Miss Phil Donahue? Wonder why he lost his show? Thank Tweety.

[givemebackmycountry]

Chris Matthews' Role in MSNBC's Donahue Firing
10/08/2010 by Peter Hart

Gabriel Sherman's piece in New York magazine (10/3/10) on the cable news wars includes a bit of history on MSNBC's firing of progressive host Phil Donahue in 2003; an internal memo at the time worried that the show would be "a home for the liberal anti-war agenda at the same time that our competitors are waving the flag at every opportunity." Sherman focuses on MSNBC personality Chris Matthews--who sometimes claims he was opposed to the Iraq War--and his desire to get Donahue fired:

Donahue's problems only increased when Chris Matthews let it be known that he wanted Donahue off the air.
Matthews was a rising force at the network, with a reported salary of $5 million.
He cultivated former GE CEO Jack Welch and had the ear of NBC CEO Bob Wright. (The two summered together on Nantucket.)
Matthews saw himself as MSNBC's biggest star, and he was upset that the network was pumping significant resources into Donahue's show. In the fall of 2002, U.S. News & World Report ran a gossip item that had Matthews saying over lunch in Washington that if Donahue stays on the air, he could bring down the network.

After the item was published, Matthews showed up at Donahue's office and apologized.
"He didn’t deny it," Donahue remembers. With the war looming, Sorenson and Griffin decided to take him off the air to make way for 24/7 war coverage.

http://www.fair.org/blog/2010/10/08/chris-matthews-role-in-msnbcs-donahue-firing/

[Ken Burch]

1. Well, it would be kind of contradictory for him to apologize for it AND deny it.

Unless Tweety just came by to do a "I'm sorry you got offended" non-apology apology.

[femmocrat]

2. Interesting.

I would rather watch Donahue than Tweety any day.

[Canuckistanian]

3. And what Tweety wants, Tweety gets

And Tweety wanted WAR.

[napi21]

4. Even if that's true, Tweety was fairly new. I still blame the

managers of MSNBC. If THEY would have thought Donahue would have made them more $$ they'd have kept him on. I think they were scared of their competition and tossed Phil to the wolves and not because of Tweety.

[tularetom]

5. Tweety a shit stirring back stabbing office politician?

Why am I totally not surprised?

I wish I could say that this lowered my opinion of him but I'm afraid that is not possible.

It was already lower than whale shit on the ocean floor.

But it does reinforce my opinion about the cowardice of media honchos.

[Doctor_J]

6. This seems bogus

It was probably the NBC brass. They make billions off of war, and of sucking up to the Bush family. Tweety's slobbering man crush on Smirk was just his way of sucking up to his bosses.

[defendandprotect]

7. Matthews a King slayer at NBC? Don't know, but according to Donahue they were

trying to kill his show for ages --

he's written some interesting stuff on it which suggests the network

was looking for any excuse. And I agree with that!

Matthews is a jerk -- who watches him?

And Donahue was the #1 show on NBC -- they tried everything they could to

move Donahue to the right -- didn't work -- even if they made him have three

right wingers on for every one leftie -- didn't work!

Which gives us all a good indication of how powerful the liberal message really is!!



PS: They also did this to another very popular show -- an actor had it - - David something?

Guy who played in the movies with the St. Bernard dogs -- can't think of his name ...

a really, really nice guy -- and he had a great show --

Everyone has been intimidated and moved to the right -- if people want a job/salary, they do it!

[radiclib]

11. You mean Charles Grodin?

I always assumed he was done in by his OJ obsession.

[defendandprotect]

14. Charles Grodin ... YES! Thank you -- meant to look it up ....

but didn't know the name of the St. Bernard movies, anyway!!

:)


Think we were all obsessed by OJ events -- which way do you mean that?

Pro or con?

[drdtroit]

8. And they continually lied and said Phil had bad numbers! n/t

[defendandprotect]

15. Right wing lies -- count on it -- !!!

[butterfly77]

9. Tweety..

POS living in the past.

[UTUSN]

10. I wish I could find Demopedia, where I posted about Tweety "firing" Phil

I saw it when it happened: Tweety performed the public execution of DONAHUE on DONAHUE's own show. He was guesting, supposedly plugging his latest "book" --couple of hundred pages, wide spaces between lines, large type-- some re-hash of American Civ 101, the American milestones in literature, movies, culture.

