Yo Mama! Apparently , Size Does Matter!

So sez Tweety this evening: "Big Bill surrounds Obama, is Hill thrilled? You bet yo mama!"
Really, does he write his own material? Are the news writers out on strike too?
My Mom found that hilarious, but I think its a bit too edgy for right now...and for some reason it drags me back to the Jefferson's and Brooklyn in the 70's....we're-a movin' on up, to the eastside...

From the blundering morass that is MSNBC's coverage of the mess in Florida, I just don't know what to say anymore.I feel like I should apologize or something, in that MSNBC might sorta partially represent the left in any way...To a deee-luxe apartment, in the sky...

This blog about Chris Matthews isn't nearly broad enough to cover the range of wankery that goes on over there. Ive been watching Matthews look all spooked, with those tail-between-the-legs-don't-hit-me-again-papa wide eyes, like he's a teenager who has gone too far. Then theres the obnoxious-little-weenie brother, Tucky, and the Deputy Dawg smirk of Morning Joe...We need a wider focus here because they play off eachother, and ...I dunno...you would think that there weren't soldiers dying in Iraq just about every day. Bring me my tin foil hat, honey, because I could swear that they were sending messages to eachother, the base, and for whoever has their finger on the Manchurian button lately .

First of all, What happened to all that war coverage that was pretty great for a while and was a major part of the day ongoing? Where is Richard Engle, Mick Ware, and Mike Boettcher? Where is the sand and grit, and reports from embeds outside of the green zone? Has that become a non-story because the actual War part is supposedly over? I'm trying to remember what I felt like to get good first hand reportage. Ever since the morning that I woke to find that David Bloom had died, while rushing towards certain disaster anyway, and trading bible passages with Timmeuh Russert; just saying no, no, no,(Jane, how do you stop this crazy thing?)and those images that Bloom had worked so hard to bring to us from right on the ground level of hell.... and ever since my worst fears were confirmed and reconfirmed about how badly we were lied to, and how the media went along with it, Ive tried to find whatever group of news people that don't aren't too scary in their strange toned-down world of morning television , and even then, I watch closely...I don't trust any one of them except Olbermann, Stewart, and Colbert (and that's a backwards kind of trust.)



I have to admit that I have been an avid MSNBC/NBC watcher, from my war coverage to just about everything else, morning to night. I guess you could say that I know them pretty well. But even if they are less scary than the Good Morning America crew or the CNN group, I still have seen them sway and bend with the political weather, and probably more due to the Bushies actual spiralling apart in front of our very eyes, than the people's desire for truth. I didn't notice especially the the rats started deserting the sinking ship till pretty late in the game, and some of them are surely still hanging on to that ship or a portion thereof, just in case the republicans pull something out of their combined asses, (swiftboating, anyone?), and that leads to 4 more years. I've seen too much hedging and positioning, and not wanting to get caught on the wrong side of criticizing the President...as if this isn't America; as if we don't live in a society where the job of reporter comes with the assumption of cojones and truth.

The war correspondents have given way to the politicians walking flanked by security guards, through the Baghdad marketplace. There was some certain transfer of authority from the correspondents that are on the ground, to the generals who are supposed to dig us out of this mess and juggle the desires of all the characters in the hearing room, and the politicians, all jockeying for position, or the correct position in this matter.

And what has become of the correspondents in Iraq? We cut to them from time to time, but it seems that there are selective blackouts on pictures of suicide bombs and other tragedies, that are certainly as much a part of the war as the wash across the desert was and the squads of brave soldiers breaking down door after door to find huddled, terrified, families, and who knows what else in the bedroom or beyond the patio.
Yeah, the drudgery of day to day village cleaning doesn't pop like those initial images, and at some point ratings have to take over, I guess. But I'd expect that even if the American public might grow numb and tired of watching soldiers and civilians getting blown up, to the players its every bit as terribly real and attention getting as the new season of American Idol. Who says that we get to divorce ourselves from the reality of what we started? How can we be a society that becomes bored and moves on to the new season of must-see TV?

This morning Scarborough was actually mouthing messages to his base on camera, saying "he's wrong" over and over to the camera in response to comments about Ron Paul's crazy and insane call to end the war....
Dan Abrams spends his evenings chasing his tail with the remnants of whatever scandal is left over from the day: Is it wrong to expect more than the constant repetition of breaking news from Heath Ledger's tragic death, only to find that its a story about how masseuses get certified for CPR? How far of a stretch is that? Who was called first? Is that breaking news? There is no story there guys; its just a tragedy like every other tragedy happening every day. Theres nothing to see, just drive on by.

