Topic: Broadcast Betrayal
We watched election returns last night alternating mostly between MSNBC and CNN with occasional dashes of NBC and Brian Williams.
Chris Matthews has never been the reason I watch MSNBC, nor has the honestly and openly partisan Scarborough. My reason is Keith Olbermann.
Fairly early in the evening but after the rise of a national democratic landslide had become apparent, America's hardballer must have been sensing his own need to get back in synch with a voter mood and attitude that he and most of his ilk essentially ignored for six years.
... a voter attitude and apathy that Matthews, along with the Republican stampeders, assumed was no mere apathy, but genuine citizen stupidity, short attention span and gullibility.
Republican statements, declarations, justifications and public attacks have irked me for the most part because of the blatant but unspoken assumption that all of us are stupid, gullible and can be talked down to at will.
This was also the basis for much of the major broadcast entities' failure to inform the public. Erroneously perceived as media cowardice in the face of aggressive REAL hardball on the part of the Bush Administration and Republican Party.
<div style="text-align: center;"><img src="http://usinfo.state.gov/products/pubs/election04/image/hardball.jpg" />
What? Hardball questions tossed at Bush?
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I don't believe the failure of the media was based on cowardice, rather a like assumption that our national audience had too many other shallow priorities which includes a lucrative market for published tripe that is marketed and earns prophets from dimwits who aren't interested in serious issues and real news.
This is that attitude most typified by Mr. Hardball himself. Up until last night when Matthews tried to strap on his guns, upgrade his in-your-face swagger with Howard Dean, the reason why Mathews had lost my regard not to mention my attention was his fluctuating toadyness and public deference to repuglican and conservative personalities, alternated with his consistent hardballing (whatever that is supposed to be) of democrats and liberals.
All that across the table blather from Matthews was, I assume, supposed to be straight talk, honesty and bluntness when in reality it was guile presenting itself as honesty and acting parading itself as sincerity on his part.
The tough-guy stance taken last night at the wrong time, for the wrong reasons and quite blatantly a grandstand act compared with the best we've seen from Bush, Rove, Mehlman. That act also compares with the deceptiveness and manipulation of the man Matthews last night said he "really likes" - former Enron clown Ed Gillespie who directed the RNC through its Swift-boat shame and political lies of the election of 2004 and has not proven himself an honest man.
So Matthews - now aware of the blue landslide and where his future audience draw might be - got tough, throwing hardball questions at Howard Dean.
… Questions he should have consistently asked the elected liars for the past six years and did not
… not with any hardball bluntness, rather lowball soft-pitch deference.
Last night's toughness from Matthews was too little too late, the wrong question for the wrong person and at the wrong time. It was transparently self-serving and in no way was he speaking for me or any other thinking citizen.
Had his interview with Howard Dean included online voting responses like they do in dancing with the stars, Olbermann would have been suddenly the single anchor broadcasting the rest of the election.
It was an obvious self-service moment in which the stink of his own past behavior seemed to be wafted up into the winds now blowing in another direction toward which he never pointed ... but should have.
It was painful to see the two of them sitting there anchoring MSNBC's election coverage.
One anchor who knew and understood what Murrow knew and understood
… the other who really likes Ed Gillespie and who's every hard ball toss has always been a spitter.
