Christopher Hitchens comes at the Clinton issue as an old-timey Leftist (leftists hate liberals!) and also a drunken contrarian, but his comments and criticisms have been accepted by the resolute centrists of the DC press corps as a, bizarrely, an argument against Clinton with a great deal of popular support. The opinion of Chris Hitchens represents the views of precisely one person on this planet. He is representative of no one on the left, right, or in the center. You wouldn't know that from listening to Joe Scarborough:

Scarborough: "What he said may resonate with some of her critics."

By "some of her critics," he meant the press.

Scarborough: "Hitchens last night weighed in on it and basically spoke for a lot of Hillary detractors."

By "a lot of Hillary detractors," he meant the press.

Scarborough: "He talked about...concerns that a lot of Clinton detractors may be bringing up."

Scarbrough's Clinton hatred is natural—he's an old GOP congressman from the Gingrich era, hating Clinton was his political job. But Chris Matthews, blue-collar catholic millionaire Democrat television personality, has hated Bill for his terrible moral failings since forever. He's pissed that we're not "done with the Clintons." As is Maureen Dowd, who repeated the tired line about Clinton besmirching the pristine White House just a few weeks ago. That's the line the DC press corps has followed since the terrible Clintons showed up in Washington in 1992—these idiot outsiders are marching into town like they own the place! They're ruining the furniture!

The White House, home to Nixon and LBJ and various slave-owners since its construction, has been the organized crime capital of the nation more times than we can count, but it was fellatio that destroyed the dignity and honor of the office.

For a taste of how weird and pervasive and completely out-of-touch this attitude is, watch Newsweek editor Jon Meacham's Daily Show interview from last night. He makes two out-of-left-field context-free Clinton jokes that just fall completely flat, and he seems befuddled that not everyone else thinks it's self-evident that the Clintons were uncouth maniacs akin to the intoxicated mob of commoners who destroyed the White House during Andrew Jackson's inauguration. And Meacham, editor of Newsweek, is the best possible example of a serious, middle-of-the-road serious Washington Press Corps member.

So the firestorm over the Hillary Clinton SecState gig is almost entirely imagined. We have our own issues with it, but they'd apply equally to about two dozen other prominent Democrats, especially Senators. It's just bizarre to see that the no one remembers the lesson of the '90s: that it can and will get so, so much worse.

Though Matthews is a frequent guest on Leno, his fall to the show's least enviable quarter-hour comes at a touchy time. Fellow host Keith Olbermann shot past him in the MSNBC pecking order and then had the nerve to mock him on national television. Some feminists accused him not only of sexism toward Hillary Clinton but also promoting domestic violence. At least Matthews had the good humor to start laughing at his situation at the end of the clip above. He may lack the polish of career TV journalists like Olbermann and Cooper, but the longtime Democratic political aide probably has the grit to make it through the minor humiliations of the moment without further loss of temper.

Abrams told the Journal the company's ethical guidelines include "a ban on full-time journalists consulting with companies in their area of coverage. Instead, Mr. Abrams says he will try to connect companies with media professionals with expertise in a general area while avoiding direct conflicts."

But a general magazine editor, or blogger without a beat (covering everything that happens at night, for example), though he may have no specific area of coverage, really should not be getting paid to answer questions about how a publication — like, say, his — might cover something when he may well have to decide how to cover that very thing a short time later, with the added complication of having been paid/bribed by the subject. Unless maybe he was totally screwed over on bonus, or the holiday party was canceled, or for whatever reason he's decided it's time to just sell the hell out.

Then there are the many media people between jobs right now, for whom a quick stint on a consulting "jury" could provide some needed cash. The work probably won't go on the resume, and probably won't be mentioned in a job interview. It should be disclosed at some point, but some people will surely be tempted to keep it secret.

But really, with the media employment landscape in the shape it's in, it would be really nice for everyone if this type of job could be ethically greenlit. It doesn't have to end badly. Help us see that this is kosher, Dan. We all NEED for this to be OK!

