Turn on MSNBC at dawn. Invite Babel into your home at six a.m. It's hallucinatory. It might be Pat Buchanan in his last act, to offer a shrill diorama of white rage. It might be Joe Scarborough, a good boy, honest injun', trying for reason, trying for something contemporary, something "now" something hip -- but still, aswirl in the miasma of tit-for-tat politics most of the time.
It might be someone marvelous, like the elegant Jonathan Capehart, or someone totally wiggy and weirdly watchable as John Ridley. Scarborough is oddly sympathetic, posing as buffoon in a fleece sweater thing, but really smart. His honor peeks through in the weirdest way. But it diminishes to keep the very stupidest stories alive. I can't get enough of that show. It's America itself; arguing, bitching, brothers and sisters going at it, always coming back the next day -- leaving their grudges behind. It might be Ms. Brezinski, smarter than anyone in the room, but still endlessly playing tape of the good Reverend Wright. They talk and they talk and they talk and they captivate and guide the national conversation, along with Anderson, and Wolf, et al, but they all remind me of the thing I don't like about Hillary Clinton -- there is a patina of condescension in every last bit of discourse, in every last analysis and in every last precis sentence they offer up for "debate".
And they are stoked, fueled, enlivened by the theatrics of the surrogates for both candidates. Oh the surrogates. Carville as Sancho Panza, Reverend Wright as some sort of Farrakhan manque as it is written. (I've heard the same things he said at the most diverse dinner parties on both coasts, except the speaker wasn't black and wasn't yelling.)
As the day goes on, you start to feel insane, if you keep MSNBC on. Bill Clinton implied or didn't imply that Obama was not a patriot. Discuss. Discuss some more. ( I think "who is getting paid for this debate?") Because the same stuff is rehashed in a sisyphusian cacophony from dawn to midnight, with some breaks for shows about prisoners and their tattoos. On MSNBC I think the vice president of the United States just shrugged again about the dead children of America. You can see the blood slowing and thickening in his arteries, occluding and blocking all the impulses that are responsible for decency.
Everybody has something to say. All of us. Me. You. We yell and fight and roar and score points.
(Pause.)
Okay. There are two candidates for the Democratic nomination. They have to talk about the millions of uninsured, the children of this country who have been bypassed by life itself, by opportunity and by hope. They have to talk about the economy and the war and our absurd financial indiscipline -- but all they can do is take defensive positions on the endless babel spewed out by their surrogates.
By eleven, one is exhausted, and feels poisoned. The commercials alone -- atop the presidential panoply -- make one feel like it's a bad smog day in L.A. No matter where you are.
It's seven p.m. There's Hardball with Chris Matthews, who seems also like the last honorable schoolboy, but somewhat....compromised by the sheer concretizing effort of putting on that show day after day. Everybody wears a tie and has a haircut. The women, passionate and committed, go out and sell it. Whatever it is. Katrina Vanden Huevel is on as I write, promoting Richardson as VP for Obama (of course), while Ron Brownstien (author of a perfect book about Hollywood's intersection with Washington) shrugs and plays cool. Buchanan is back with his inability to ever, ever see the shade of gray.
Chris bemoans the soap opera of the Democratic war, while never mentioning that he's one of the guys stoking it on and on and on.
THERE ARE FOUR THOUSAND SOLDIERS DEAD TODAY. It is used as the anchor for a "discussion of the surge".
Some shit has gone down in Detroit with the mayor and perjury over sex. The distractions are like bubble gum to bad breath; a temporary relief at best. Now it's Olbermann, the bastard love child of Howard Beale and Hamlet, and I watch him tell us about bedbugs(!!!) at Fox-news - I watch, feeling a bit like Jimmy Stewart in Vertigo, when the lens does something unknowable, stretching, elongating, bending...
And yet there is real life. It remains ever present. We can not avoid it. Journalism is insufficient to the task, and art seems to have lost a certain metaphoric elegance -- it doesn't draw people in.
I send money every month to the Children's Defense Fund. I think about the things I can do.
It is no secret that I am madly in love with Obama and everything he stands for. I talk to my shrink about an America that does not elect him. I think it will be the end of some hope, some dream for the realization of everything that Martin Luther King stood for.
If it doesn't happen, I will retreat. Into the small and the quiet. My friends, my family, my work. No public hope. I worry that my anger at Hillary Clinton is muddy, but then I think about the impression of falsity and the condescension she exudes. To me. I know she doesn't hit everybody the same way. I think about my friends who keep asking me not to slam her anymore.
