Let’s take a break from eating our own, for a moment, shall we? For now, my fellow Stinquers, is a good a time as any to remind ourselves that as unseemely as the situation at MSNBC might appear, it doesn’t even begin to approach the nakedly propagandistic dreck that emanates from Rupert Murdoch and Roger Ailes Fox News channel.

Exhibit A, today is a “draft letter” that Fox News “exclusively”  “obtained” from “defeated Democratic congressmen” imploring Nancy Pelosi to step aside for the good of the Democratic party. The letter, curiously enough, repeats tired right-wing propaganda about the Speaker’s supposedly polarizing persona: Read more »

Every Hero needs a villain. And for Markos Moulitsas, the Villain of the Olbermann Window Closing is MSNBC President Phil Griffin:

Remember how I told you about Phil Griffin, and how he’s done everything possible to keep MSNBC from going the full liberal?

I rest my case. MSNBC has suspended Olbermann indefinitely without pay for giving political contributions to several candidates this cycle.

The Kos Case — repeated ad infinitum across the Web — goes something like this: Griffin is a Joe Scarborough partisan who grudgingly puts up with Olbermann because Keith made MSNBC a (relative) success, after years of failure. But Griffin undermines the left-leaning nature of that success every chance he gets, because it chaps his ass.

This should be easy to document.

Except for one problem: It isn’t.

Read more »

ATTENTION: This is a LATE BREAKING STORY.  Late yesterday, MSNBC President Phil Griffin formally announced that he was permanently, officially and irrevocably canceling Keith Olbermann, a decision that has been proclaimed infallible by Papal bull and thus will stand forver until Olbermann is allowed to come back on Tuesday (as in: tomorrow). If you haven’t heard yet, Olbermann is the MSNBC host who jeopardized his network’s well deserved reputation for objectivity and fairness by singlehandedly orchestrating Harry Reid’s improbable re-election giving some money to a few guys running for something. This is like Pete Rose betting on Baseball, the Chicago White Sox throwing the 1919 World Series, or Ben Collins writing a book in which he reveals himself to be The Stig.

In a similar incident some years ago, MSNBC fired Imus in the Morning show host Don Imus for making racially charged remarks about a female college basketball team. At the time, Imus was about the only thing MSNBC had going for it. Not long after, the nascent Fox Business Channel (which, like MSNBC also had nothing going for it, except perhaps in an unintentional comedic sense) hired Imus to do his old show and so that Fox Business would at least have a couple of viewers for a few hours each day.

In announcing the permanent cancellation of Countdown with Keith Olbermann until this Tuesday, it is likely that MSNBC was hoping to prevent Fox News from hiring away Mr. Olbermann, and in an obvious and crass attempt to make liberals and liberal issues look bad, put him back on the air with no editorial oversight whatsoever.

That’s it for now.

I heard him play this Bach Sarabande at Lincoln Center in 2004, also as an encore.  I wept.

“A policeman guarding Mr Obama’s Mumbai hotel set off a major security alert after accidentally shooting himself in the leg last night.” [Daily Mail UK]

For some reason this was in my head all day:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eVil_NUviG8

Nelson Riddle, Frank Sinatra – what’s not to like?

Keith Olbermann [Twitter]