Phil Griffin at MSNBC continues to make an ass of himself by suspending his on-air staff for making political donations without the contractually obligated Simon Sez. Like some kind of minor-league commissioner, he gave Joe Scarborough, two days without pay on Friday. Unlike Olbermann, who basically gave Griffin the finger, Scarborough apologized and said it won’t happen again.
If you buy into the notion that Liberals need their own cable network to fight Fox (which I don’t, but I know a lot of Progressives do), contrasting Griffin’s weak-ass suspension with Roger Ailes’ behavior this week tells you all you need to know about who has what it takes to win that battle.
debit
Hmm. Where’s the petition to get Scarborough back on the air?
Cat Lady
Two whole days oh noes! Whatever will Mika bob her head to now? I might actually watch to see if she can form her own thought.
Ash Can
@Cat Lady: I imagine she’ll just bob along to whomever fills in for her boss.
Judas Escargot
contrasting Griffin’s weak-ass suspension with Roger Ailes’ behavior this week tells you all you need to know about who has what it takes to win that battle.
Because machismo/bravado are such wonderful political values.
WyldPirate
@Cat Lady:
Her rhetorical head bobbing is even more embarrassing than if she were literally head bobbing in Scarborough’s lap live on air.
But I think that’s the point of her being on the show in the first place. I tried not to think that for a long time. The artsy “Mika as slut” photos shown during commercial breaks changed my mind.
RosiesDad
Makes you wonder why Griffin’s bosses don’t have a policy for dealing with executives who repeatedly make the network look idiotic.
fasteddie9318
@Ash Can:
Maybe, but I bet a couple of times each morning she’ll close her eyes and dreamily imagine that it’s Joe she’s bobbing to, and not whatever poor excuse of a
mansubstitute host they replace him with.RosiesDad
@WyldPirate: Sometime if you want to make yourself really nauseous, spend an hour counting how many times Mika says, “I love it!”
Gunga Dean
I’ll sign any petition to get the suspension revoked. But you cannot make me watch the unwatchable.
JWL
The airwaves are owned by corporations lock, stock, and go fuck yourself inside-out. There is no such thing as the “people’s airwaves”. The airwaves are private property.
And so long as they don’t mess with NFL or MLB broadcasts, that’s OK with me. I’m a creature of habit.
For the time being, anyway…
WyldPirate
@Judas Escargot:
This is what I don’t get about progressives and their hatred for “machismo/bravado”.
How many more examples do we need to see that it works? Reagan v Carter, Bush got away with it despite his empty head and Obama gets excoriated and played by the Rethugs for an entire two years for the very goddamned problems they caused without an effective message to tout his accomplishments and fight back, but nary a whimper and mostly acquiesence and damned near begging for bipartisanship that isn’t going to come.
Obama reminds me more than anything of an abused spouse that gets the shit beat out of her and goes back for more of the same and wonders why they get the same treatment.
Americans notice this shit and they vote for it time after time. Deep down, most Americans want a “head daddy” for the daddy state. Moreover, they don’t want one that won’t stand up to the bullies.
Obama has the brains, but he doesn’t stand up to the bullies and he gets played–over and over–and comes across as being weak. If he doesn’t change this and start blasting the lying sacks of shit from the GOP–and he can do it with cutting sarcasm and not anger as he has massive talent in that area–he is fucking toast in ’12.
Judas Escargot
@WyldPirate:
I don’t care if “it works”, it’s wrong, and its a sickness.
IMO, the core problem of our culture right now is the over-emphasis on feelings in domains that require reason. This is a very self-indulgent age.
Matt Taibbi’s half right: it’s not so much that the Teabaggers are crazy, it’s that they’ve been raised in a culture where “I feel I feel I feel” is the main driver for all cognition. And this with a 21st century media that (having worked the problem since the 1920s) can make you feel exactly what they want you to feel, when they want you to feel it, making damned sure that you never really ask yourself why you feel it.
Global warming? “Can’t be true! That’s just how I feel!”. Evolution in schools? Nope, hurts the religious fee-fees. Reason, logic, evidence, physics, math, biology, medicine, statistics? Always trumped by the fee-fees.
Shit, how many wasted posts last night essentially discussing ED Kain and his little conservative ‘feelings’? Christ on a stick.