I don't know why it so flabbergasts me, and call me naive, but most of the country, including the republicans are for pulling out of Iraq, and most everyone agrees that this is a criminal administration, so where do pundits or newspeople get off acting like this anymore? John Gibson made fun of an actor's death, saying that it was probably due to suicide while watching the democratic debates, Chris Matthews thinks nothing of spending months telling his audience that one candidate is the definite nominee, at the same time as he keeps up a pretty heinous running commentary about her and her husband. After Matthews was made to grudgingly apologize for his remarks, Little Tucker Carlson stepped in and repeated them..I'm not even going to go into the Rush Limbaughs and the Bill O'Reillys out there. I cant even believe that I'm grouping MSNBC into the same world with Fox News, but...they are growing in that direction, and it is beyond me why the powers would allow this to continue, what with the mood of the country and the real movement of us all towards a middle/left mentality. Its like the inmates have taken over the asylum, and there is a fine line between shock for ratings, and alienating your audience ...and ultimately we will switch the TV off. If I will then anyone would quite sooner, because I am a real TV person, and a real MSNBC watcher.

MSNBC seems to be getting its ducks in a row behind Keith Olbermann, but its not happening quickly enough. David Schuster and Rachel Maddow would be an excellent pair for a roundtable show or even a straight news show. They both are quirky as hell, but also smarter than smart. And they could garner a great following just because they are so quirky; it makes them each lovable and human. MSNBC has an embarrassment of talent to keep falling back on the same old failed line up. ...Chuck Todd, Richard Engle. Why is he so underutilized; Oh yeah, hes a foreign correspondent and we don't want to show much about that messy foreign stuff now, do we? Isn't it preferable to have Tweety and Tucky telling us like it really is over there? Sam Seder is fantastic with his sort of sparkle smirk and humor, which is the secret ingredient to any news show working well.

This morning I was sick, and laying helpless in bed flipping channels, trying to get past the local news on every network channel...and finally I jumped to channel 68, where I found the face of Willie Giest filing the screen, donning 70's tinted aviators and his canary-in-my-mouth, slap-my-face, look. The camera pulled back and there he was with two bikini-topped hula girls at the Hawaiian Tropic...um...restaurant...kiosk at the mall...booth at the convention center...?
Because I guess that since Mika and Scarborough were in Boca (Joe's home town, or so he told us over and over again, as if that's a good thing,) Willie was pretending that he was in Hawaii...huh? Childish banter ensued, as if we were supposed to be fond of these guys, and then we were back to the hard news of the debate last night.

Scarborough is proud to be a republican, even in light of the line-up of clowns who are representing his party. What they said is not worth reporting, because it doesn't amount to much, except for Ron Paul's usual anti-war rhetoric, that is good to hear but it tends to take away from his real platform of government abolishment and all kinds of silliness.
But Paul going on about ending the war and Morning Joe's silent commentary ("he's wrong, he's wrong, he's wrong")...and I know that this is an entertainment show, but I felt...offended...and I found myself looking at the curve of his nose and his little hateful mouth, his sickeningly thick hair, and I wondered how people like this get a platform. I know that when I switch him on, its because there is nothing else on...and lately because he has given John Edwards some air time. But today, this morning, I turned him off.

Do you hear that MSNBC? I turned your fucking Morning Joe off! ...And, I am, what might be referred to as, a loyal viewer. I lay here thinking about how Scarborough is their Deputy Dawg, sending a less than subliminal message to his base, and to the doleful Matthews and the under-appreciated and misunderstood Tucker Carlson. And I was wondering how it makes sense at all that a guy like this gets to pretty much state, on national TV, that the war is a good thing, or that we are not failing over there, in the bigger or the smaller views, without a peep from any one of the correspondents that MSNBC has supposedly under contract...Maybe they have cut them all loose; I haven't seen much of Engle since he went on his book tour and Boettcher seems to also have vanished after covering some major stories out of Atlanta.

The point is that they no doubt have some correspondents out there, or they have access to stringers, and they choose time and again to allow the right leaning, misogynist pundits to rewrite the storyline of our tragic tale; Which wouldn't be anything different than business as usual except for the fact that we are living in dangerous times, and to see Morning Joe winking into the camera just as John McCain is going on about the glory of the war, and decrying whatever it was that they have renamed the cut and runners, I get a sinking feeling.

