There is a dirty little secret that interview shows such as MTP and its network imitators, PBS Newshour, CNN's State of the Nation, and the rest don't want viewers to know. The one thing they all share in common is a ratings-driven necessity to book interesting guests who will agree to come back. When President Obama refused to grant interviews to Fox News because of the obvious right wing bias of Murdoch's GOP network, the mainstream media rushed to Fox's defense with almost hysterical outbursts of self-righteous indignation. It was both amusing (for a profession held in such low esteem by the public) and illuminating.
The MSM's professional sustenance is based on access. Any threat to one's access is a threat to all. When Lawrence O'Donnell went off-script on “Morning Joe” with Republican Lites Joe Scarborough and Mika Brezhinsky, ripping into a GWB hack for his hatchet job book alleging President Obama is helping terrorists, Joe Scabrous cut O'Donnell short and invoked the MSM's censorship clause -- the commercial break:
This imbecile, Mark Thiessen, claims that the Obama administration's drone attacks are killing too many terrorists, which is a bad thing because: “[If] you vaporize a terrorist with a predator strike you're vaporizing all the intelligence in his head that we could be getting by interrogating him.” I see. So therefore, the U.S. should hold back on drone attacks when we have actionable intelligence on the terrorists' whereabouts in hopes of capturing them at a later date when we might extract really reliable information by waterboarding them 187 times? Where have we heard this tune before?
Somehow, wingnuts -- being wingnuts -- have automatic license to make the most ridiculous claims against Democratic presidents and get away with them. Imagine what the right wing reaction would be had liberals claimed the Bush regime was vaporizing too many terrorists instead of seeking to capture and torture them for the intel that might be gained. They'd be ridiculed as traitors and soft on terror, inviting attacks when they had the means to take out the terrorists, etc. The wingnuts might even assert with that false outrage they do so well, that torture is illegal. True to form, the wingnuts have smeared O'Donnell as a “9/11 conspiracist” (an absurd lie) and “nutty” (for exposing a wingnut smear) while praising the ferret-faced Thiessen as “classy.”
Similarly, when Rachel Maddow ripped into baby-faced Illinois Congressman Jim Schock for his hypocrisy in praising stimulus spending in his district while trashing it in Congress and voting against it, Schock's lame retort was that she wasn't giving back her Bush tax cuts for the 2% of American wage earners. In fact, Warren Buffett and other beneficiaries of welfare for the rich have said the tax cuts are ill-advised and they do not need, or want, them. Meanwhile, Gregory tried to keep things moving with an apologetic grin. While he wasn't as heavyhanded as Scabrous, the MSM is concerned that hacks, hucksters, and hypocrites may refuse to leave the friendly confines of Faux News if they are continually subjected to such truth-abuse by the Maddow-O'Donnell truth squads.
Here's what Rachel said to Congressman Hypocrite:
“You, in your district, I just read that you were at a community college touting a $350,000 green technology education program, talking about how great that was going to be for your district. You voted against the bill that created that grant. That's happening a lot with Republicans sort of taking credit for things that Democratic bills do and then Republicans simultaneously touting their votes against them and trashing them. That, I think, is a problem that needs to be resolved within your caucus. Because you seem like a very nice person but that is a very hypocritical stance to take.”
“If you vote against the omnibus bill, if you complain about the omnibus bill, if you tout your vote against the omnibus bill, it is hypocrisy to then go to your district and go to a ribbon cutting ceremony for something that is funded by the omnibus bill that you voted against.”
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