had some of the worst panel discussion guests I have ever seen. Good riddance, the guy was horrible and at least from this MSNBC viewer will not be missed.
Joseph Nobles
Wait. Al Sharpton improved ratings over Cenk? Al Sharpton?
I watched one of his shows. Al was manifestly uncomfortable in the strictures of hosting a show. He was stiff and wooden in his physical marks. He frequently shouted unknowingly at the camera, only relenting in this approach when he began speaking to guests and could tell what his voice was doing. He read the teleprompter in the worst way, even to the point of questions being pronounced rather than asked.
In other words, the perfect guy to hold your spot and not endanger it. And Al improved the ratings?
Sorry, Cenk. No need for alternate explanations here. MSNBC can do better with the slot.
harlana
So they replaced him with Al Sharpton. Hee.
ObamaBot2012
Having never watched Cenk Uygar, I can’t say he’ll be missed.
Just reading the comments about his show here and other places though, convinces me that all he did day in and day out is call President Obama a miserable failure. In other words, attempting to be like Keith Olbermann and Ed Shultz.
The thing is, Uygar went on vacation and his fill-in Rev Al gets higher ratings. How can Uygar expect to keep his show when his fill-in is kicking his ass with higher ratings?
In the end, it was just good business to give Uygar the boot. And this fat fuck goes and blames the President, what an over-bloated ego Uygar has.
WereBear
Won’t miss him. We love Olbermann and watch him on Current TV now; for us, at least, he gets it right.
Cassidy
A handful of hours of progressive opinion? MSNBC has about 5 to 6 hours a night, 5 days a week in primetime! How the he’ll is that a handful?
Cenk may be an asshole, as is Ed, but that’s what we need. I love Maddow. If I was a lesbian, I’d be smitten. But her persona is based on sarcasm and wit. Fun to watch, but we need angry pundits. If we’re going to fight a propaganda machine then it needs to be brutal. Maddow eviscerated conservatives, but they lack the self awareness to realize they were bested. People like Ed and Cenk push them until they get mad and say something stupid.
RosiesDad
@ WereBear
Agreed. Olbermann has been the best voice Libs have on TV. And I expect that over the next couple of years, we’ll see some of the folks he brought to MSNBC (like Rachel) follow him to Current as their contracts expire.
@Mike Kay
Ratigan may consider himself a conservative but he is not someone I perceive as a shill for the political right (cf. Scarborough, Halperin, etc.).
debit
@WereBear 60:
Keith just tweeted that he’s having Cenk as a guest tonight. I just…really? That was my reaction: really? You’re going to have him on to trash your former network? I’m disappointed.
LikeableInMyOwnWay
Cenk’s tone is exactly the same as Ed Schultz’s tone. And as for being loose with the facts, as they both are, so is Rachel Maddow, who is a total bully when she gets her teeth into a favorite peeve or litmus test issue. All of these people are very much standard cable tv fare, in that they always think the most important thing they have to tell us about any story is What.They.Think.About.It. Which, I have news for them, is not the the most important thing about any story. Ever.
So, it’s cable tv musical chairs. Nothing new. And Al Sharpton as the replacement? I like his advocacy work, but as an interviewer with contentious guests, he is insufferable, despite the fact that I usually agree with him ideologically.
If tv is a vast wasteland, then cable tv is a barren hell, a desert of borax and sand and the skeletons of wagon animals.
kth
63: probably an oblique way of alluding to his own departure from MSNBC, without endangering his own golden parachute. Which is fine with me considering KO seems to have been shown the door for political reasons rather than business ones.
Neither Uygur nor Schultz are much to my taste–if Schultz is a Democratic Limbaugh, then Uygur with his self-satisfied mugging is a lefty Hannity–but I’m a canvas-bag guy and as such probably not the intended audience.
kay
So true. He was going to SHOUT us into compliance!
I felt myself moving subtly Right, standing there, just out of a general sense of defiance :)
On the merits, I don’t think he can call himself “fact-based” if he’s going to launch a really explosive and damning assertion with no facts behind it.