Finally, in light of Huckabee's comparison between WMA and Easter eggs, and my Psych 101 text book, I've got to nod towards Melissa's pundit's balls open letter, (not cross posted here for some reason; maybe she just hasn't had time yet,) and the obvious obsession, in these days of wimmin and blacks being uppity enough to run for high office, with their own cojones and how every man, woman, and child must be admiring their manliness....I guess its hard to get knocked down a peg or five.... but, I have no empathy for those who have played such a deadly and destructive role in American History. Serving as a warning to others might be the best payback to a suffering country.
We've Finally Got a Piece of the Pie....

Sweet Jesus, I Love MSNBC!

It snowed in Baghdad yesterday.
In a scene straight out of solemn black and white stories of cease fires at Christmastime, residents of the war torn city marveled at the beauty of the white crystals falling, even if they melted upon hitting the torn apart streets. It hasn't snowed in Baghdad for as long as anyone can remember.

We are living in strange times, my friends.

This past week has been backwards crazy like that; on the heels of Olbermann's O'Reilly puppet theater the other night, in which O'Reilly unsuccessfully messes with Obama security, and then reports of Hannity being chased through NH by Ron Paul supporters, stirred up because Faux News didn't allow Paul to participate in the debate... Along came Dan Abrams complaining that he felt lately that Hillary was being shoved at us by the media! Oh really? The sweet indignation of just realizing what has been happening all along.


....and now Obama is suddenly the second coming!? What was Dan thinking when he was the program director of this very station and he supported the chronically low ratings of Scrappy-doo-Tucky-Carlson, the Libertarian fool, and the non stop rantings of Tweety Matthews, acting as if Hillary was a done deal and there was no point in even discussing other candidates. So sure were the M$M pundits about Hillary, that I started switching it off, because I am just fucking weary of being told what to do by pasty white men.

Yeah, Abrams' outrage rings a little hollow. NOW Dan is with us, in the face of the big bad M$M machine? Well, its possible, I suppose, since MSNBC is maybe the best of the worst of the M$M, but God, who in their right mind allows the likes of Willie Giest to ascend to the role of snide janitor, much less sidekick to the repugnant Morning Joe, and who kept Carlson employed against the usual formula of ratings and sponsors? I wasn't a fly on those walls, but if appearances mean anything, Tucker rode along on his relationships rather than ratings, long after it was clear that any retooling could help him in any way, and once the suits got involved there were slap-downs of Tucker and the "rumors" that Tuckie was on his way out (...also, didn't Tucker thank his 10 viewers on air, and then get reprimanded for it by the bosses?)

Granted, they have got Rachel Maddow on every show in a row, just about every night! (and, having quietly shot a pilot already, maybe she can get Kent Jones a gig there...he is sorely missed on Rachel's AAR show!) One good move doesn't clean the slate, but if they do start to build a decent lineup based around Keith, with Rachel taking the nine o'clock slot, it could be great programming for the upcoming Democratic majority! If New Hampshire is any indication, the snotty conservative pundits who used to have a stranglehold on all of the airtime they wanted, haven fallen from favor, along with their masters in the White House...

After writing the above rant the other day, I was surprised, pleased, and honored to receive an invitation to join Jill's newest project: a blog called Sweet Jesus I Hate Chris Matthews!
Not only was I pleased that she would consider my pitiful missives that are coming pretty irregularly lately, but also I'm kinda thrilled that we are all on the same page about this thing. I spend alot of time wondering if I'm just a crazy fool who was born at the wrong time, in the wrong world, and when I get any sort of confirmation of my sanity and/or remaining humanity around me, I feel so much better! Thats what got me started writing this opinion sort of stuff (and who watches more MSNBC than me??) and thats whats allowed me to go on through the morass of the Bush years and the press playing along like some sort of hired PR team.

And, it wasn't only me and Jill; it was also the entire newscycle, that left old Chris, by last Thursday, saying things like "the popular feeling is that the media...well, me actually..." influenced the outcome of the elections.... So, after years of being a sort of political kingmaker, in servitude to whosoever's stock was going up, and manipulating the American people by playing along with the farce that is his shtick; that no one could have known that any one thing or another was gonna turn out badly in this nightmare called the Bush years; no one could have known? I knew! So many of us knew! How come there were printed bumper stickers, way back then, that said "ATTACK IRAQ? NO!!," (to which has been added a new horrific array of other versions and countries,) right here in my neighborhood?

And regardless if who Tweety Matthews has ever written a speech for or been on staff with, it is an inarguable fact that he, and most of the other M$M pundits were decidedly leaning towards the talking points that were coming out of the White House in their reportage of the news leading up to this fiasco, and ever since. Its not even like any of the press would have had to look far or confirm all that much of the reams of information that was being dumped in their laps, already having been researched and confirmed. The only would have had to put their jobs on the line to report it.

