I’m not responsible for where DanBlather lives. it’s not like he’d care if I Portiaed all the girls of Prague.
Rachel handled that discussion perfectly. You can see it here:
I agree that I’m finding her show more compelling than Keith’s at the moment, although I still enjoy Keith for the comedy. I’ll keep tuning in to hear what Billo The Clown is up to. 
Yesterday was a bit much for me with Olbermann. The Richard Lewis segment was just a major annoyance, as the guy appeared to be back on coke and was largely incoherent.
But what I really took issue with was the segment with the editor of The Village Voice. This guy claimed to have evidence of another scandal involving Palin and her house being built by the same contractor who built the sports center in her hometown while she was mayor. Sounds pretty juicy, right? Well, as soon as he mentioned the name “Spenard”, I knew that this was probably a complete non-starter. He called it “Spendard Company”; it’s actually Spenard Builders’ Supply. It’s an Alaskan-owned company that has been in business up here for a very long time. It’s also just about the only game in Wasilla for serious building supplies such as manufactured trusses, etc. That SBS would be the material supplier for her house and also for the sports center is not at all surprising. In fact, it would be surprising if it were not so. It would only be a scandal if they had donated the materials.
This information can easily be checked, but Olbermann chose not to vet the information before allowing this guy to put out bad dope. It makes his other stories suspect for me.
While I agree that Olbermann’s tone has gotten harsher recently, I still enjoy his show. And Rachel Maddow complements him beautifully–the “voice of reason”, as it were. And anything’s better than that tool Dan Abrams; I’m so glad that he’s gone!
Rachel is also one of the only people (along with Ed Schultz) that I can tolerate listening to on Air America. She’s not a harpie like Randi Rhodes, a mealy-mouthed wimp like Alan Colmes, or just plain grating like Lionel (Og, I almost wish Franken would lose the election so we can get him back!). She proves you can be partisan without being annoying.
Ed Schultz is not in the Air America stable. He’s had some major falling out with the owner. They were on a show together and took turns sniping at each other rather than discuss the topic. Having said that, I enjoy his show most times.
Stephanie Miler isn’t Air America, either, but has a funny left-leaning radio show.
Seriously? She looks like a man! I mean, she really, really, REALLY looks like a man.
ETA: Really! I can’t get over how much she looks like a dude. Not even a particularly feminine dude, either!
ETA2: I wouldn’t have said anything if you had just said that you found her attractive, but when you dragged the rest of us into it, I felt that I had to distance myself from that comment.
She and Buchanan are perfect foils. I love it when he’s on.
If by that you mean intelligent, strong, educated and talented, then yes. If you mean sexy, then no. She’s a bit too mannish for my liking.
When I was watching that last night, my boyfriend mentioned to me that Richard Lewis seemed like the Nicholas Fehn political character that Fred Armisen does on SNL’s weekend update segment. All of the starting and stopping and almost making it to a point and then veering off in a different direction… incoherent is an understantment.
Except for the gay part (unless you’re a lesbian liberal).
I liked Olbermann for about 5 minutes back in 2006 when I mistook him for someone with objective and balanced opinions. When I realized he was a shrill partisan hack I had to turn him off for good. Rachel Maddow is smarter but so far only slightly less shrill and partisan. I’d love to know her socially because I think she’d be an invaluable contributer to political discussions but I haven’t seen anything out of her that makes me feel like I need to tune into her show. She’s like everyone else but - gasp - gay. Whoop.
I was reading Frum this morning, and he said that he was feeling a little tired and jet lagged. He had never seen the show but had agreed to go on because his writer’s sydicate had asked. He was appalled at the tone of the show while he was waiting to go on and responded based on what he heard before the show.
He really put her in her place. I guess MSNBC won’t be calling him back anytime soon.
Do you have a link? I’d like to read it.
Really? My impression was that she politely, but firmly, handed him his ass.