The plodding pace of Huffington's delivery was at least as tough on viewers as her accent, but her pronunciation was, admittedly, often odd, and also often kind of hilarious: "Connect-icuit," "Philly-buster," "Newer mayor" (for "Newark mayor") and, best of all, "the biggest wiener of the election season." (They're all in the clip above.)

Huffington did make the most of her Greek background in the last minute of the show, when she talked about her kids' "ya ya" (that's for grandmother, mind you!) and life in Athens. (That's also in the clip above.) But going forward she should probably stick to guesting — or hire a voice coach.

Also noteworthy: Huffington's especially warm chat with rumored sometime rumored lover Cory Booker, the Newark mayor. Watch their eyes (and notice Booker's effusive compliment) in the clip below.

• Shuster was suspended from MSNBC in February for saying Bill and Hillary Clinton "pimped out Chelsea." Which was a total overreaction on the part of his bosses, but they do call the shots, so it counts as a strike.
• In August, he ended up in an extended, horridly awkward on-air argument with Joe Scarborough about Iraq. Scarborough was at least as obnoxious and provocative, but Shuster did his part to keep the fight going and ended up looking like he was on the receiving end of a smackdown. Particularly after Scarborough slammed him for sleeping through three scheduled appearances on Morning Joe.
• Now this!

None of this is to say the ex-Fox Newser is about to be fired. Shuster's colleagues Keith Olbermann, Chris Matthews and Scarborough had plenty of on-air fights as well. Shuster is in the good company of bloggers at the New Republic, Los Angeles Times and Huffington Post, all of whom were fooled by Gorllin. (Olbermann, contrary to Eisenstadt's claim, did not buy an Eisenstadt claim that Joe the Plumber was related to Charles Keating.)

Your night editor (sigh) was taken in, as well, writing a post about Paris Hilton's relatives angrily phoning up McCain about one of his campaign ads. Do I get any points for rejecting five subsequent tips from his site as suspicious? Didn't think so.

Shuster, though, will probably need to watch his step a bit more closely going forward than the rest of us. (Watch his Eisenstadt face plant in the video up top.)

Keith Olbermann became the voice of Bush's second term. After eking out a narrow victory and calling it a mandate, the President really outdid himself. The war went to hell, the lies that got us into the war were further aired out, the details of his various unconstitutional surveillance programs came to light, the ideological disdain for effective governance and the bubble of true believers led to the Katrina disaster, and America basically got a serious case of buyers' remorse. One guy on TV sounded as perpetually pissed off and outraged as you did, from 2003 onward: Keith Olbermann!

His newfound glee at casting moral judgment on the mendacity of the lunatics in charge was, you know, refreshing after a couple years of the newsmedia wandering in the post-9/11 desert of breathless Bush-worship. Everyone felt kinda bad for selling that stupid and pointless war, but no one quite wanted to be the first to go whole-hog anti-authority. But Olbermann's voice of the opposition was the best thing on TV, leading right up to the 2006 midterms, when America first wholly rejected the Republican party.

But now we've just had an election about Hope and Change, and the new guy in charge is not a fire-breathing pissed-off Howard Dean, but a calm and cool unifier promising to bring dispassionate rationality back to the White House. Meanwhile at MSNBC, Olbermann's charming protege is a Rhodes Scholar who's specifically pledged never to have more than one guest on at a time, because shouting and argument and cross-talk don't actually advance the discussion. Rachel Maddow's ratings are phenomenal, and every month there's a new fawning profile of her showcasing how... normal (and nice!) she is.

If Olbermann was the voice of the opposition, Maddow is the voice of the new liberals in charge. It won't necessarily diminish Olbermann's popularity and influence (or even his ratings), but he's not on top of the zeitgeist anymore. Let's pray for a great 2012 race to get him across that next contract renegotiation hump. Gingrich/Palin '12!

