Oh, Joy-Ann!

MSNBC just made it official: Joy-Ann Reid, usually referred to simply as Joy Reid, is taking over Chris Matthews' old weeknight time slot permanently.  Her new program, punningly named "The Reidout," premieres July 20.

I won't be watching of course, as I have had a problem with Reid ever since I heard that she questioned Florida politician Charlie Crist's integrity over his sexual orientation in a mocking matter on a blog and deflected blame for it to hackers, probably the most implausible explanation for incriminating prose since . . . since . . . well, memory of a similar incident fails me, but you can read what I said about it here.  I used to like Reid, as I said before, but her political-correctness spiel and her smugness wore thin over time, and now it's almost threadbare.

When the press noted that Reid was the first black woman to host a show on MSNBC, I was wondering, "Why this black woman?" - for the reasons above. If they wanted a black woman to helm the 7:00 PM Eastern slot, couldn't they have tried to steal away Abby Phillip from CNN?  (My mother wanted to see Ali Velshi get the time slot.)  But it is what it is, and if I watch cable news at all in that hour, CNN's Erin Burnett is my only recourse.   

As for Reid's two-hour weekend morning program, "AM Joy," that's being phased out in favor of her new weeknight gig, with no indication as to who will take over that two-hour time slot.  I vote for Steve Kornacki.  Maybe it's important for someone like Reid to look at the news from a perspective involving race and politics, but we need Steve to look at the news - especially politics - through his expertise with numbers.  (As for Ali Velshi, he has an earlier two-hour weekend time slot.)  As Trump and Biden try to pin down their bases and look for swing votes in what promises to be a tough presidential election campaign, and as COVID-19 will likely ravage the nation long after the last ballot is counted, we need a numbers guy like Kornacki, whom I would have preferred to see replaced Matthews on weeknights, to have a show of his own.  Maybe not for two whole hours, but we certainly need him.

As for the loss of Matthews back in March, I must admit I'm already missing his Winston Churchill references.  

Taking His Hardball and Going Home

Last week, I wrote on this blog that it was time for MSNBC's Chris Matthews to retire after he compared Bernie Bros to the Wehrmacht.  This past Monday, he did just that.  I'm glad to see that Matthews discovered my blog and took my advice.

Okay, Matthews, whom I've always had a love-hate attitude toward, likely never even saw my blog, unless he Googled himself and went through all 170 million results.  But he did in fact retire, thanks not only to his Sanders gaffe but also for a bunch of comments he made to women.  This past Friday, he had to deal with a magazine GQ column from journalist Laura Bassett, who charged that Matthews complimented her appearance by rhetorically asking, "Why haven’t I fallen in love with you yet?"  At a cocktail party from a single man, that comment might have been appropriate.  But when the supposedly happily married Matthews made that comment to Bassett  just before a televised discussion with her about sexual-assault allegations against Trump . . . uh, yeah, that was more than a little awkward.  In fact, Bassett added for good measure that Matthews "has a pattern of making comments about women's appearances in demeaning ways."

For the record, Bassett is an attractive woman, but that's all I'll say about that.  I may have already said too much.

While all this was going on, Matthews mistook Jaime Harrison, a South Carolina Democrat running for the U.S. Senate there, with Republican U.S. Senator Tim Scott, also of South Carolina. Both men are black.  Both of them are also bald, but any fool can tell them apart.  Black people do not all look alike, of course, and Matthews' mistake would have been understandable if this had been a Julie Wolfe-Esmé Marshall situation (two models who look so much alike that when I met Julie Wolfe, I began to tell her that she looked like Esmé Marshall only to have Ms. Wolfe finish my sentence for me), or even if it were a Dom DeLuise-Chef Paul Prudhomme situation.  It was nothing of the sort.

So, on Monday night, after opening his show "Hardball," Matthews - who does not look like Dom DeLuise or Chef Paul Prudhomme - announced his retirement on the air.  And while he finished his sentences - especially the one about how it was time for a new generation more in step with the times to take over at MSNBC and the one about how he was sorry for his demeaning comments about women (none of which involve Julie Wolfe or Esmé Marshall) - he did not finish the hour of his show.  After "Hardball" returned from its first commercial break, Steve Kornacki was sitting in Matthews' place looking as stunned as everyone watching at home must have been.  And so an era ends.  We'll have to wait for a new era to begin; a rotation of different hosts - including, I suspect, the insufferable Joy Reid - will fill in the 7 PM Eastern hour until a permanent host can be found.