MSNBC in the background. Iraq. In the background? How do we get out? Matthews is speaking to Richardson about Carville and the Clintionian sense of entitlement (only within their staff -- I disagree).
I know I will do anything I can for her if she is the nominee, but my dreams for this country will have died. I wish Senator Clinton and Senator Obama could silence the gutter-sniping and solely talk to the issues of what it means to be an American circa 2008.
I am terribly angry over the Clinton's praise for John McCain; so craven, so vicious, so cynical and so wrong. In the background, Richardson is passionately extolling the virtues of his guy
and the night goes on, the talk goes on, unabated and I watch, I judge, I scribble, my passions agitated. What next?
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"there is a patina of condescension in every last bit of discourse"
Y'mean, like:
"I am madly in love with Obama and everything he stands for. I talk to my shrink about an America that does not elect him." ?
"What next?"
More navel-gazing.
Why do people seem to think they're supposed to watch cable news channels, even when their intuition and reason tell them that what they're watching is drivel. Repeat after me: cable news is worthless. It exists to sell soap, to provide employment for blowhard know-it-alls, and to manipulate us politically. You know it's bad for you. Don't watch. You don't have to.
Well, you could just turn off MSNBC and read a good book of essays by John Berger entitled "Hold Everything Dear" instead of honoring any of these shills with your valuable time or prose. About an hour of TV a week is all one needs to surmise the new world order madness. My idle side does occassionally imagine Brian Williams and Stephanopolous in a photoshopped porn video together, and I do recognize that is as idle-minded as ingesting any of this psychotic nonsense on TV which attempts to disorient and disempower us further. We need to come back to inner quiet and stillness before we can take any meaningful action, and, perhaps, that means discarding most of the media, which by our very act of watching, steals our time and potential effectiveness.
Stop buying crap, too.
We do have some power left. It's just making a choice to use it.
I could tell the blogger was some sort of playwright just by the melodrama contained within his nicely crafted prose. After reading a lot of the respondent posts, I was really impressed by how so many of them attempted to outprose the poet instead of making functional points; not drinking the coffee, but sniffing it, to parlay my lame attempt at poetry into yet more cliche ridden prose.
Get up, get showered, grab a bite, go to work. Who has the time to watch all that televison, anyway?
Well, apparenly playwrights and lots of Huffpo readers.
It's fun for me, however.
First article i've read in a loooong time that expresses exactly what I feel. Every single word.
While my spousal unit & I are regular Olbermann lsiteners she did remark that there isn't enough non-political material...like the economy, And the other shows keep repreating the same stuff. What we like about KO is he is doing the job way too many media journalist types are too spineless to do, call the bastards out for what they are doing to this country be they in the White House or in the boardrooms of Walmart. While I watch Mathews at times his show really should be named "Softball" for all the stuff he fails to challenge on his show. Some accuse him of being pro-Obama but they effectively block out how much he fell over himself saying nice stuff about HRC last year. I ran across a post at another site where people were foaming at the mouth at how liberal he is. He's anything but unless your benchmark is Vlad the Impaler.
For al its flaws MSNBC is still better than the coporate shills at CNN or the Goebels Propaganda Network (aka Fox). & then there's Lou Dobbs He protests so much that I wonder how many folks without green cards he employs. Kinda like the Eliot Spitzer of immigration.
Jon: Feels a little surreal, doesn't it? You write like an angel - another lovely job using words to paint the picture of a feeling. I don't listen to television, but I hear the same "experts" who read the tea leaves and dissect the ineluctable and inevitable "truth" on our behalf. No matter what we would like to believe, "this is what's really gonna happen."
But "When men on the chessboard get up and tell you where to go .... and logic and proportion have fallen sloppy dead .... " I think maybe you need to ask your heart .... and not your head?
When I get all paralyzed by those elegant intellectual arguments, I go back and listen to Barack Obama. I hear him speak to us as intelligent adults. I watch the faces of those in his audience - "kids" of all ages. They're hearing what I'm hearing, and it's something for which we've all been yearning, and missing, for decades now. I can literally feel the energy swirling around those events. It comes equally from Barack himself and those responding to him. You may call it "hope," and I may call it "connection, " but it's the energy that's going to fuel - and guide - our collective commitment to pull ourselves up by the bootstraps, join hands, quit worrying about what makes us "different," and begin the work.
And I quit worrying about the pundits . I believe Barack Obama will be our 44th President -
Thursday, March 27, 2008.