“Fact-based”. My. Ass.
rickstersherpa
I think it is always best to remember we are talking about the entertainment industry masquerading as news. MSNBC, formerly Jack Welch’s vehicle for torpedoing Al Gore’s presidential run and otherwise serving GE’s corporate interests became “liberal” network when it floundered as the “second” Fox (remember Tucker Carlson had a show on it) and then stumbled on to us liberal tribe members when Olbermann starting getting great ratings by bashing Bush. MSNBC is now owned by Comcast. To date, I have not seen many shows, and I don’t think we are going to get any, on O’Donnell, Maddow, or Schultz about how corporate consolidation and lack of anti-trust enforcement is suffocating the American economy. Ocassionally, Cenk touched on that subject, and that might be one of his problems with his tone.
If I want be self-indulgent about my incredible rightness and laugh at the foibles of the other tribe, I will watch Maddow, and I do think O’Donnell actually does some real good, the gods forbid, “reporting” when he breaks down how Congress is dysfunctioning at the moment (and I also go to Current TV and watch Keith, both for the tribal jibes and to watch all the people no longer welcome on MSNBC, CNN, and CNBC because they are “to liberal” and offended conservatives fee-fees.
One thing over the last three years, and fairly predictable, is a large number of liberals and academic leftists (and where were these folks when the union movement was being throttled in the 1970s and 80s) would discover that the socially liberal, center-right on economics politician we were electing as President in 2008 was after all a politician. His views on economics (which I confess were probaly views I shared 10 years ago) were pretty plainly spoken for years, especially a strong anti-pathy to deficit spending (google Obama and Brookings Institution – Hamilton Project, run by, guess who, Gene Sperling). Unlike FDL, I have tried to avoid having illusions so as not to be disillusioned. And I agree with this guy, who really hates Obama,( http://www.distantocean.com/2011/06/mark-halperins-mistakes.html) that most so called liberals will vote for him, because for whatever lack of enthusiasm I have for him is more than made up by my enthusiasm for defeating the other tribe (much as love particular friends and family members who have fallen into its clutcthes).
But if I want news, I go on the web to the BBC, Guardian, Reuters, McClatchey. and Calculated Risk.
Guster
Cenk is uncivil. That is all one needs to know.
Pat
I agreed with his message, but there was something about his delivery that turned me off. Some personalities are just better for TV than others.
bemused
Cenk is heavy on bitch, bitch, bitch and far too light on just the facts, ma’am, imo. I’m sufficiently outraged daily as it is and don’t want or need news accompanied with high-pitched screeches. Both Cenk and Schultz rush in hyperventilating not allowing a few moments for info to sink in or the guests to finish their points.
Tom
I watched this guy’s show once… he was bad. Just plain bad delivery. Makes me think more of MSNBC that they didn’t give this guy the slot.
AAA Bonds
Yeah, I wouldn’t put this guy on cable either. Good call by MSNBC.
The one bit of his I tried to watch, he LOUDLY “um”d and “ah”d and stuttered his way through his monologue(!) for about twenty seconds before I turned it off.
He might be TV material if he hired a coach to help him with that stuff and put some work into dealing with his tics. It’s just embarrassing otherwise.
Nemesis
Sorry to say this, but Cenk just wasnt that good at the MSNBC gig.
Frankly, content-wise, if you were to peruse the twatter toobz for a few minutes each day, say, visiting the GOS and BJ, you pretty much know exactly what will be televised on MSNBC between 5 pm and 11 pm ET.
Its the outrage du jour, day after day after day. I mean, hell yes, its light years ahead of fox entertainment and cnn, but those are poor standards to measure against.
Rome Again
@Dollared:
Dollared, if you read what I wrote, I said that Schultz was great in his Wisconsin broadcasts:
For those who are trying to dispel the idea that Schultz is a firebagger, you do realize that last night while this thread was being argued, Schultz featured a poll question about whether his viewers would be willing to vote for someone who made any changes to Social Security, Medicare or Medicaid and was screaming that Obama deserved to lose the election if he did such a thing? The poll ended up with a 97% will not vote for such a candidate result. I guess this means that if Obama makes any tweeks to the big three that might actually be improvements and save money, he’s going to lose the election if Schultz and his followers have anything to say about it – and we’ll be stuck with… Michelle Bachmann? Mitt Romney? Rick Perry? WTF?
karen marie
I watched several episodes of Young Turks and found Cenk and his co-host to be completely juvenile. I do not have a TV any more, so only watch clips of news/opinion shows online. Cenk is a waste of bandwidth.
I agree with Martin‘s point about cheerleading versus facts.