He claimed that the show had “sneering and disregard for some of the substantive issues that really are important” - without offering any examples. She asked him if he thought her approach was equivalent to a crowd shouting “Bomb Obama!” and “Kill him!” was equivalent, and he totally dodged the question saying “I don’t think it’s an important question.” He did make a worthwhile point about whether North Korea should be considered a terrorist state - but avoiding the fact that conflating them as part of an “axis of evil” made any substantive discussion with them much more difficult. Who coined the term? David Frum! Sorry, but you don’t get to lower the standard of political discussion when you’re in power and then have the slightest credibility decrying it once you are out of power. That, and he claimed “There was some controversy about whether exactly that was what the person said”. Bullshit. It was very clear from the video, and it’s not as if the network had microphones all over the place to pick up the crowd. They usually have a split from the microphone on the podium, and a single pair of mics to pick up the crowd. It was loud, it was clear. And if it had been a liberal threatening McCain, the right would be making huge amounts of hay of it.
I think this is the blog post to which puddleglum was referring.
Olbermann states that the pre-interview - as done with all guests - was about GOP chaos and various other topics, not Afghanistan, and that Frum wasn’t ambushed by anything.
Well, she does have a doctorate in PoliSci from Oxford, which is pretty fucking impressive for a news television show host, and she’s smart and funny. She doesn’t make a big deal about her sexuality so it’s not like it’s a selling point. (She’s also admitted that she makes use of the wardrobe experts on MSNBC because otherwise she’d “dress like a 14-year-old boy.”) But maybe I’m just a sucker for the people who ostensibly know what they’re talking about as compared to ex-sportscasters or ex-Inside Edition hosts.
Hey, I wouldn’t deny that she’s smart (in fact I said so :dubious:) but so is Ben Stein and I wouldn’t tune into his show if he had one either. Edward R. Murrow only had a bachelor’s degree.
That would cover the “smart” part. PhDs in Political Science with a sense of humor are a bit more difficult to find.
The wonderful bit is that she hasn’t let them run roughshod over her. She hasn’t been forced to change her personal style to look like an ISO standard female TV news anchor. She looks like a person. Treading carefully…she is a great example of “lesbian style” (see also: Lang, K.D.).
Don’t be too dismissive of Keith. He did enter college at 16. So he only got a BA, but as he already had a career in radio while still in high school, did he need more than a BA from Cornell? In fairness, Bill O’Reilly is shockingly well educated. What happened?
Commasense, well said, Comrade. I’ve been a “Countdown” fan from the beginning. I was a huge KO fan from his days on SportsCenter and I have a Playboy magazine circa '97-'98 with an interview with him about his first MSNBC show, “The Big Show.” I didn’t watch that because I didn’t get MSNBC at the time. IIRC, “Countdown” didn’t become popular until after his first Special Comment.
Here is a characterisation of a typical show nowadays:
KO: “Sen. McCain is a lying, good for nothing, politician, isn’t he?”
Richard Wolffe: “Yes, he is, Keith”
KO: “Gov. Palin is too stupid to live, isn’t she?”
Howard Fineman: “You’re right, Keith”
KO: “Bill O’Reilly and Fox Noise are the Worst Persons in the Wooooooooooooorld!”
KO: “Paris Hilton is a horrible skank. My producers make me do this”
Michael Musto: “Can we make out, Keith?”
KO(Special Comment): “I’m mad as hell and I’m not gonna take it anymore!”
KO: It’s been ten zillion days since Mission Accomplished in Iraq. Good night and Good luck.
“Countdown” was great when it began because it was the first real news program to show what a trainwreck Bush was. Now that everbody but Fox has seemingly jumped aboard, it’s not as interesting and others do it better, like Rachel Maddow.
when i first saw ms maddow, on tucker carlson’s show; there was something about her appear. that bugged me. it took me a few shows to figure it out.
no accessories. no watch, rings, earrings, necklaces, bracelets, pins, nothing. the thing that was bugging me was the neckline without a necklace.
i’m getting accustomed to the look now, still a bit odd though.
Please consider the occasional use of the keys on your keyboard immediately leftward of the zed and rightward of the virgule. People everyone will bless you for it.