MSNBC is being woefully out-performed by the other 2 Cable News outlets today. I woke up at them to hear Scarborough defending and hyping Hillary Clinton, after 2 minutes I switched channels but came back 10 minutes later. Unbelievably, Joe Scarborough was saying the exact same thing! The media wanted to push HC out of the race and she had a right to fight. And then they started on the "new" Wright "revelations". I have boycotted Fox and I really intensely dislike them but I have to give them kudos when they do the right thing. Fox has been talking about the economy, violence in the Chicago school districts, the economy, a little campaign politics. CNN ( major disappointment as they have really earned their nickname of the Clinton News Network) has been doing the economy especially the housing/mortgage crisis with in-depth interviews with real people, Iraq war, live feeds from campaign with less commentary. I turned back to MSNBC and Andrea Mitchell advises that she was up until this morning reading through Jeremiah Wright's papers and have some talking head say "...this is really serious. Obama will have to address this issue as Hillary will take this to the Super Delegates to show that she is more electable..." YAWN!!!
Is that the best you can do MSNBC. Gregory will go through the whole mess again this evening and then Dan Abrams will pick up the baton. Ridiculous waste of airtime!
I watch MSNBC everyday. I record Morning Joe, Hardball, Race for the whitehouse, Count down, and I use to record Tucker. I agree with everything you say. The Democrats race would long be over if the Republicans on the network were not sitting there making the arguement for Hillary Clinton. They are enjoying this all out brawl. I tried to support Hillary Clinton. I bought the story that she was going to be the next president of the U.S. Just as long as it was a Democrat. But the more i hear her talk, the more i do not like her. Now she has miss spoken about Bosnia. This is the question that needs to be put to Senator Clinton. Name any situation that you have been in that you had to run to avoide sniper fire. If you can name one then maybe you miss spoke. But if you never had to run from sniper fire, then you just flat out lied. Every time i hear her speak i turn the volume down on my television. I also do the same everytime they show the Rev wright. They talk how negative the campaign has got. If Senator Obama takes it he is considered weak, and if he fights back he is just another politician. Just about all of his negative campaigning is in reponse to The Clinton kitchen sink tactics. The media should put an end to this campaign. It is over, but they need a story.
This was a remarkable post, or multiple posts, if you include the replies. I feel like somebody was sitting in my living room while I watched MSNBC. For months I have been flipping through TV channels and internet sites, trying to find world news, trying to find American political news that wasn't a quote and a response full of fluff and misquotes, logical mistakes and an attitude that They have to tell Me what is important as opposed to what I might think is significant. I'm 57 years old and I have always watched the news. I like to hope that it's not my brain hardening but it sure seems to me that I learned more reality from Cronkite than any hundred of the talking heads on MSNBC and it's clones on the other channels. How sad it is that an American citizen might have to go to an Islamist website to find the information that makes a bit of American politics more understandable. The truly scary part of all this is when I pick up my book of essays on political philosophy and find the RNC platform in an essay written by Mussolini while a head on MSNBC is spouting Luddite anecdotes. Can't they stop this crap and just tell us which lying bastards they have selected to lead us into the next series of bloody escapades?
I I couldn't agree more, Jon Robin. The feeding tube of endless discussion, in lieu of news can get to you. I think the idea is to pop on the TV at a convenient time and get caught up on what they are talking about, then go off and do your thing. Which to me is worry they are going to screw it all up royally. Thank you for your passion and clarity.
Leave it on for hours? Jeez why torture yourself. I can only stand it maybe for 1/2 of KO sometimes, but then even he just whines into all the rest of the crap.
You don't even realize that you are the "gutter sniper." It is those of you who have access to the air waves, the blogs, the papers, the news programs that are not only stoking the fire but creating it. You have decided Hillary is condescending; others have concluded that Obama is smug. You have heeped accusations of racism at the Clintons, while Obama is trying to defend his choice of churches. You have dragged out every video, parsed every word, and deliberately tried to produce any shred of evidence that might indicate that your candidate is so wonderful but the opponent would be the literal death of this country. You write this story about MSNBC (which I turned off months ago) but you can't NOT slam Hillary in the article. Don't you see that you are a caricature of what you complain about. You are the problem. You want to say something that is so profound that your readers will sing your praises but if you read these posts you will see that you have simply provided the fodder for those with an agenda. Turn off MSNBC.
You've said it all. What really gets me is when the pundits self-analyse themselves over their shoddy work and mistakes, they still can't correct themselves. They just go ahead and do it some more. For awhile there, after they got burned by incorrect polls they said they weren't going to rely on the polls, but, they're back it with the polls. And don't get me started on their speculation.
