Posted on 02/27/2015 5:39:05 AM PST by Kaslin
Canaries are not very formidable birds, but they have their uses. For instance, coal miners learned over a century ago that when canaries gag and drop dead at the bottom of the cage, it's a sign that maybe there's something wrong with the air in the mine.
MSNBC is not a very formidable network, but its wheezing is similarly instructive. MSNBC's slogan is "Lean Forward," which has a robust sound to it. But it turns out the phrase is a more apt descriptor of how the Peacock Network's mini-me is poised to teeter off its perch and plunge beak-first into the droppings-stained pages of the fading New Republic below.
It is suffering "cataclysmic ratings declines" (in Politico's words) from already mediocre ratings to begin with. The hope had been that Ronan Farrow, the Prius-dashboard saint of Brooklyn hipsters and the son of Mia Farrow and Woody Allen (or Frank Sinatra), would, like David Hasselhoff in "Baywatch," leap into the waters and save the drowning network. It turned out that Farrow's flotation device was a messenger bag full of bricks. His show has been canceled, as has Joy Reid's daily show. Other MSNBC stars are being followed around by the Grim Reaper. Al Sharpton, a race-baiting tax cheat with blood on his hands, is slated to be moved out of his 6 p.m. slot, presumably so he can spend more time with his wayward teleprompter.
MSNBC had thought it could mimic Fox News' success from the left. The problem is that it never understood what Fox News is. MSNBC's execs saw it through the prism of their own ideological bias and so ended up offering a left-wing caricature of a caricature. Contrary to myth, Fox (where I am a contributor) is in fact an actual news network, albeit with prime-time opinion shows. Meanwhile, a study by Pew found that MSNBC was 85 percent opinion.
The more salient point is that there's such a small appetite for that opinion. As Josh Kraushaar of the National Journal recently observed, Barack Obama has successfully moved his party to the left but has failed utterly to bring the rest of the country with him. In 2012, James Stimson, arguably America's leading expert on U.S. public opinion, found that the country was more conservative than at any time since 1952.
This might seem counterintuitive given that Obama was re-elected that year, but there's an obvious explanation. Obama has a singular skill: getting Barack Obama elected. In all of the elections since 2008, he has shown a remarkable inability to get anyone else elected or to move public opinion in his favor. (Obamacare, for instance, remains stubbornly unpopular.) Measured in terms of statehouses, state legislatures, and House and Senate seats, the GOP is stronger today than any point since the 1920s. If you still think Obama has generous coattails, ask Rahm Emanuel for a second opinion.
The president is unbowed, of course. He's unilaterally using -- and abusing -- the powers of his office to legalize illegal immigration, throw a wet blanket on cheap energy and turn the Internet into a government-regulated utility. He has the support of his dwindling party and the equally dwindling mainstream media. But even here his policy agenda is as threadbare as his cultural legacy. A majority of Americans believe race relations have gotten worse since he was elected.
Meanwhile, the cultural left has disengaged from mainstream political arguments, preferring instead the comforts of identity-politics argy-bargy. You judge political movements not by their manifestos but by where they put their passion. And on the left these days, the only things that arouse passion are arguments about race and gender.
For instance, the feminist agitprop drama "The Vagina Monologues" is now under fire from the left because it is not inclusive of men who believe they are women. Patricia Arquette was criticized from the right for her Oscar acceptance rant about women's wage equality, but the criticism paled in comparison to the bile from the left, which flayed her for leaving out the plight of the transgendered and other members of the Coalition of the Oppressed.
Such critiques may seem like a cutting-edge fight for the future among the protagonists, but looked at from the political center, it suggests political exhaustion. At least old-fashioned Marxists talked about the economy.
Of course, liberalism isn't dead, it's just resting. But it certainly could use an exciting, charismatic savior to breathe new life and fresh thinking into its ranks. Thank goodness Hillary Clinton is waiting in the wings.
Liberalism is just HIV.
Tyrannical Socialist-Fascism is the AIDS that it helps bring in.
People “like” the feelgood-ness of liberalism as espoused in the past (all of the free love and dont forget to recycle BS). But when it starts to affect their private lives, and pocketbook, then they want out. By that time it’s too late.
MSNBC never appealed to the average person because it wasn’t the feelgood liberalism that they were “ok” with. It was that hard snarky, elitist, hipster douche brand of leftism that people like John Stewart, Salon, HuffPo, DailyKos, and BuzzFeed pushes. The stuff that got us to a government that is lawless, unbound, and does not care about America.
People are dropping out of the left in droves (note the Democrats losing the white vote), but the pop culture has a hard grip on most mediums, so most people dont know that it is socially acceptable to not like that stuff without potential alienation or professional repercussions.
MSNBC will just lurch even further to the left because all of the “young talent” that they will bring in is going to be even more abrasive, snarky, and vicious.
Wow! The intellectual firepower represented by that triumvirate.
..... Do I really need the /s tag?
Good analysis and this phrase entered my mind as well. You don't need a 24/7 news outlet to sell celebrity.
As of today, I declared liberalism to be dying.
Conservatism is resurging.
No, it has gone terminal.
Hillary is so yesterday.
Is Liberalism Exausted?I don’t know about Liberalism but I know that I’m Exausted.I feel like I’ve been run over by the Liberal Express.Just imagine a locomotive.You’ll get the picture.
It appears that Obama is running down the Liberal Railroad tracks at full steam and the Republicans who were elected to slow him down have’nt even put up a fight.
So they needs be to be looking for a young, energetic, fresh face to reinjuvinate the political left, Hillary Clinton ain’t it, so therefore, apart from her other problems, she will not get the nomination.
Which is actually a problem.
Consider what happens to a lot of stars (cosmic, not Hollywood, variety) when they exhaust themselves.
And liberalism has reached that stage.
Now that it has its victims, what is currently known as “Liberalism” is little more than a murder-suicide in waiting until its inglorious final statement.
That is a fine portrait of the Three Stooges of the Lamestream Media.
LOL Jonah has a way with words...
I would agree except, who do they have who is any better? The situation is reversed from ‘92 when the left had the young candidates and the right had the old ones. The left has the same bunch of clowns they had over twenty years ago and they don’t look so fresh anymore while the right has the young looking group. I have never thought Hillary could win the presidency but she may be the nominee simply because they have so little to offer. A washed up, incompetent old hag who only managed to become nationally known by hitching her wagon to an Arkansas con man. Some say Slick Willie never would have amounted to much without her pushing him but it cuts both ways, she certainly would never have gained the national stage without him. She is about as attractive a candidate as Admiral Stockdale without his background of service. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T1w3FgB0Ohc
Democrats are like the con man offering something for nothing... After a person's been taken enough times it dawns of them that the promises of the con man are lies... bait used to take a sucker. Nothing more.
That's how the country is starting to see Democrats. They're con artists. That's why they're dying. Jonah Goldberg gets it ... Chris Matthews is starting to understand...
These scu*bags will survive and flourish because large swaths fo the electorate love what they say and love the Progressive line to the point of psychosis.
IMHO
My how time fly’s by I remember that so well including the SNL skit.
“ who am I ? Why am I here ? “ Perot cringed when he heard those words.
How about that video of Hillary walking up the steps and onto the stage then does some Twilight Zone thingy with her hands making some kind of square that the MSM is showing 24/7 ? What’s up with that ?
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