FlipYrWhig, I assume Maddow got rid of the Talk Me Down segment because it was a retarded concept and made her look like an idiot.
Bruce S
Honestly, I am probably at least a bit closer to Cenk’s politics than to Lawrence O’Donnell’s – although that’s probably a matter of my own personal “tone” and some hair-splitting more than an important or “divisive” distinction – but I watch O’Donnell because he interests me with his dry but ever-present sense of humor, has an aura of intelligence, a streak of “contrarianism” and even a bit of “ex-insiderism” that makes his show more entertaining. I generally DVR Lawrence, Rachel and Ed because they each have their peak moments that I enjoy (although Rachel is the only one I’ve ever seen commit anything resembling actual journalism – i.e. going to Baghdad and Kabul with Richard Engle or doing some original, on-the-scene reporting from the Gulf rather than sitting in a chair reading her own take on stuff she and her staff scanned off the wires and the internet.) I try to spend no more than an hour scanning through the 3 shows and finding the best stuff, most interesting interviews, etc.
I found Cenk tedious and utterly predictable, although obviously well-intentioned and if he had the 6:00 spot it would have simplified my TeeVee Idiocy, in that I’d only record Rachel and Ed.
Ed Schultz’ primary virtue, incidentally, is that he’s the only MSNBC guy – actually probably the only cable host I can think of, including the FOX Alpha-Male Phonies – who could sit with a bunch of moderate-to-conservative-but-not-crazy folks in a bar in Oshkosh Wisconsin and nudge their thinking regarding current politics. He could do that because if they spent the first hour together talking about hunting or fishing, he wouldn’t be grinning silently and in obvious discomfort. Ed Schultz is more like folks I knew growing up in the Midwest than any of these other folks, including pandering-to-ignorance pricks like Sean Hannity and Bill O’Reilly – or the obviously unhinged and smarmy Beck. MSNBC needs him – and a credible, aggressive liberalism needs more guys like him.
Also, ironically and to his credit, along with offering more visibility to the labor movement than any other MSNBC host, Ed has shown himself to be more in touch with the broad African-American community than the rest of the MSNBC hosts put together – and is responsible for Rev. Al likely getting a spot, which would be a big plus for the network. Rev. Al’s another guy whose reputation and some past antics probably rubs a lot of sensitive libs the wrong way, but he’s been light-years more responsible in his relationship to the Obama administration than, IMHO, truly dubious and self-serving characters like Jesse or West or Dyson. And, like Ed, he’s steeped in the aura and vernacular of his origins, doesn’t wear some prestigious school tie as his badge of intellectual legitimacy and hasn’t been cleaned up and blow-dried for my TeeVee. He is who he is, which I respect. Again, won’t win any journalism awards, but another distinct voice libs need for any viable coalition.
Bruce S
Ironically, the MSNBC host who I have seen lose it the most when interviewing right-wing crazies is Lawrence O’Donnell. Despite his “cool” image, he can be absolutely terrible when interviewing people he disagrees with vehemently and is prone to blowing it by sounding like an intemperate bully, rather than letting an idiot hang themself.
dollared
@Rome again: Obama said “make me do the right thing.”
That’s what Schultz is doing. He’s being Obama’s backbone. I’m glad he is – I retire in ten years. That’s my money Obama is stealing.
And he’s also speaking a larger truth – that Obama owns 2010’s massive failure, and he owns his failure to win the “jobs” issue. If the failure repeats in 2012, it’s Obama’s fault.
Rome Again
@dollared:
You really think you’re going to win this by citing that because you retire in ten years, it’s YOUR money Obama is “stealing”??? Really? Everyone who works pays into Social Security, and while I am not scheduled to retire in ten years (I’m not scheduled to retire at all, my work will never be done – I’m a low wage earner, I don’t get a huge vacation at the end) I would have been scheduled to retire in 12-17. Spilled milk, Dollared.
Bruce S
Good to know that if Obama loses the election it will be Ed Schultz’ fault. Nothing to do with prioritizing deficts over jobs.