Keith does this "not voting is a symbolic stand" thing because he is obsessed with the idea that he is a Big Serious Important Old-Timey News Man. You know who else makes a big point of saying he is so non-partisan that he doesn't vote? Len Downie, the former executive editor of the Washington Post. Len, in the words of Michael Kinsley, "does not even allow himself the luxury of deciding whom he would vote for if he was into that sort of thing."

We'll freely admit that it is stupid and unfair to say "Keith Olbermann is a big fat liberal" just because he hates George W. Bush with great intensity. It is quite possible to intensely hate George W. Bush as a conservative, a moderate, a libertarian, an Anti-Federalist, a Whig, or a fascist. It is reductive and stupid to equate hatred of George W. Bush and the modern ruling Republican party with any political ideology beyond an affinity for competence and morality in government. And, you know, genuinely unbiased objectivity does sometimes mean saying "Jesus Christ this administration is terrible." That's not a political statement if it's true!

But, Keith, it does not make you Serious to say you don't vote. It doesn't change the fact that you would've voted for Obama. It doesn't actually fool anyone, either. None of those View ladies would have any of it! You disappointed Whoopi.

So we'll agree that we honestly have no idea what Keith Olbermann's political leanings are beyond hating George Bush if he'll stop pretending to be too Serious-Minded to participate in the vast voting conspiracy.

And hey, maybe we'll get a chance, in an Obama administration, to figure out what Keith Olbermann's politics actually are! Because he just signed on through Obama's re-election campaign, hosting Countdown on MSNBC through 2012. NBC even gave him primetime "essays" on the network news and he gets two specials a year on regular NBC. Man. NBC had to give him network gigs to keep him from taking his show and moving to another channel, supposedly, though there is not a channel left, on the TV, that Keith Olbermann has not already worked at. And he left nothing but bad blood at all of them.

Campbell is a fine interviewer who does admirably call bullshit when she hears it, but her show's self-congratulatory "keeping them honest" segments still invariably boil down to "both sides stretching the truth, as usual, what are you gonna go?" meaninglessness. And hey, she got some history wrong!

In attempting to explain why a single party controlling the legislature and the White House is bad, a terribly annoying bugaboo repeated only by media people and minority parties and not so feared by voters who vote for single party rule, Campbell explained that the last time this happened was in the 1970s, with Jimmy Carter. Hah. That's not true! Nor was it in the 90s, with Bill Clinton. It was, as Keith explains, in the 2000s, with the current President, Mr. Bush.

Keith doesn't explain that Campbell's point about all of those situations being disasters is actually borne out by the evidence, but whatever. Unified Democratic government also brought us Vietnam and Civil Rights, for those keeping score at home. Mixed bag, right?

CNN had the holograms. What was that? What was the point of that? NBC lost Tim Russert this year, and we missed his whiteboard. It was definitely preferable to Chuck Todd—who we like!—standing on the holodeck with magical 3D graphic map that kept slowly turning from side to side for no reason. John King and his stupid magic map still serve no actual purpose.

Meanwhile CNN refused to call any states too early, because of the 2004 debacle, even though no states were prematurely called in 2004, so to figure out that Obama won Pennsylvania and Ohio and hence the presidency (all before the polls closed on the West Coast!) you had to turn to MSNBC.

And finally, Wolf Blitzer needs to get off of TV. He's everything that's wrong with CNN—a complete inability or unwillingness to ever say anything, just mindless equivalence and hedging and cliche, because CNN is the "unbiased" network. Gah. We're with Jack Shafer on this: Blitzer's infuriating.

In 2012 we'll probably have to watch PBS. And then everyone loses.

SNL and my Football Night In America show share adjoining studios, so upon my arrival yesterday, awaiting me was one of the cue cards from the bit, with Ben writing of the sketch: "Keith - Remember, a) I didn't write this; b) it took years of study - fondly, Ben."

As to the giddiness: Honestly, everybody deserves a laugh but if on the weekend before the presidential election they spent more than seven seconds bothering with ME, the campaign staff has even less of a clue than I thought.