So, when Tweety Matthews and his producers felt it prudent to give the stage to Michelle Malkin, as if she deserved to be on any show further towards the mainstream than the Jerry Springer Show; when they chose to allow old Tweety to literally drool on Ann Coulter, as if this is the kind of woman that anyone (especially a college crowd, which he was entertaining that week,) should aspire to be like some mean trannie with an ax to grind and books to sell, its so far beyond the pale, and begs some programming and social questions at the very least....Unless, of course, MSNBC aspires to be more like Fox news.

The pale? Well, here is a guy who finds all of this politics stuff so fun and interesting, like alot of us do. He rubs his hands together and turns all red, practically jumping up with anticipation of the upcoming primaries and what they could possibly mean. But somewhere along the line, he seems to have disconnected with the reality of what he is doing ,and what it means in the life and death struggles of not only our soldiers around the world, but of the growing number of Americans who are suffering due to the economy and our lack of health care.

So, even with the turn back towards the middle, and the network's seeming attempt to start to show a little deference to what is actually happening in the country, there is still a bit of problem with the ongoing bipolar swings of not only Tweet, but the bunch of them. When you start to wish that all pundits could be as stable as old Pat Buchanan (even if you disagree with him,) you're in trouble. When you start to think from time to time that Morning Joe has a point or two right, you're in big trouble...but across the board, we all think that something is wrong, and getting wronger, with Tweety.

On the heels of this week, came word that Timmeuh Russert is going to give Hillary an entire hour on Sunday; and entire hour! Not only was Timmeuh featured on Hardball to promote this hour, but Tweet went on about how it was going to be the hardest hitting, most important interview in the whole wide world!! And this, as part of the umpteenth time that Tweety was musing on how Hillary should and would concede; bow out of the whole show, gracefully...you know, back off.

It makes me think of how Kos has supposedly been trying to manipulate the republican primaries by having dems vote for Romney...met by such outrage! Such venom!...on both sides....But How are we supposed to view a 1 hour "hard hitting" commercial for Hillary to display her newest self? And how are we supposed to take an entire segment of Timmeuh and Tweet's delight at being able to present her newest self?

Crazymaking; after so many months of beginning every interview with anyone even remotely involved in the election process with a question like "With Hillary as the obvious candidate of choice for the democrats, what do you think of....?" Then planning her fall...now he views this interview as the most historic, interesting, and hard hitting thing to ever happen!
Either he is just trying to go with the flow as he sees it day by day, he is seriously bi-polar and not in control of which way his mania is leading him on any particular day, or this has all been a plan to try to shape the discourse....And, if so, I don't think that its working. Its clear anyway that he is not all that fond of Hillary...or women in general.

The feeling that I'm getting is that in the shadow of being so wrong all the time lately, fearing that his power is slipping as a new generation of more liberal pundits makes their way into his world, and the reality of electing a woman as president looms large, he is very confused about how to act, but is sure that he must keep being the boisterous Chris Matthews that he always was. Whats clear is that something is wrong. Ive watched him almost daily for years, as something that I turn on in the background while I putter in the evening, and something that my entire family watches, and there is something amiss there.

Look for Tweety to pull out some of his personality to match Hillary's new campaign of showing people more of who she is emotionally. I want to start a pool about tears; the tears of Hillary, the tears of Tweet, the tears of all the clowns! (cue: circus music)


c/p RIPCoco
c/p Brilliant at Breakfast

HAH! Tweety Puts on a Sweater and hangs With the Peeps in NH!

Tweety is back on his home nest, after a harrowing couplea days of having to go head to head in with the stylings of the ever more popular Keith Olbermann. Just Botox smooth enough, and in relaxed sweater garb for the "country" feel, he hit New Hampshire with a big "HAH," set to take the town on with his teetering bluster and that down home red faced bark that only our Tweety can muster. Thinner and older, and smacked down over and over, you've got to hand it to him in that he just keeps going...one hand on Dowd's knee the other cupping his own crotch (or the the man crotch of Ann Coulter)...HAH!!

Its an example of narcisissio-egotitus that rivals that the drawbacks of Bush himself. The swaggering oaf act was dampened by the presence of Rachel Maddow, representing the devastatingly smart contingent of pundits who manage to tell the truth and sweetly point out the lies. So smart is she, and so high is her Q-rating, that she is on every show in a row on MSNBC these days, and Tweet does not seem all so happy with this turn of events. Indeed, old Tweet seems taken aback to find himself on a set next to Rachel, considering that his usual foils have been the scary Maureen Dowd, the scarier Ann Coulter, and the Scariest Michelle Malkin, interspersed with a little Johnny Mac for good measure.

