MSNBC - ya wanna know why your ratings suck?

[saintsebastian]

52. MSNBC's Problems Go Deeper than Prison Documentaries

The only tolerable shows in my book are All In with Chris Hayes and Melissa Harris-Perry. The other personalities seem utterly incapable of criticizing President Obama. In fact, Rev. Al Sharpton, host of PoliticsNation has said publicly that he has "decided not to criticize the president about anything".

They seem to frame every debate as a choice between supporting the White House full-stop or aiding and abetting the Tea Party. Take Benghazi, for instance. The death of our ambassador could have forced us to discuss the disastrous effect that US military intervention had in Libya. This would have been a perfect time for the allegedly liberal network to hold the president's feet to the fire. Instead, they devoted a hundred percent of their efforts to defending the White House from right-wing conspiracy theorists. So instead of asking whether or not bombing Libya was a wise thing to do, we were talking about altered talking points and kangaroo courts.

We used to criticize Fox News for being the Bush White House's own personal news station, yet we all gather 'round to watch Now with Alex Wagner -perhaps without ever being made aware of her ties to both the Clinton and Obama White Houses. We used to scoff whenever Bush's insiders would leave their jobs at the White House to take up gigs at Fox News, yet we didn't blink an eye when David Axelrod and Robert Gibbs became "commentators" at MSNBC.

I agree with some of the other commenters that the departure of Keith Olbermann signaled a change for the network. Consider that it was Mr. Olbermann who said that there were "no moral constructs in which" the Affordable Care Act can be supported. He would call, nightly, for the bill's defeat in Congress because he had reservations about "heinous mandates" that forced us to buy into the profit-oriented way of doing things. He called the ACA a "cheesy counterfeit". Would Olbermann, who lifted the network from obscurity, be allowed anywhere near a mic on today's MSNBC?