From the beginning DONAHUE was his big Labrador retriever self, friendly, reaching out, all over the room and coming back to the table. Tweety was sitting immobile, except for his snake eyes following DONAHUE all around.

This was in the run-up to the Iraq Attack, when everybody in the media INCLUDING TWEETY, who claims to have always been anti-IraqAttack, was boiling over with Shrub worship. DONAHUE kept coming back to the table increasingly frustrated like a big puppy, puzzled as to why his supposedly fellow Liberal(?) was being so cold.

Tweety had been rehashing Am Civ, being all jingoistic. When Iraq came up and DONAHUE said something critical of the rush to attack, Tweety STRUCK!1 He said, "That's what's wrong with YOU LIBERALS, that you can't find anything positive about your own country!1" And he kept going with a lambasting.

DONAHUE was crushed and came back to the table and put his head in his hands, uncomprehending what had just happened.



Is Demopedia totally disappeared? My version in the moment was much fresher and detailed.

[leveymg]

12. Thanks for that. I didn't see that particular show, but it rings true

that the network and corporate brass would use a "liberal" to execute the sole progressive voice left on NBC. That's how it was done within the Democratic Party when the ADA chased out the Henry Wallace Progressives in the early 1950s.

More than anyone else, I think GE's Jack Welch was the moving force behind the purge of all dissenting voices on the network he owned. Tweety is just a spear carrier, by comparison.

[defendandprotect]

17. Have never understood how anyone sees Matthews as anything but a fake...moving with power ...

don't see him as anything but that -- power shifts, so does he!

[defendandprotect]

16. Never knew Donahue to be stuck for a counter-argument ... that sounds strange ... PLUS

Donahue had had a HUGE victory over the right wing in his PBS special on

single payer health care!! Explaining it to the public -- explaining how

out of reality we were in our health care vs other nations universal health care!

I think that was the final blow to the corporate establishment!!



I'm still puzzled as to the reversal re MSNBC and their sudden embrace of liberal

hosts -- Schultz, Maddow, Olberman, Ratigan -- reported a liberal but never have watched him

so not sure/?

this began about two years or more into Bush administration --

and of course by then Jon Stewart had been banging away for quite some time at MSM and

Bush --

Still can't figure it out -- GE suddenly supporting liberal programming?

GE has always been further right than the John Birchers and the Nazis --

going one back, it was an early and ONLY defrauder of government on government contracts!!

[gvstn]

26. This one?

http://demopedia.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=389&topic_id=3854829&mesg_id=3855601

or same post is in this thread

http://demopedia.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x3854829#3855601

[jberryhill]

13. When did he get a sex change?

[ooglymoogly]

18. Tweety; always following the wind; just dun't have the cells

to know when the wind is a fart. He and cnn's anchor, the (* is the real deal) snitzer et al; were a tag team ushering the bushmaster into the presidency. For that, along with the rest of the neocon enabler$; will always be a maggot, living in the mire of crap; with the blood and lives of millions of fellow travelers on his head. UNFORGIVABLE!!!! EVER!!!!!!!!! The stabbing in the back of Donahue just one more nail in his slippery skateboard coffin-closet into hell.

[itsrobert]

19. Tweety also got upset when Olbermann was getting Election and Convention Anchorman stautus

over him. That's when MSNBC brass made up some bias crap and put in David Gregory to anchor the coverage.

[ooglymoogly]

22. Indeed....Greg, the wind sock; Tweety with the morally bankrupt gravitas of an ebola spreading,

mosquito; compared to moral giants like Olbermann and Maddow?

I think (at least some important parts of) MSNBC has seen the light; and has at least, some modicum of nagging and persistent patriotism left in its bones; Having to realize Donahue was right all along and the fool Tweety was soooo deadly wrong.

In juxtaposition;

Phux being irretrievably morally bankrupt; without the slightest promise of; or chance of redemption; with calumny so deep in the abyss, its roots clawing at hell, to even try.

Cee N N, will never recover from it's horrendous part in the mess we now find ourselves and never even making the effort.

MSNBC going along to get along, finally, as far back as 2003; with some belated equanimity; seeing its culpability; making some fast and deep corrections; pulling itself from the mire that ultimately will be called by its real name...The Treason of the Millennium.

Lest we forget; it was after all, MSNBC who hired Donahue in the first place, knowing full well his head was wrapped around the truth.

and lest we forget the vicious pressures of those well laid plans of mice and rats, those preplanned calamitous days in which truth for these bastards was the grim reaper.


