You always had to wonder where Fox News came from. We had never seen anything like it before... on American shores at least. Here was this network dedicated to tearing down a political party and a President and spewing lies and half truths and outright fabrications as news to the public at large. And there was a clear political agenda. Right wing, Conservative, Christian, Republican...Murdocian. And so the question was how did something like Fox News come to be? It was almost like an alien had dropped them off and then left. Now we know. An alien did drop Fox News on our shores. An alien named Murdoch.
And now with his gonads in a sling we see how it all played out. Fox News is just the American version of Murdoch culture. He is the Citizen Kane for our time. He is the William Randolf Hearst with a cyber twist and far more nefarious because of his far reaching power. We are finding out he was running Britain for some time and he has been working on the United States through his surrogates...the biggest one being Fox News. The absolute hate and chicanery that spews out of Fox News is in line with what we are now finding out about Murdoch Standard Operating Procedure.
Defame. Distort. Discredit. Use any means at your disposal. But have your will rule the day. Is anyone surprised we now have people like Andrew Brightbart? He is merely a tadpole spawned by Murdoch lackeys. And so the giant will have his day in court and we will see what falls out of the attic as they root through the dusty old boxes of Murdoch conquests. And now we know. Fox News is not some aberrant rogue news organization that just hatched itself. Fox News was brought here as a bastard child and dropped on our shores to grow up into the creature of hate we now have.
http://www.billhazelgrove.com/
Rocket Man will be out in July
Showing posts with label cable news. Show all posts
Showing posts with label cable news. Show all posts
Wednesday, July 13, 2011
Monday, January 24, 2011
MSNBC Taking Water Fast Post-Olbermann
I admit it. Keith Olbermann was my man for a long time and even when I moved away from combat punditry I would always flip on Keith to see what he was up too. But now he has left MSNBC or more specifically Count Down and turned it over to Lawrence O'Donnell. The scuttle is that after two years of Keith negotiating with the network they parted ways over differences we can only guess at. Pushing the bar must have finally got to the brass, but all you have to do is watch the network post-Olbermann to see it is a ship taking water. Fast.
I like Rachel Maddow and Lawrence O'Donnell, but they are no Olbermann. Bringing in the Ed Schultz show is just piling on left wing on liberal on left wing. He brings little but bombast and regurgitation to the lineup and I am a liberals liberal but Ed is too much for even me. But Lawrence O'Donnell while sincere and heartfelt is a man with a cross hair on his back. You can already see the brass's next move when the plummeting ratings come in. And they will plummet.
The problem is Keith wasn't just Count Down, he was the anchor of MSNBC at night. Hardball, Maddow and O'Donnell were the warm up bands for Keith, though they often followed each other with reciprocal stories. But Keith just took it up a notch and blasted a hole right through the rights latest buffoonery with scathing indictments, dripping sarcasm, and boyish glee. Many times he went right over the top and blasted out of the roof, but it was always an interesting rocket to watch. Now we are left with the smoke and blow back of his departure and there seems to be little propellant left in the MSNBC tank.There is just a gaping hole.
Lawrence will do his best to fill the big man's shoes but he is doomed. The left suffers from lack of firepower in general and they just lost one of their biggest guns. Keith had the guts and and the position to take on anyone including the President and say exactly what he thought which is probably why the higher ups at CBS and MSNBC squirmed and pulled on their collars. But of course it was that type of red hot editorializing that cranked up the ratings and made MSNBC a player.
It almost makes you wonder if the golden age of combat punditry is coming to an end. If the age of civility does indeed occur then certainly the other combat pundits will be out of a job. Maybe Keith Olbermann saw the writing on the wall and got while the going was good. But before it is over a Jay Leno type of scenario would not be that surprising with Olbermann returning to bring ratings back in line. I think a flame thrower would be the proper metaphor for the regard he would show the short sited higher ups of MSNBC and company.
http://www.billhazelgrove.com/
Rocket Man will blast off in February
I like Rachel Maddow and Lawrence O'Donnell, but they are no Olbermann. Bringing in the Ed Schultz show is just piling on left wing on liberal on left wing. He brings little but bombast and regurgitation to the lineup and I am a liberals liberal but Ed is too much for even me. But Lawrence O'Donnell while sincere and heartfelt is a man with a cross hair on his back. You can already see the brass's next move when the plummeting ratings come in. And they will plummet.
The problem is Keith wasn't just Count Down, he was the anchor of MSNBC at night. Hardball, Maddow and O'Donnell were the warm up bands for Keith, though they often followed each other with reciprocal stories. But Keith just took it up a notch and blasted a hole right through the rights latest buffoonery with scathing indictments, dripping sarcasm, and boyish glee. Many times he went right over the top and blasted out of the roof, but it was always an interesting rocket to watch. Now we are left with the smoke and blow back of his departure and there seems to be little propellant left in the MSNBC tank.There is just a gaping hole.
