Phil Griffin: MSNBC's Leftist Bias

This is for the Leftists who insist that MSNBC is a legitimate news outlet rather than a Left-wing propaganda machine.

That includes Rachel Maddow and her absurd claim that MSNBC is not a political operation.

MSNBC President Phil Griffin embraces his Lefty oasis and encourages Leftists to consider it their home.

From the Media Research Center:

In an interview with the AP, MSNBC President Phil Griffin bragged about life after Keith Olbermann, touting the cable channel as "really the place to go for progressives."

Griffin didn't bother denying the liberal bent of the network. He highlighted left-wing anchor Rachel Maddow, hyping, "She really has elevated the discussion and is in many ways the model that we want for cable news."

The MSNBC executive wouldn't discuss Keith Olbermann, who abruptly left the cable network in January. His new show will debut this week on Current TV.

...In the June 19 AP piece by David Bauder, Griffin identified his network's brand: "MSNBC has established a sensibility, a position, a platform...MSNBC stands for something and MSNBC is really the place to go for progressives and people who are looking for smart, thoughtful analysis."

I don't want to hear another Leftist claim that MSNBC is fair and balanced and delivers objective reporting.

If that's what you believe, maybe MSNBC President Phil Griffin can help you understand that you're wrong.

Chris Matthews: Gingrich, The Joker, Obama, Batman

I think MSNBC should send Chris Matthews packing - immediately. The damage being done to the NBC news brand is enormous and probably irreparable.

Like Matthews' former MSNBC colleague Keith Olbermann, I'm sure Al Gore's network would welcome him with open arms.

On Wednesday, Matthews cast Newt Gingrich as the Joker to Obama's Batman.

I'm not a Newt Gingrich fan, but this is ridiculous.

Video.



Transcript, from NewsBusters:

CHRIS MATTHEWS: Let me finish tonight with the Joker. Remember him? He was played by Jack Nicholson in that great “Batman” movie by Tim Burton. He was the key to the movie. Why? Because his dark world of malevolence and revenge set in contrast the goodwill, generosity and glamour of our hero. He was to the movie on the bad side what Batman was on the good. Batman stands on tall buildings looking for evil to be perpetrated, people to be saved. The Joker looks for ways to manipulate public opinion, interrupt the TV news, and bring his evil intentions and motives and instincts into reality.

Maybe the President today is our Batman, trying to do good, a bit mysterious, a bit cool and technocratic, a bit removed from the world of emotions, but right, right there on the side of good, always using his brains and wit to look out for the people in trouble. Well, maybe he's not that good.

No, Newt Gingrich is a far better Joker than Barack Obama is our Batman, that wide demonic smile of his, too much smile, not even a twitch of heart behind it, all guile, all dark delight in the menace he can dredge from the afternoon newspaper, the fears of people on the street, the midnight dread of what might be coming in an uncertain world and time.

Newt Gingrich, like all the bad guys of the Batman world, has now gotten caught up in his own nasty ploys. He’s just so instinctively looking for the next chance to attack he loses control even on his own bad attitude. “Life’s been good to me,” the Joker tells us on his comeback from the past, his face repainted to cover the horror, his smile deluding none of us instead being an unintended warning.

The joker is out there again, and no one's safe from his menace, least of all himself.

Matthews has really gone off the deep end. It's almost scary. He's so over the top.

The funny thing is Gingrich isn't the comic book villain Matthews makes him out to be.

Instead, Matthews is the joke.

Keith Olbermann, John McCain, and Adult Diapers

Keith Olbermann is NOT a class act.

Olbermann may think that he's insulting John McCain, but he's insulting everyone over 70 years old.

Tough Loss

All's well that ends well.

At first, all seemed to be going well at Lambeau on Sunday night, but all didn't end well.

Still, the Bears didn't win.

The Packers lost.

I think it's the curse of Keith Olbermann.

Bears 27
Packers 20

Libs Still Slamming Rudy Giuliani for Terror Remarks

The nicest thing I can say about Keith Olbermann is that he's a partisan hack.