But is it too late, the damage too profound for this country to recover from so fatal a blow to its vitals?

If cpr can be belatedly administered to a fast cooling corps; if recovery has the slightest chance at finding a heartbeat; it will be because of what MSNBC has done with its own resurrection into sanity;

with the rehiring of Olbermann in 2003, not this time, as a benign sports commentator; but as a truth hound; now joining the progressive net, who had been screaming bloody murder all along and throughout and from the embryonic beginnings of the neocon takeover and even its conception much earlier; even before the internet, along with like minds; with even the barest platform of even a few sticks, posts, subposts and the like, never ever giving up on this country.

We have to realize what an incomparable fool Tweety is; the past dark maze we have been led into by the nosering.

Painting the roses black, so to speak; no matter what asshole he sticks his finger, to find the direction of the fart, er wind.

Olbermann, Maddow and Shultz and a very few token others on MSM, are the pinpoint of light at the end of that tunnel, shinning through the carefully applied darkness; carefully designed to be impenetrable; the biggest blackout of truth in news "coverage" ever conceived, in this country.

The only possible breakthrough will be from somehow educating, we the people, of the dark enigmatic process that has stolen our government, our judicial, our justice and our MSM.
'
We have to realize our own capital, the capital that is too slowly being realized.

The capital that we were right on the most vital issue of our time.

The capital that bluedogs and pugs cringe in horror from; when they are confronted with that truth.

[BrklynLiberal]

20. Tweety always was a legend in his own mind.....

[political_Dem]

21. Tweety is quite ruthless, to say the least.

What he did to Donahue is reminiscent of McCarthyism. He needed a cheap excuse to stay on top. He's disgusting.

But even he has to know that what comes around, goes around eventually.

[defendandprotect]

30. I agree with you .....

it's deep within him --

Have always felt that way -- wouldn't say I wasn't fooled for a short while when

he first appeared way back -- but it pretty quickly became clear to me that he

was filth. IMO, were he given a really solid feeling that the right was permanently

in control, he'd be breaking out his Nazi uniform!!

[itsrobert]

23. Tweety = Jay "Big Jaw" Leno

Same type of win at all cost.

[McCamy Taylor]

24. The message of this piece is very divide and conquer. This would not be news if Tweety was not

embracing his Democratic "roots."

I suspect Jack Welch and his underlings had more to do with what happened at MSNBC than Matthews.

[Swagman]

25. Phil Donahue was the best. How cowardly of the TV station

[UpInArms]

27. The Biggest Cheerleader for Bush's comment "Mission Accomplished" was Chris Matthews

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x3242220

Chief among the cheerleaders was MSNBC's Chris Matthews. On the May 1, 2003, edition of Hardball, Matthews was joined in his effusive praise of Bush by right-wing pundit Ann Coulter and "Democrat" Pat Caddell. Former U.S. Rep. Robert K. Dornan (R-CA) also appeared on the program.:

MATTHEWS: What's the importance of the president's amazing display of leadership tonight?

MATTHEWS: What do you make of the actual visual that people will see on TV and probably, as you know, as well as I, will remember a lot longer than words spoken tonight? And that's the president looking very much like a jet, you know, a high-flying jet star. A guy who is a jet pilot. Has been in the past when he was younger, obviously. What does that image mean to the American people, a guy who can actually get into a supersonic plane and actually fly in an unpressurized cabin like an actual jet pilot?

MATTHEWS: Do you think this role, and I want to talk politically <...>, the president deserves everything he's doing tonight in terms of his leadership. He won the war. He was an effective commander. Everybody recognizes that, I believe, except a few critics. Do you think he is defining the office of the presidency, at least for this time, as basically that of commander in chief? That <...> if you're going to run against him, you'd better be ready to take away from him.

<...>

http://mediamatters.org/items/200604270005

Tweety is a whore

was a whore

will always be a whore

Tweet does not represent the progressives in any way, form or manner

never has

never will.

Do not expect anything different.

Do not be deceived.

Do not be lied to.

Period.

[zehnkatzen]

28. Thanks for reminding me why Matthews is beneath contempt ...

... and why he makes me ill whenever I see his pasty face being treated like it has a real opinion.

[hulka38]

29. MSNBC bowed to the pressure just like all the other networks.

There are so many important historical lessons to be discussed and learned from and so much is now known from that period but America seems content to lock it away. I believe this is because virtually all the top Democrats and tv and print media are guilty of promoting something they knew was false at its core.