Lawrence will do his best to fill the big man's shoes but he is doomed. The left suffers from lack of firepower in general and they just lost one of their biggest guns. Keith had the guts and and the position to take on anyone including the President and say exactly what he thought which is probably why the higher ups at CBS and MSNBC squirmed and pulled on their collars. But of course it was that type of red hot editorializing that cranked up the ratings and made MSNBC a player.
It almost makes you wonder if the golden age of combat punditry is coming to an end. If the age of civility does indeed occur then certainly the other combat pundits will be out of a job. Maybe Keith Olbermann saw the writing on the wall and got while the going was good. But before it is over a Jay Leno type of scenario would not be that surprising with Olbermann returning to bring ratings back in line. I think a flame thrower would be the proper metaphor for the regard he would show the short sited higher ups of MSNBC and company.
http://www.billhazelgrove.com/
Rocket Man will blast off in February
Wednesday, December 22, 2010
The Confessions of an Ex Cable News Junkie
Hello my name is Bill, I am a cable news junkie. Recovering. I fell off the wagon a year ago and started watching hours and hours of cable news beginning with Keith Olbermann, then Rachel Maddow, then Chris Matthews, then Lawrence O'Donnell. Some nights I watched three hours of straight talk with the same topics regurgitated on every show but I didn't care. Hell, I was such a junkie I switched to Fox and watched The Factor and Sean Hannity during commercial breaks. Talk about addicted.
But I am back on the wagon and I have gone cold turkey. I have to say it has not been hard this time around. I don't know what happened, but suddenly I just didnt' care. I just couldn't buy off on Rachel's impassioned carefully researched, fully felt, emphatically delivered diatribes on why don't ask don't tell should be abolished and why it wasnt' happening. Maybe it is because it did happen and when she announced it on her show in a town hall meeting everyone clapped FOR HER like she was the President who had just accomplished getting rid of the policy!
Or maybe it was Keith Olbermann who I really dug and would watch sometimes two or three times a night! I just couldnt' get enough. But then I started to realize there were never any guests from the other side. And how many times can he have Eugene on from the Washington Post in his super hip glasses? Or the little guy from The Nation who stands in for him? Or Howard from Newsweek then the Huffington Post in his scarf and hipster long hair? It just began to feel regurgitated with his question at the beginning: How many of these stories will you be talking about tomorrow? Um, really none of them.
Or Chris Matthews yelling at everyone and letting no one finish. Or Lawrence O'Donnell with his quirky sense of humor and his government experience allowing himself to get the last word. Or even Anderson Cooper keeping them honest with his white hair and dwarfish good looks. Don't get me wrong. I could easily fall off the wagon and go back to my old ways of watching three straight hours a night, but I think what is different this time is I started to wonder what else I could be doing with that time! And that's what really got me. Forget that it is really entertainment, that there are millions of people watching the guys on the other side, that it doesn't really matter at all because these are talk show hosts. Forget all that, here is what really got me back on the wagon and why I will never return to the cable news wasteland.
I could have probably written another novel with all the time I wasted in front of the boob tube getting riled up all night. Ouch. Now that hurts.
http://www.billhazelgrove.com/
Rocket Man will be out in January
But I am back on the wagon and I have gone cold turkey. I have to say it has not been hard this time around. I don't know what happened, but suddenly I just didnt' care. I just couldn't buy off on Rachel's impassioned carefully researched, fully felt, emphatically delivered diatribes on why don't ask don't tell should be abolished and why it wasnt' happening. Maybe it is because it did happen and when she announced it on her show in a town hall meeting everyone clapped FOR HER like she was the President who had just accomplished getting rid of the policy!
Or maybe it was Keith Olbermann who I really dug and would watch sometimes two or three times a night! I just couldnt' get enough. But then I started to realize there were never any guests from the other side. And how many times can he have Eugene on from the Washington Post in his super hip glasses? Or the little guy from The Nation who stands in for him? Or Howard from Newsweek then the Huffington Post in his scarf and hipster long hair? It just began to feel regurgitated with his question at the beginning: How many of these stories will you be talking about tomorrow? Um, really none of them.
Or Chris Matthews yelling at everyone and letting no one finish. Or Lawrence O'Donnell with his quirky sense of humor and his government experience allowing himself to get the last word. Or even Anderson Cooper keeping them honest with his white hair and dwarfish good looks. Don't get me wrong. I could easily fall off the wagon and go back to my old ways of watching three straight hours a night, but I think what is different this time is I started to wonder what else I could be doing with that time! And that's what really got me. Forget that it is really entertainment, that there are millions of people watching the guys on the other side, that it doesn't really matter at all because these are talk show hosts. Forget all that, here is what really got me back on the wagon and why I will never return to the cable news wasteland.
I could have probably written another novel with all the time I wasted in front of the boob tube getting riled up all night. Ouch. Now that hurts.
http://www.billhazelgrove.com/
Rocket Man will be out in January
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