It's obvious that the guy is not too bright. That's OK. Not everyone is intellectually gifted.

The thing is Olbermann's miniscule audience of libs believes what he says. They buy into his trash.

Those in his audience not in agreement with the Olbermann perspective watch his MSNBC show because they are masochists. There's no other reasonable explanation.

On Wednesday, Olbermann commented on Rudy Giuliani's remarks at a Lincoln day dinner in New Hampshire on Tuesday.

He and other libs got bent out of shape because Giuliani told the truth.

Why? The truth is their enemy.

Here is what Giuliani said:

“If any Republican is elected president —- and I think obviously I would be the best at this —- we will remain on offense and will anticipate what [the terrorists] will do and try to stop them before they do it,” Giuliani said.

The former New York City mayor, currently leading in all national polls for the Republican nomination for president, said Tuesday night that America would ultimately defeat terrorism no matter which party gains the White House.

“But the question is how long will it take and how many casualties will we have?” Giuliani said. “If we are on defense [with a Democratic president], we will have more losses and it will go on longer.”

“I listen a little to the Democrats and if one of them gets elected, we are going on defense,” Giuliani continued. “We will wave the white flag on Iraq. We will cut back on the Patriot Act, electronic surveillance, interrogation and we will be back to our pre-Sept. 11 attitude of defense.”

He added: “The Democrats do not understand the full nature and scope of the terrorist war against us.”

So? What's the problem?

I agree with him.

The libs are aghast.

How could Giuliani tell (GASP!) the TRUTH?

Keith Olbermann became particulary testy in his rant responding to Giuliani's remarks.

Olbermann charged:

Since some indeterminable hour between the final dousing of the pyre at The World Trade Center, and the breaking of what Sen. Barack Obama has aptly termed “9/11 fever,” it has been profoundly and disturbingly evident that we are at the center of one of history’s great ironies.

Only in this America of the early 21st century could it be true that the man who was president during the worst attack on our nation and the man who was the mayor of the city in which that attack principally unfolded would not only be absolved of any and all blame for the unreadiness of their own governments, but, moreover, would thereafter be branded heroes of those attacks.

And now, that mayor — whose most profound municipal act in the wake of that nightmare was to suggest the postponement of the election to select his own successor — has gone even a step beyond these M.C. Escher constructions of history.

Those are the words of a real slimeball, a lib running scared at Giuliani's popularity with the American people.

Olbermann continues:

...And if you somehow missed what he was really saying, somehow didn’t hear the none-too-subtle subtext of “vote Democratic and die,” Mr. Giuliani then stripped away any barrier of courtesy, telling Roger Simon of politico.com:

“America will be safer with a Republican president.”

At least that Republican president under which we have not been safer has, even at his worst, maintained some microscopic distance between himself and a campaign platform that blithely threatened the American people with “casualties” if they, next year, elect a Democratic president — or, inferring from Mr. Giuliani’s flights of grandeur in New Hampshire — even if they elect a different Republican.

How ... dare ... you, sir?

“How many casualties will we have?” — this is the language of Osama bin Laden.

Yours, Mr. Giuliani, is the same chilling nonchalance of the madman, of the proselytizer who has moved even from some crude framework of politics and society, into a virtual Roman Colosseum of carnage, and a conceit over your own ability — and worthiness — to decide who lives and who dies.

Rather than a reasoned discussion — rather than a political campaign advocating your own causes and extolling your own qualifications — you have bypassed all the intermediate steps and moved directly to trying to terrorize the electorate into viewing a vote for a Democrat, not as a reasonable alternative and an inalienable right ... but as an act of suicide.

Olbermann is horrified that Giuliani would dare to spell out what the future might hold if a Democrat took control of the country.

Olbermann is so desperate for attention and ratings that he compares Giuliani to Osama bin Laden.

That's more than a bit over the top.

It's a pathetic cry for attention.

Did Olbermann or Dems get upset with the "Vote or Die" movement of 2004?

P. Diddy and the best dressed clueless libs donned their "Vote or Die" shirts, never hesitating to say that a vote for George W. Bush and other Republicans would get you killed.