If Mika Brezinski is the smartest one in the room she is hiding it very very well.
Mika must have some kind of Tourettes when she's in a conversation with Joe, Willy and whoever else. She just blurts out words or exclaims. She's not even trying to interrupt to actually say something. And that hair drooping over her eye makes her look a little demented.
Today, I wanted to throw something at those 2 ditzes, Andrea and Nora for trying to make today's topic Hillary is 'knee-capping Obama a la Tanya Harding.
who in their freaking right mind would keep PMSNBC on all day...
what a waste of electricity.....
cnn is bad but pmsnbc is rock bottom AWFUL...
chrissy matthews.....obama licker.......keith blabberman...dumber than a box of liberal rocks...
mika b................omg.........................and all those girls they trot out who try to pretend they are news anchors...laughable...........................................the whole place like the ny slimes SMELLS...........
fumigate.............asap
Reading these comments is a pleasant surprises: There are people out there who've resisted and even overcome the mind-crushing steady drumbeat of the cable news outlets Clinton-bashing and Obama-reverencing. It's sort of like Big Brother in "1984:" Hate, Despise, Revile Clinton; Adore, Worship, Believe in - above all - Believe in Obama.
In MSNBC's case, the root cause is General Electric who pays these pipers and so calls their tune. As I type this Keith Olbermann is coming down the pipe, but, regretfully, I've given up on him. Certainly, all of us know he's bashing Clinton tonight and praising Obama. Why should this night be any different from any other? I also gave up on Tucker Carlson - long before MSNBC did - as well as Chris Matthews, the most insidious of the bunch.
I feel sorry for Olbermann, who's only proving he knows on what side his GE check is signed. It won't be long after this primary race is officially decided that Olbermann will find himself all alone among his co-workers; the others, like monotone Phantoms of the Opera, will unmask to reveal disfigured Republicans.
And, Keith will be holding the very bag he crawled into a few weeks ago.
you're full of baloney. if anyone is scorning shillary it's because of her vicious campaign. period. and by the way, cnn w/ wolf blister and lou "i hate mexicans" dobbs is WAY WAY WAY more painful to watch. almost as painful as watching shillary make up idiotic self-serving lies about bosnia and her teacake break in ireland. oh yeah, and "opposing nafta" as she shilled for it during bubba's adultery-fueled presidency.
Gee MN guy who says:
"My family and I have already done that same thing for the disenfranchisement of Florida and MI led by the Obama campaign and supporters."
Uh...the residents of Florida and Michigan have their own elected officials to thank for the mess. THEY BROKE THE RULES and arrogantly decided to move their primary up thinking they could sacrifice their delegates in order to have an early effect of the nomination.
Jon, MSNBC has one good thing and that's Keith Olbermann. He is the anti-O'Reilly, the conscience of cable, an honestly smart and good man who does a very good show. We also love Rachel Maddow and Eugene Robinson, who seem to rotate on panels of different shows.
But MSNBC aside, folks, this is not an anti-Obama post. This is a PRO Obama post. It seems like the IQ of the nation goes down every time race and religion come up. I agree with Senator Obama - if we do not unmask the anger, we cannot difuse it. We ARE a diverse nation - unlike, China, Japan, Russia, Sweden, Denmark, etc. And yes, diversity breeds contempt. So lets recognize it and get beyond it or we will end up a 3rd world country while the rest of the world zooms past us - in education, innovation, health care and currency!
I felt somewhat like you do re Olbermann until he decided to become president of the St. Barry Obama fan club. Now I can't stand his show and will probably quit watching it. Olbermann has become what he supposedly, in the form of Fox News, hates, offering opinion as fact and slanting almost everything that goes on in the Dems race so as to make Hillary look bad. Olbermann's obsession with BillO has led to the (probably inevitable) result of him *becoming* BillO. He failed to heed Nietzsche's warning that if one stares too long into the void, it begins to stare back into you. RIP Olbermann.
actually it's staring into the "abyss," not the void. you must thinking about staring into shillary's soul.
So as long as you agreed with what he was saying he was worth watching?
You feel insane because the talking heads and guests on MSNBC are talking to themselves, not to us. The more I watch cable news, the more I am certain that the people making that particular machinery go care nothing about the public, care hardly anything about democracy. They are in a continual club room with other club members, congratulating each other on being so smart. That's enough to make anyone feel insane.
Right on Nellie, I agree with you.
