MSNBC, the cable network of hate.
MSNBC, the cable network of hate.
MSNBC was the outlier. Fully 85 percent of its airtime was devoted to commentary — virtually all of it left-leaning — while only 15 percent went to news reporting. Even allowing that this approach is driven by business considerations (newsgathering being more expensive than bloviating), there are a couple of intrinsic problems with this approach.
The first is that relentless partisan criticism invariably leads to name-calling. It’s like a drug addiction — you need more and more. Once you’ve called George W. Bush stupid a hundred times, audiences want something a little different, so you graduate to “worst president in history,” and finally, as Olbermann often did, a demented war criminal. Sometimes on that network, conservatives are labeled “Hitlerian.”
Sarah Palin starts out in 2008 as someone who can’t tell Katie Couric what newspapers and magazines she reads and is then spoofed as a provincial by Tina Fey for saying something she never said (“I can see Russia from my house!”). She ends up last Friday, at least in Martin Bashir’s telling, as “America’s resident dunce” with a reputation as a “world-class idiot” — all as a buildup to that weird riff on defecation.
The stream of angry, vicious, and hateful stuff that pours out from MSNBC anchors on a daily basis is quite shameful. That the left tolerates it and actually seems to relish it also tells us a great deal about the left itself.
On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.
The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.
The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News
MSNBC, the cable network of hate.
MSNBC was the outlier. Fully 85 percent of its airtime was devoted to commentary — virtually all of it left-leaning — while only 15 percent went to news reporting. Even allowing that this approach is driven by business considerations (newsgathering being more expensive than bloviating), there are a couple of intrinsic problems with this approach.
The first is that relentless partisan criticism invariably leads to name-calling. It’s like a drug addiction — you need more and more. Once you’ve called George W. Bush stupid a hundred times, audiences want something a little different, so you graduate to “worst president in history,” and finally, as Olbermann often did, a demented war criminal. Sometimes on that network, conservatives are labeled “Hitlerian.”
Sarah Palin starts out in 2008 as someone who can’t tell Katie Couric what newspapers and magazines she reads and is then spoofed as a provincial by Tina Fey for saying something she never said (“I can see Russia from my house!”). She ends up last Friday, at least in Martin Bashir’s telling, as “America’s resident dunce” with a reputation as a “world-class idiot” — all as a buildup to that weird riff on defecation.
The stream of angry, vicious, and hateful stuff that pours out from MSNBC anchors on a daily basis is quite shameful. That the left tolerates it and actually seems to relish it also tells us a great deal about the left itself.
On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.
The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.
The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News
It is good to watch MSNBC sometimes to get an insight into how Obama and the militant activist class of Democrats think.
As I recall, Obama asked for an end to vitriolic rhetoric after lesser statements (ironically, from Palin herself) didn’t lead to a shooting. Why has the left not heeded this request from the head of the Democrat Party?
Recall what the left, the hard core left, is all about. Think: Pol Pot. Then recall a friend of Obama’s writing years ago that we may need to kill off 30-40 million Americans to achieve their victory.
They work at this for decades, especially in America which is the hardest nut to crack. 1.5 billion hollow points for DHS, which you do not use for target practice. LEO’s buying or being given military equipment across America.
We are living in very dangerous times.
When your ideology is not logic based or based in truth, what else could you possibly put on that network, when Martin Bashire says someone should defecate in Sarah Palins throat, and no one calls for him to be removed, what kind of an audience is that. msnbc panders to an audience that is possibly the lowest denominator for intelligence and this is what that audience expects.
tells us a great deal about the left itself
But doesn’t tell us anything new. Are there no adults to marginalize this childish behavior?
Another example of group polarization. Whens groups isolate themselves, they get nuttier and paranoid. The extreme Left tend to hangout only with people like themselves. Wasn’t it liberal turned conservative David Mamet who stated that can’t recall ever meeting a conservative before age 60?
Here’s another example of the democrat/socialist’s lies: http://nypost.com/2013/11/23/cooked-census-reported-to-obama-and-rahm/
It seems the Census Bureau was told by the White House to provide false information in order to set the unemployment rate at less than 8% just before the 2012 election.
Love your web site, Robert! It’s my new home page.
“Are there no adults to marginalize this childish behavior?”
It comes down to internal or external motivation. Externally motivated people want to be liked above all: if the ‘cool kids’ are hewing to a party line, then the externally motivated want to fit in, and may espouse a party line even though they are conflicted by it. The internally motivated hold true to their beliefs, but are the minority. After years of marginalization and ostracization, even the strongest can be beaten down. This leaves the very few who don’t give a damn what the majority thinks, especially if the majority opinion is at odds with economic and natural law (a redundancy, I know).
People are social animals. And as part of the natural world, tend to follow the line of least resistance. It takes a conscious effort not to do so, and freedom is most definitely not on the line of least resistance.