Speaking of '
playing politics,' Chris Matthews begins his MSNBC sideshow everyday with the words: "Let's play Hardball." The program is a conscious embodiment of the mentality and practices perceived as proper to the duopoly game, and perhaps an unconscious parody of bipartisan dialogue. Some are unwilling to play along with the charade, and some play longer than others.
Stuart Rothenberg, for instance, has announced that he will no long appear on the show. His reasons are telling:
Like most of the evening programming on MSNBC and the Fox News Channel, "Hardball" has become a partisan, heavily ideological sledgehammer clearly intended to beat up one party and one point of view. [Emphasis added.]
One wonders what Rothenberg thought it once was, or where he thought he was when he was on it. Its very title declares that it is nothing more than a game! It enacts the politics of the duopoly parties according to the rules established by the corporate media-cracy. Comically, while Rothenberg is turned off by Matthews' liberal Democratic slant,
Media Matters points out that his program has a clear conservative Republican bias as well. Whatever the case may be, it is immaterial whether Matthews is liberal or conservative on whatever issues. The point is that the corporate media and their circus masters are simply deferential to power, no matter who's in office. Ironically, however, they inadvertently reveal the inconsistency of the duopoly dialogue. The Daily Show summed up the current state of the debate nicely in an "
i on News" segment: "Fox insinuates, MSNBC hates Rush Limbaugh and CNN wants to hang out with us at a slumber party."
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2 comments:
The Daily Show really and truly is fair and balanced news. No one escapes their satiric wrath. However, that points to the sad state of the cable news networks. A comedy show on the same network that shows Southpark and Scrubs re-runs has the best transpartisan news.
On a slight note, if people watch news that reinforces their bias what does that say about people who watch the Daily Show/Colbert Report? For sake of argument let's say MSNBC - Liberal, CNN - Center Left/Limousine Liberal, FOX - Conservative...and discuss.
heh, it is definitely a sad commentary on the state of our national media. One of the things I've always been struck by about the Daily Show is the amount of news you have to follow, or be on top of, in order to get so many of their jokes. Because they don't assume their audience is filled with idiots, they are able to raise the level of the discourse.
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