Given the choice, would Tweet find himself, at this late stage, so horribly wrong, unable to influence this thing even though hes tried, being schooled by a younger, prettier, smarter, WOMAN, who can intellectually and in just about every way, kick his ass all the way to the polls and back! In a few smart words, Rachel's dry sarcasm in the face of Tweety's wrong assertions, make him redder and redder; sometimes I watch just to see if he'll stroke out on national TV.

I keep thinking, "I am SO TIRED of this slimmed down, botoxed up, FUCK, telling me who the choice of my party is before the votes are even in. What gives him the right to plant shit in every lazy American's head, until no one bothers to even go to the polls because its a done deal. Tweety's stock and trade is to plant the talking point conversationally and just let it do it's job. And of course he never fails to jump from one sinking ship into the cult of another visionary leader. Is this guy a reporter?

So, no Tweety, I am not wondering whats next for the BIG LOSER(S,) Edwards and Huck-ominy . I do not buy that Edwards is the big loser at all, when the frontrunner's are within a couple thousand votes of eachother, and, to paraphrase Trippi, are caught in battle while circling round the drain; you gotta just stand on the edge of the tub and watch...because anything can happen! Edwards was third and maybe a low third, at 16%, but take away either one of the front runners and half of that percent of voters will peel off and join HIM. The people with him are with him...so I believe that would be 16% and then half of the rest..? The anti Hillary people are never gonna vote for her...not now, anyway.
Don't you ever learn, Tweets?

Its all a big gamble for him, and his ilk, and hes got a gambling problem. He approaches this thing like its So exciting; so much fun. But what has his role been in preventing certain information from getting out, and promoting misconceptions and swiftboating? What role has he played in the continuation of this war, with his dense reporting of the talking points for...YEARS!!....

And tonight's hardball!!!: I haven't had time to really study this, but I think that he diminishes all women by suggesting that Hillary won mostly because 'every woman can remember being passed over for that big promotion or denied a job because they were women.' If thats true, Obama has it in the bag when we get to the states with people of color living in them! So, what Tweet is saying is that after seeing Hillary CRY, we all remember the times we were kept down...and in the grips of that we lose our ability to make a decision? He wished this evening that he had even one woman on the panel, but maybe it would have to be a particular woman, because Rachel might just have to say that there were alot of times in her career when she was kept down for being a Lesbian...no?...so, lets only ask certain women, OK? BUT there were no women....so a panel of men discussed how a part of Hillary's surprise win must have been disappointed women feeling sorry for her. hell, maybe...

Or one could see Keith Olbermann for some REAL information about polling and all that...

I missed the beginning of the show, but I'm sure that part of the reasoning must have been the fact that people in open Cauci are less likely to vote certain discriminations, as opposed to others, in public. The secrecy of the voting booth is a big part of this. But that cuts both ways as we move towards different states. Could it also have been that after the Iowa Cauci, there was a certain clear picture of what it might feel like to have Obama be our candidate, and it felt a little dangerous and...too soon because of his youth and idealism?....BECAUSE, Tweet would have it be all sewn up right there as Obama was supposed to roll right through New Hampshire on a streak.

I know that there is alot of dead air to fill for these guys, but I resent like hell how knee jerk quickly the script went over to "How will Hillary drop out gracefully in the face of the Obama phenomenon?" And in that way, I'm happy that they were as good as tied in NH. I don't want to have it decided now, and I want them to circle the drain for a little while longer just to give Edwards a chance to talk more...because more than anything else, what Edwards is saying to the American people is really, really important to our future. To that end, I hope that everyone will send him some cash. If for nothing else, just for message!

Tweety's question tonight about Romney and Edwards "Is he still alive?"...
God forgive me if I'm just a little sick and tired of wondering how Tweety even has a job anymore. Are you listening MSNBC suits? Ditch Tucker and Matthews...and throw out Giest while you're at it; consider this the baby and the bathwater because this is Damien the Omen and we should cut it off before it kills again!

Oh, and an aside to Hillary: I don't want to see us "fall backwards" either...but I don't feel like we should try to "reverse it," by keeping a presence in Iraq as a gushing wound, represent large corporations as if they were individual people, and continue this deregulated globalism insanity without some careful reconsideration. Don't cry for me, Hillary....If you are elected, I'll keep working to make it better just the same way as I have been all along, with no expectation that my government is going to help; with the full expectation that my government will work against me!

RIPCoco