Perhaps we should have seen this coming. Maybe we should have known something was up when Matthews did not take part in MSNBC's coverage of the South Carolina primary this past Saturday, reducing the gaffe-machine squad to just Joe Biden (who urged people to support Jaime Harrison's presidential bid).

Sorry to see you go, Chris.  Well, not really, especially after that remark on Election Night 2012 about how you were glad we had Hurricane Sandy the week before because it brought about opportunities for good politics.

Hopefully, Joy Reid will follow Matthews out the door sooner or later, and maybe also Chuckles the Clown (also known as Chuck Todd).

The Fall of Chris Matthews

If Joe Biden is like a favorite uncle, then his fellow seventy-something Irish homey Chris Matthews comes across as a friendly uncle who isn't your favorite.  He proved that again on MSNBC this past Saturday night, and despite Matthews' penchant for saying stupid things over the years, this time he went too far.  Even farther than expressing gratitude for Hurricane Sandy occurring just before the 2012 election.

When it became obvious that Bernie Sanders was not only going to win the Nevada caucuses but win big - with at least 47 percent of the vote - Matthews expressed a fear that the Republicans would destroy Sanders with negative ads based on his record and past statements about socialism should he become the Democratic presidential nominee.   That was a legitimate observation, and Matthews should have stopped there, but he went on to say that it was "too late" for Biden or Bloomberg or anyone else to stop him and compared Sanders' Nevada victory over to Hitler's invasion of France.

"I was reading last night about the fall of France in the summer of 1940," Matthews said, "and the general, Reynaud, calls up Churchill and says, 'It's over.' And Churchill says, 'How can that be? You've got the greatest army in Europe. How can it be over?' He said, 'It's over.'"

So, Matthews not only rendered the Sanders campaign as being morally equivalent to the Third Reich, he equated Sanders - who has relatives who perished in the Holocaust - to Hitler.

It seems that the part of Matthews' brain that was affected by the bout of malaria he got when he was in the Peace Corps has finally atrophied completely. While I would expect similar comments from Chuck Todd, who's never been the sharpest tack in the toolbox (and he made such a comment, referring to Sanders supporters as "brown-shirts"), Matthews, a learned political expert, should have known better.  

But then, maybe he shouldn't have.  Mathews likes to talk up his Philadelphia roots and his middle-class background as proof that he has his ear to the realities of politics, but in fact he's a Washington insider who's been in his bubble so long that he can't breathe when he steps out of it.  Oh yeah, one other thing I can't resist mentioning - Matthews was reporting live from Las Vegas during the Nevada caucus coverage on an outdoor set  when a sudden thundershower drenched him. He was all wet.  And not just literally.

Matthews, as an Irish Catholic, has made a reputation out of lamenting and being embarrassed by conservative politicians of Irish descent for their idiocy.  As a descendant of the Philadelphia Irish, I am embarrassed by and am lamenting Chris Matthews.  Yeah, he apologized, but he's done that so much it hardly means anything anymore.

Matthews is 74.  It's time for him to retire.  Too bad Chuck Todd, at 47, still has many years ahead of him.    

Beck-Ola

Fox News made a lot of liberals happy for a change this week. The so-called "fair and balanced news" channel announced that Glenn Beck's show, on at 5 PM Eastern, will end later this year.

I'm not happy. I'm very upset . . . about having to wait so long before it ends!

The Beckster, as Ed Schultz likes to call him, has the third highest-rated show on cable news, but Beck's ratings have been plummeting recently as Beck himself has gotten weirder. He's suggested, among other things, that both George Walker Bush and Barack Obama have been helping to bring about a new pan-Islamic caliphate in the Middle East by refusing to bomb the ruins of ancient Babylon during the Iraq War. Seems Beck thinks the caliphate's capital is to be established there.