I absolutely agree that Obama should stand up to bullies: But his options really are limited given this media climate and culture. If he ever shows a hint of the animal aggression you crave, FOX et. al. will transform him into The Angry Black Man before your very eyes before that news cycle is over, leaving him rhetorically dehumanized. They’ll make sure of that. And I bet that (as a lawyer) he knows it.
This was one of Charlie Baker’s tactics against Deval Patrick in the MA governor’s race: In the debates (esp. the first two), it was clear that Baker was doing everything he could to make Gov. Patrick lose his cool on live TV just once, just once. But Patrick didn’t, he stuck to facts, figures, reason and reassurance– and he managed to look like the one in control, won most of the debates (and kept his seat). I hope the President studies his old friend’s debate performances, he’ll be needing those debate chops in 2012.
What Obama needs is to find a way to make the Republicans fear him, without giving the media a way to ‘animalize’ him in the eyes of the sleepwalkers. I personally think that going Crazy Ivan with a government shutdown against the GOP (ie make it clear that he’ll let it all burn down to hell on their watch before he lets them f_ck his legacy with HCR and the START treaty) is the only thing that could save his Presidency at this point. But he’d need to do it hard and cold and reasonable, in the Roman style.
I’m not sure if he has that in him, frankly. And even if he does, who in the DC pundit class would ever back him up?
liberal
@WyldPirate:
While that’s a factor, clearly the biggest factors are (a) the economy (which I admittedly dont’ think is going to improve much by then), and (b) who the Rethugs put up.
kdaug
@liberal: Guess what, sunshine – corporations are sitting on $1.5 trillion and aren’t hiring. The gameplan is to continue to tank the economy to get McConnell’s objective of a one-term Obama realized.
Then they can install a Palin who recognizes her place among her betters (“The haves and the have-mores. Some people call you the elite. I call you my base.”)
The sad fucking part about it is that they don’t even bother trying to hide it anymore.
WyldPirate
@Judas Escargot:
I don’t disagree with you that it is “wrong and a sickness”. The problem is that we aren’t a completely civilized society and that Dems are going into “battle” with a knife while their opponents are using sniper rifles and heavy artillery.
And they are not doing this already? For fucks sake, have you not been paying attention for the last several years?
This is why I don’t buy the “Obama can’t be seen as the angry Negro” argument. they’ve already done it and he still got elected. It’s going to get worse in the next election cycle as well. He is getting to the point where he will have nothing else to lose.
Now I can understand if he doesn’t want to sacrifice his dignity and “go there”, but it is going to get much nastier and the lies are going to get worse. He is pissing off some of his base by all of his goddamned talk of bipartisanship with SOBs whose stated primary goal is to make him a one-term President.
WyldPirate
@liberal:
This is what I see as Obama’s saving grace.
You’re right that the economy is huge and Obama’s response to the Rethugs is going to play a huge role. Those are the big ingredients in the soup pot. IF the economy is still stagnant and Obama responds as he has, he is toast.
I think Palin getting in the mix and winning Iowa and South Carolina will set her on the way to getting the nomination. If she gets in, I think Obama is re-elected unless the economy gets much worse. If the economy gets worse, I think all bets are off.
A third party run by someone that can raise the cash could really muck things up for either side depending on the candidate.
Gin & Tonic
@WyldPirate:
That’s why I worry about Bloomberg.
Michael
@kdaug:
In a truly just world, such Galtian, policy manipulating nihilist behavior would result in some truly magnificent, over the top violence directed at Our Financial Overlords and their puppet opinion manipulators in the punditocracy. I’m not talking about weak sauce protests with signs and slogans – I’m talking car bombings, poisonings, extended family slaughterings and kidnappings.
And they’d deserve every…single…stinking…bit of it. They’ve ruined lives, crashed hopes and dreams, and their physical destruction would be well-earned at the hands of their victims.
How many wrecked businesses? Destroyed marriages? Foregone educations? Lost homes?
I used to not understand the stunning ruthlessness of Castro, the methods of Lenin or even the seeming excesses of Chavez, but now am coming to some realizations that perhaps they grasped the thick-skulled sense of entitlement of the indolent and frequently stupid top tiers that they were seeking to displace from the position of “unilateral decisionmakers”, and realized that stronger actions were required.