When all the other networks were beating the drums for war with Iraq, only Phil Donahue on MSNBC was allowing the anit-war voice to be heard. MSNBC soon fired him beacuse they didn't want to seem passive and unpatriotic while all the other networks were waving the flag and interviewing every retired general possible. It took Olberman a few years in his slot, but still he hasn't grown half the b*lls that Donahue departed the network with.
I thought you were writing an article about the lack of substance and objectivity in our mainstream media outlets. Unfortunately, you were just writing another article to throw your support behind the Presidential Candidate that you are in love with. When I got to the 3rd sentence of the 13th paragraph I decided to stop reading your incognito campaign propaganda.
I think I'm going to have a small notebook with me, when I sit and listen to any of these pundits, then send an email with the questions I'd like them to take the time to research, to discuss. For instance, why hasn't any journalist gone and done a program on ministers and what they say, those that are white, black, green, purple? Educate the public, instead of simply using sound bites to stir up the public, dummy down the public! Why isn't anyone asking what went wrong with Hillary's campaign, talking about that, how she ran her campaign, where they went wrong, what their expectations were and why they weren't met? Why don't they have an educated discussion on just what she's done that makes her ready on day one. If I read a book on how the White House operates, would that give me the gravitas to say, I'm ready. Let's discuss the role of First Lady, what she did with the health care reform, how much more she's done than other First Ladies! What about her 15 years with the Rose Law Firm, what about Obama's legislative job, his work in the law firm he worked at. I have alot of questions for these paid "journalists", but not enough answers!
I can answer one of those questions for you. Hillary ran her campaign like George Bush runs his administration. She chose loyalty over competence.
I'm surprised that intelligent people watch MSNBC -- or smoke, for that matter. I gave both up at about the same time years ago.
Except for the part about working for Hillary if she's the nominee, this post was like reading my thoughts for the last three months. I literally can't vote for someone who puts her political posture in front of people's lives, and for me, at my age, there's no reason to continue to think that "ligitimizing" the worst to "get" some of what's good will ultimately pay off. It won't. This isn't a war (the war between fascism and democracy) that can be won "incrementaly." The reason they call it "revolution" is because when things get this bad in humanity's garden, you have to literally "turn the earth" to get anything to grow again. The Clintons, the DLC, and all who buy into their "mind set" are creatively and politically sterile. If Hillary is the nominee, I'm moving on. Literally. (Finland, Canada, or Argentina) Otherwise, reading this post was like listening to myself think. Only it feels so much better to know I'm not the only one.
Lovethesinner, when you bail, as I fear you may yet do, don't forget to look into Holland or Iceland. the former is a beautiful country filled with people who seem to actually try to think about things. Plus they have incredible gardens and parks. You can't deal with politics all day and when you go for a walk to clear your mind a stroll along a flower lined canal checking out the outdoor sculptures will let you know that Rotterdam is a great place to be. Iceland, on the other hand seems to have a great deal of artistic people who keep their sense of humor while talking about the state of the world. Yeah, it gets cold and dark for awhile in winter but that's why they make full spectrum lights and chat rooms. You might not guess this, but I get to live in New York, where the leadership likes to employ sex slaves while using the state police as his private army. Yeah, we're thinking about moving after the election too. I really think the darn thing is already "in the bag" and if it pans out the way I think we are all going to be taking out our passports.
I'm from originally from Canada, and always laugh when I hear Americans say they are going to pack up and move there if things don't unfold to their liking here. I can tell you that it's not that easy -- how do you know Canada will take you? It's not like *you* get to decide, a notion which sounds like the kind of arrogance that Canadians often associate with their neighbors to the south. I can also tell you that Canada is, sadly, a VERY anti-American place, so I doubt you'd like it all that much. A friend of mine in grad school came to Toronto with her husband and baby and was shocked at the rude treatment she received, even though she was the nicest person you'd want to meet. You've been warned.
I have to tell you what your problem is, I had it myself for a while. It is MSNBCitis.
They are the sickest channel on TV, and you caught it. They must have caught it from Fox News, who are suddenly sounding normal.
I found watching MSNBC or BONBC was very painful and especially when Pat Buchanan started sounding like the fairest person on the show.
Instead of just supporting Barak Obama, they go on and on about the wonder of him all day long and do their best to tear down Hillary Clinton and if she has nothing to pick on they will have a go at her husband or even her daughter.
All that after Obama made them fire Imus, while he sat in his pastors racist church for 20 years and they still have not noticed.
Change the Channel and see how good you will feel.
Posted March 24, 2008 | 08:30 PM (EST)