Some of Beck's recent theories of world domination by enemies of America sound like they came right out of James Bond movies or Saturday morning television cartoons, but Beck has been under protest from liberal activists virtually since his Fox show began in January 2009. Remember that Beck - on another Fox show - declared in July of that year that President Obama had a "deep-seated hatred for white people," and in August 2010 Beck famously told people who were dropped from unemployment benefits after 99 weeks to work at McDonald's if they had to, even though the fast-food chain had more job applicants than jobs. His Austin Powers-redolent world government theories were only part of his problem.

Anyway, enough advertisers pulled their TV commercials from the Beckster's show to encourage Fox to drop him, although Beck and the network will (reportedly) continue to work together to develop new programming. Beck is going behind the scenes, where he likely won't be heard from again, and he's treating this career change like a promotion.

It's a Pyrrhic victory in one respect. Beck goes against noted MSNBC wild man Chris Matthews, who answers Beck's wild theories on a regular basis, in the same 5 PM Eastern time slot, and even today he trounces Matthews's "Hardball" show in the ratings. So even as Matthews rants against Beck, Beck still gets more viewers. I suppose more people found out the truth about Beck by seeing the rerun of "Hardball" at 7 PM Eastern, or maybe people suddenly started to find Beck moronic on their own and stopped watching. But mostly, it was likely the petitioning against Beck's advertisers that did him in. That's the same reason Beck's radio show has been dropped from so many stations.

Beck's impending departure from Fox and his diminished presence on radio comprise a blow against the right's toxic gibberish, and Dana Milbank of the Washington Post suggests that Beck's raging paranoia against the system is less of a factor in the body politic now that the economy is slowly recovering. However, the campaign against Beck only treated a symptom. The disease, in the form of Rush Limbaugh, Laura Ingraham, and that Long Island Irish Nazi Sean Hannity - all of whom can be as loony as Beck and also are just as mean-spirited - goes merrily on. Right-wing talk shows will never die. Remember, this is America.

Under New Management

The effects of MSNBC's redone lineup at the beginning of the Comcast era are already being felt, especially in the ratings. With Keith Olbermann gone, MSNBC's ratings have tumbled, and Lawrence O'Donnell has lost much of the audience that tuned in to Watch "Countdown" at 8 PM Eastern. He was only ahead of Kathleen Parker and Eliot Spitzer by 50,000 viewers this past Wednesday in the 25-54 age range, according to one estimate, and his overall viewership declined over the first three days of the week.

Ed Schultz keeps fighting the good fight for the working man at 10 PM Eastern, but his later time slot and his cut to four nights a week instead of five has to be a detriment to the brand equity he'd built up in the previous two years. Schultz now confirms that his "Psycho Talk" segment is gone per orders from his new bosses at Comcast. He figures that the new bosses - so far, not the same as the old bosses - are smarter than he is, and that this decision is in the best interest of the show. Which brings up the obvious question: If the new management honchos at NBC/Universal are acting in Ed Schultz's interest, why did they reschedule him to a later hour with one fewer weekday?

No one at MSNBC is even acknowledging Olbermann's departure. Rachel Maddow professed ignorance of the situation as it was starting to unfold when she appeared on Bill Maher's HBO show last week. Even the PBS NewsHour - which does media stories and covered Olbermann's recent suspension - didn't bring it up. Right-wingers, smelling blood, are burying MSNBC in scorn and ridicule, throwing dirt on a body that is merely ill rather than dead. (I researched online news and commentary on the MSNBC shakeup for this post. Most of it is smarmy right-wing nose thumbing, with very little objective analysis available.) When Chris Matthews earlier this week blasted Michele Bachmann for insisting that the Founding Fathers eradicated slavery, conservative bloggers and Glenn Beck bashed Matthews, insisting that the clause that made a slave three-fifths of a person was done to prevent the slave states from being overrepresented in the House of Representatives with non-citizens at the expense of the free states. This compromise clause, they charged, was designed to allow slavery to die out in the South by encouraging emancipation for more congressional representation.

