I got into msnbc for a while and watched the line up: Hardball, The Ed Show, Countdown and Rachel Maddow show. After a while (yeah, I'm slow), I realized that the first three shows were just repeating the same talking points based on the current news cycle. Nothing new that couldn't be figured out reading the headlines in the NY Times in 5 minutes. The only exception to this is Rachel Maddow.
Rachel Maddow does not follow whatever the current talking point playbook is. She actually investigates something and attempts to discover the truth at the core of it. Sort of like 60 Minutes can do on its best nights. Except, Ms. Maddow does it 5 nights a week with humor and with something that is almost completely absent from most newscasts: a sense of cautious optimism. She actually is not going to go down the path of "Something I disagree with happened and I'm going to milk it as some kind of megadisaster for the USA."
Now Keith Olbermann, unsuprisingly, has been fired or let go or whatever So? He was just another part of the angry line up. Nothing really unique in his show, except for the Oddball sequence. Kind of a calmer Ed Schultz, although a bit more rational than that. Now they're going to give the angry Young Turk, Cenk Uygur, his own show. He's part of the screamers from the left who are more anti- than pro-Obama. If Obama smiles at a conservative, it's considered a major loss to some of these screamers. Also, MSNBC is a TV business and the ratings are more important than politics or reality or whatever.
Some of the lefties I follow on Twitter are up in arms about this whole Olbermann thing. I don't see the problem. Shows get cancelled all the time and hosts replaced. It's about ratings and making money in the Fox dominated world of cable news. It's just another TV show. In fact, if he gets a gig eventually almost ANYWHERE else, he'll get more exposure and higher ratings. The thing I'm more annoyed about is how so many don't give Rachel Maddow a chance BECAUSE she's on msnbc and people assume she's just as angry and repetitive as an Ed Schultz or Olbermann.
Here's hoping Rachel Maddow gets "let go" and ends up somewhere else with a larger audience.