P. Diddy was even honored as BET's person of the year in 2004.

Only a few months after running New York City's marathon and raising several millions for the Big Apple's school system, Diddy didn't rest on his laurels, instead he starred in Lorraine Hansbury`s Raisin In The Sun on Broadway. With Combs in the lead role, the play was nominated for a Tony Award and became one of Broadway's highest grossing productions ever. Later on, Diddy launched Citizen Change -a non partisan organization that aimed to mobilize young voters and lure them to the polls in 2004`s presidential elections. Helped by his ``Vote Or Die`` campaign, 21 million young voters turned out to vote in 2004, 4.5 million more than the previous election. In between acting and leading his campaign, Diddy found time to open his Sean John store in midtown Manhattan and his "Making The Band 2" series once again generated high ratings for MTV.

First, it's ridiculous to suggest that P. Diddy's group Citizen Change is a "non partisan organization."

Second, the catch phrase for his efforts was "Vote or Die."

VOTE OR DIE!

OK, Olbermann and Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, etc. -- at least be consistent.

Slam P. Diddy.

It's not right to single out Giuliani for scorn, especially when he is accurately assessing the situation.

Olbermann goes on:

...Which party rode roughshod over Americans’ rights while braying that it was actually protecting them, Mr. Giuliani?

Which party took this country into the most utterly backwards, utterly counterproductive, utterly ruinous war in our history, Mr. Giuliani?

Which party has been in office as more Americans were killed in the pointless fields of Iraq than were killed in the consuming nightmare of 9/11, Mr. Giuliani?

Drop this argument, sir.

You will lose it.

What's scary is that some people value the opinion of Olbermann, of the outermost fringe of fringe Leftists.

Olbermann's Latest Whoring

Keith Olbermann is really desperate.

It may be an outgrowth of his positively dismal ratings. It could be that he's jealous of all the attention that David Gregory is getting for his loony liberal attacks on the White House.

Who knows?

Whatever his motivation, there is no question that Olbermann is engaged in a pathetic attempt to be noticed.

NewsBusters has an account of Olbermann's latest whoring.

Buddy Dana "Blaze Orange" Milbank was Olbermann's enabler last night.

(Transcript excerpt)

Keith Olbermann: "The war against the media, it's not something from our imagination, and it certainly got a little personal today. There was an e-mail that a producer at ABC News had written in the fall of 2004 during the presidential campaign that was leaked to the infamous, deplorable Matt Drudge. The e-mail read, as a posting today: 'Are you watching this? Bush makes be sick. If he uses the “mixed messages" line one more time, I'm going to puke.' I'm not even going to put the 'if that came from the White House somehow' thing in there because the timing's too good. When you consider that the President won that election and the e-mail was not even about Iraq, does this not smack of desperation on the part of the White House, to let something like that leak out right now?"

Dana Milbank: "Well, I, first of all, am never going to call Matt Drudge deplorable. Every time he links to one of my stories, I get an extra 50,000 hits, they tell me, so-"

Olbermann: "Good. Good for you."

Milbank: "-so let's establish that."

Olbermann: "I said it, not you."

Milbank: "You're toast, Keith."

Olbermann: "I'll go to the Matt Drudge Ombudsman."

Olbermann is shameless.

He floats baseless theories and creates stories, similar to the MO of Newsweek and the New York Times.

He slams powerful, popular people, like Matt Drudge, to throw himself into their spotlight.

Milbank, in a rare moment of fairness, albeit an extremely self-serving one, stands up for the influential Drudge. He points out what a dramatic impact he has. He acknowledges that a simple link from Drudge is guaranteed to bring incredible exposure and a massive increase in traffic to a website.

I have no doubt that Olbermann is trying to draw Drudge into a feud for purely selfish ends.

He wants attention. What better way than to criticize Drudge?

Hopefully, Drudge won't take the bait.

I think the exchange between Olbermann and Milbank is very telling. It's an indication of their envy.

Clearly, Olbermann is unhappy yapping away in the shadowy abyss known as MSNBC.

It must be cold there in the ratings cellar.