I doubt they would have counterattacked this viciously if Matthews and MSNBC were in a stronger position. And besides, the conservative argument is bogus. If 60 percent of all slaves were counted for representation in the House to encourage emancipation and a 100 percent count of blacks, why was an even balance of free and slave states kept between 1820 and 1850 to keep one side from outvoting the other in the Senate? Why was slavery allowed to expand into the territories in the 1850s? Matthews likely would have defended himself yesterday on his "Hardball" show by asking these questions. But his attention was shifted to the unrest in Egypt instead.

Meanwhile, Fox News - the Deutsche Allgemeine Zeitung of American television - is so far ahead in the ratings, it's left CNN and MSNBC fighting each other for a very distant and very irrelevant second place. Here's an example of Fox's dominance as reported by the Kansas City Star: This past Wednesday's edition of "The O'Reilly Factor" drew 3.24 million total viewers, with 910,000 viewers in the 25-54 age range - "nearly," the Star reports, "as many total viewers as MSNBC."

So what does this all mean for liberals? A lot, most of it bad. With fewer progressive voices available in broadcasting and the far right becoming louder and more ubiquitous, some MSNBC viewers are just giving up. "MSNBC doesn't have me as its devoted fan anymore," said one friend of mine. "I watch 'Hardball' online and alternate from Lawrence O'Donnell to 'Parker/Spitzer.' I was never a big fan of Rachel Maddow. Olbermann was the one for me. Now that he is has left MSNBC, so have I."

Me? I will continue to watch Chris Matthews - largely for the entertainment value - and I will especially continue to watch Ed Schultz as he battles against the morons and, in his time slot, Greta Van Susteren. Because even a watered-down, tamed, reined-in Ed Schultz is preferable to a Greta Van Susteren at the height of her broadcasting prowess. We need Matthews and Schultz - and Cenk Uygur and Rachel Maddow - more than ever.

Lawrence O'Donnell? Larry, I love you, but you ought to be writing a column for the Atlantic, not commenting on television.

Wake Me When It's Over

Last week I reported on Lawrence O'Donnell's new MSNBC show "The Last Word," and I guessed what sort of an identity he would cultivate as the host of his own program. Having finally had the opportunity to watch it, I know exactly what his identity is going to be.

He's going to be MSNBC's resident bore.

Listen, I'm not one of those conservative pundits attacking liberals for being boring and wonkish, and now I'm accusing Lawrence O'Donnell of being just that, so you can take my appraisal to the bank. I had MSNBC on during the 10 PM Eastern Time hour, and O'Donnell was just . . . not . . . interesting. Bear in mind that I was watching him while on my PC. I don't normally have the TV on while online, but when I have Keith Olbermann, or maybe Chris Matthews, on while online, I sometimes find myself paying more attention to their ramblings than whatever blog I'm writing, whatever Facebook post I'm looking at, or whatever Flickr photos I'm uploading. O'Donnell doesn't distract me like that. For from being animated like Olbermann, Matthews or the wonderful Ed Schultz - or even being bitingly witty like Rachel Maddow - he's incredibly dull, a sleeping pill in a two-piece suit. Whatever appeal he had as a fill-in host has been lost as a host of his own show. Maybe, given time, O'Donnell will find his voice. But it's worth remembering that MSNBC shows that don't catch on right away (Phil Donahue, anyone?) don't get much of a chance to catch on at all.

Maybe it's that Boston intellectual thing O'Donnell has going with him. Matthews is also a Washington insider like O'Donnell, but he's a Philadelphia street kid who knows how to play hardball, hence the name of his show. O'Donnell is more cerebral, perhaps too so for television. Maybe that's why "Mister Sterling," the NBC congressional drama he produced, only lasted half a season - as a spring replacement series.

Meanwhile today is the first Monday of October, and for the first time since "Chicago" - not the revival that's been running since 1996, the original production - opened on Broadway, John Paul Stevens is not on the Supreme Court. Sadly, neither is his replacement, Justice Elena Kagan - at least not as much as someone else would be. See, Kagan has to recuse herself from nearly half of the cases coming up before the Court this term because she was instrumental in several cases reaching the Court as Solicitor General. And all that jazz. It now looks like several cases might be deadlocked in tie votes, letting lower court rulings stand.

Let me know how much of an impact Justice Kagan will have on the Court's direction. I'll be taking a nap. Most likely with the television on.

Say, on MSNBC, at around ten or so.