Calvin Jones and the 13th Apostle
@WyldPirate: This is what I don’t get. Obama doesn’t need to go all Malcolm X(the early years) on people. He just needs to keep pointing out that the Republicans(and name McConnell and Orange Julius by name) are lying sacks of shit. Okay, he can’t say those exact words, but I think people get the point. He doesn’t need to pound a podium to do it. He just needs to be straight up when ever any one asks, and to stop kissing Republicans ass. Tell the country that the Pukes want him to fail. Tell the public that the Republicans want more misery, just because. It’s really very simple. And it doesn’t require a change in demeanor. Just a change in what he says. I mean Jumpin’ Jack Flash!! All the establishment Pukes(meaning the think tankers and the like) all say the new START should be passed. It’s only the clowns in the Senate that want to torpedo it. Obama has to make sure people know that. Whether he does it, Gibbs does it, or Axe does, it doesn’t matter. It’s a theme that needs to be pounded home.
kdaug
@WyldPirate:
No, mate, that’s where Diebold comes in.
Person of Choler
@Michael:
“In a truly just world, such Galtian, policy manipulating nihilist behavior would result in some truly magnificent, over the top violence directed at Our Financial Overlords and their puppet opinion manipulators in the punditocracy. I’m not talking about weak sauce protests with signs and slogans – I’m talking car bombings, poisonings, extended family slaughterings and kidnappings.”
How could you have forgotten to add the Gulags, Auschwitz, and the Killing Fields to your little list?
WyldPirate
@Calvin Jones and the 13th Apostle:
Calvin, this has been driving me made about the Dems since at least the Clinton years. It’s as if they are afraid to use the word “lie” and the Rethugs know it and take advantage of it.
I get so sick of it. This “letting it slide” attitude regarding the rethugs by both the media and the Dem politicians is what has allowed the Rethugs to get away with “creating their o9wn reality”. The problem is that the crazy sons of bitches believe the fucked up reality that they have created.
Triassic Sands
I don’t think I know a single lefty who wants to watch a lefty version of Fox — otherwise known as MSNBC, I guess. I think that’s why their ratings aren’t equal to Fox’s.
Wingers need Fox since they are operating in Wonderland and need someone to neatly package all their lies for them.
@kdaug:
The thing is corporations are making lots of money — they have found out how to make money without hiring (work harder, boy), so while unemployment is high, the “economy” is OK. It’s just a matter of what one thinks the economy is — people having jobs (how quaint) or corporations making money (the new full employment).
Michael
@Person of Choler:
Meh. Twenty years from now when our Chinese, French, South African, Indonesian and Indian UN occupiers open up punitive prison labor camps for Our Financial Overlords, their extended families (including spoiled children) and the members of the punditocracy, I’ll subscribe to the pay per view to help defray the costs of the occupation.
ornery curmudgeon
@WyldPirate: “It’s as if they are afraid…”
That’s an interesting phrase for ‘bought’ …
Mouse Tolliver
If Jan Hooks replaced Mika Brughzhizhi for a day would anyone notice the difference?
Must See Clip: Hooks spoofs “Attitudes” talk show with Nora Dunn & Christopher Walken.
kdaug
@Triassic Sands:
Yep. It’s called “quantitative easing”. Just print more money and pump it into the market. Good times.
Kenneth Almquist
MSNBC is the network that devoted more air time to the Monica Lewinsky story than Fox News did. It’s the network that hired Phil Donahue for a while but then dropped him because they didn’t want to appear too liberal. When Bush’s approval ratings dropped through the floor, MSNBC started putting on liberal commentary from people such as Keith Olbermann and Rachel Maddow. The notion that MSNBC is a liberal network in the same way that FOX News is a conservative network is wrong. I don’t think that the Olberman and Maddow shows will disappear any time soon, but they will disappear the moment that executives at MSNBC conclude that a conservative would get higher ratings.
Nick
@Calvin Jones and the 13th Apostle:
He has done this, he’s done it repeatedly. No one pays attention…and very often, the left is too busy parsing his words or debating whether or not they were “strong” enough.
why do you guys insist he do what he’s already been doing?
frongoozi
Big Media on Politics is a debate about rich and poor between rich people for the rich and rich people for the poor. Not surprisingly, the rich for the rich are in it to win, and the rich for the poor find all kinds of ways to hobble themselves for the loftiest ethical reasons. Unions put regular people in the game – nothing’s replaced them.