Because, you know, Ed agrees with “even Larry Summers” core message – that the “deficit debate” is bullshit at this point in time, and he is desperate for the President to take their advice of putting jobs before deficits more seriously…
http://titanicsailsatdawn.blogspot.com/2011/07/taking-excellent-advice-where-one-finds.html#more
It strikes me that some of the “Firebagger!” hysterics here would have been more comfortable with the “message discipline” of the brain-dead CPUSA than the messy coalition known as the Democratic Party. When Wall Street and financial industry CEOs can get the White House on their speed-dial and talk to a ranking aide at will, the too-often-ignored folks Ed Schultz speaks for need to use every noise-making and attention-getting device they might have.
Also, I’m sick of this persistently recycled bullshit that we can be absolutely certain that the only “cuts” being discussed to SS and Medicare and Medicaid are “progressive” so we just need to STFU about it. Pass me the fucking Kool-Aid. Again it reminds me of the kind of mind-bending poltical lobotomization I used to see in people on the sectarian left, who couldn’t wrap their mind around the notion that their pre-fab, faith-based politics or obedient orientation toward top-down “leadership” might not always conform to messy and complicated realities.
This crap is the true “purism” that Democrats absolutely don’t need at this critical moment when we’re playing nothing but defense and need to push back aggressively against the near-unanimity in “the Beltway” that “everyone agrees” we need to rally around the wrong answers to disastrously wrong questions in order to keep a bunch of crazy people from bringing down the economy.
Sheer madness not to stake out – vocally and aggressively – some alternative path back to reality when the White House is engaged almost solely in opaque gamesmanship played totally on the GOP’s terms. If eleventy-seventy dimensional chess is good coming from the White House, maybe we need at least some two-dimensional chess coming from various factions among the base – you know, at least for the purpose of clarifying that there actually ARE two different sides – and have been for decades as the GOP worked their tax-cut assault on the long-term solvency of our government – when it comes to the current and near-insane “deficits” and “spending-crisis” bullshit.
Rome Again
Actuarial tables for Social Security are adjusted from time to time. That is reality. We are not living with Social Security Actuaries from the 1930’s. I hate to disappoint you. If there is an area where waste is found and could be corrected, would you not want it to be corrected? Or would you just say no due to the original actuary table (which we no longer have) being some sort of sacred cow? Get real!
Rome Again
@Bruce S:
I didn’t say that – but he is trying to talk the Democratic base into believing it’s okay to throw this election. Apparently you believe it too. By the way – your entire post is moot since you admitted your hair is on fire because you think Obama is losing this fight. He’s not losing this fight at all.
Bruce S
Given that comment, you’re a total idiot – with all due respect. This “fight” was lost the minute it was played on “deficit reduction” turf. You truly don’t have a clue.
As for the rest of it, I have no control over idiots attempting to impugn stupid shit to me. You’re welcome to walk that shit back to your butt – but I’m not expecting miracles.
Bruce S
Also, do you know the difference between “actuarial tables” and Price Indexing for inflation? Apparently not – but, again, I’m not surprised. You’re officially off the radar – total waste of my time.
Rome Again
It ain’t over until the fat lady sings. Calling this game before it’s over is a mistake.
Rome Again
@Bruce S:
So, you’re saying that if Obama doesn’t actually tinker with Social Security but actually only mentioned it – he has lost. Yet, he’s the one holding the following cards:
1. Section 4 of the Fourteenth Amendment
2. Business leaders who don’t want to see their consumer base tank
3. Homeowners who don’t want to lose their homes
4. The working class who don’t want to see their jobs disappear
5. Billionaires begging to be taxed more
6. Bankers who don’t want to deal with runs on their funds
7. The entire world watching us and predicting that if we fall we take all of the rest of them along with us.
Yeah, this has all the signs of a virtual loss, doesn’t it? Right now, they are engaged in a game of chicken and if Obama doesn’t win this, everyone (including the GOP as well as the entire world) loses. You are the one who is not seeing the forest for the trees.
I’m so sorry that I didn’t cite specific details on the Social Security thing. The fact is it’s a program that has been tinkered constantly since it’s inception. No matter what happens in this fight, adjustments will be made again eventually. So, did you scream all those other times that adjustments were made? If not, sit down and STFU.
TheHalfrican
@ sleeper
I’ve always suspected that there isn’t a “liberal fox news” because at the end of the day, Liberals/Progressives don’t really want a TV propaganda organ that basically tells them what to do. We’re pretty much cool with our handful of Maddows and the NetRoots, we don’t need some douche anchor with bad hair and dead eyes screaming “THE REPUBLICANS ARE EVIL! OBEY!” at us.