Also, what's this "about time" jazz? Since spring they've been trying to cajole, sweet-talk, bully, threaten, blackmail, and bribe everybody at NBC from the pages to the presidents to get the milquetoast coverage they want - especially to shut me down. Then McCain spoiled his otherwise impeccable performance at the Al Smith dinner with that angry-old-man bit about me. They have helped bury their own guy in the polls and helped me pass O'Reilly in the ratings. So, seriously, if they'd like to spend any part of the penultimate day talking about me I'll send them all fruit baskets of gratitude.

One last SNL thing: I'll be reporting the details on this tonight. ask them why Governor Palin didn't say her first line as scripted three shows ago. As they pulled back from the monitor shot of Tina doing the impression she was supposed to compliment Tina. Could've been a real rehab to her image - why'd she refuse?

McCain's SNL "point man," hagiographer aide Mark Salter, says the stuff about Palin refusing to compliment Tina Fey is ridiculous and untrue. Also he says "Keith olbermann. An angry man." That is not a palindrome even though it sounds like it should be. [Update: Nor is it an anagram.]

In other news, it is the day before the election and there is no news.

New York

Olbermann had no such kinship with Dan Abrams, the lawyer and former MSNBC executive who hosted Verdict, the program that followed Countdown. In fact, Olbermann’s dislike of Abrams was so intense that he refused to provide Abrams with a “throw,” that brief chat as the audience is passed, it is hoped, from one block of programming to another. Sometimes there would be up to five seconds of dead air between their shows....

Abrams, who is now MSNBC’s chief legal correspondent, says that he considers Maddow’s hiring to be the right decision for the network. But sources say he was privately steaming. “Dan Abrams is not the most sensitive guy,” one MSNBC source says. “But he was like, ‘What the fuck?’ ”

Maddow tells New York she is purposely "naïve about these things," which is just as well: Her ratings doubled Abrams' in a matter of days, which makes her promotion look more like a smart move than vengeance. Besides, Olbermann has sniped at Abrams before, and one could argue that Abrams has done the same, so it's hard to see why Abrams would have been so surprised at the idea of Olbermann shanking him.

Maddow has a smart strategy for avoiding such feuds: Avoid reading blogs.

She’s been getting more and more attention lately, and is now worrying about what she thinks will be the “inevitable” backlash.
“I’m trying not to read the blogs or the press about myself anymore,” she says. “I don’t think it’s healthy for me. It’s like training a dog. I needed it in the beginning, but now I need to sit—sorry,” she glances at the dog. “I need to S-I-T or S-T-A-Y without getting a Milkbone. You can’t live on Milkbones.”

Unfortunately, Maddow's execution was a bit off. She let Obama run the clock too often with his answers and wasted time on two questions concerning infrastructure spending where the candidate's answer could have been predicted in advance ("Well, I've actually talked about this," Obama began one response).

But the interview was good enough. Click the video at top to watch some of the feistier moments. What will be remembered, above all, is that Maddow — less than two months into her show — got it in the first place.

Fox just signed Bill O'Reilly, the most predictable shouting head on television, to a new four-year, $40 million contract. They just "lured" Glenn Beck from CNN (if you consider him a man who needs "luring") with a multimillion-dollar contract. Other Fox News names like Shep Smith and Sean Hannity get paid huge salaries to stay on.

Meanwhile, MSNBC's new star Rachel Maddow came out of nowhere, in cable news terms. She was with Air America not too long ago, for fuck's sake, which is definitely the minor leagues. MSNBC took a chance on her, got her on air, saw how well she did, and then took the leap to giving her her own show. Which has paid off. The best part? They are probably paying her—in cable news terms, again—peanuts.

Where are Fox News' Maddows? Where is the young talent that they nurture and build into a star while still paying them the wages of a rookie? These things are important. The economy is shit, advertising revenue is dicey, and homegrown stars are the wave of the future.

I'm taking bets on Tampa Bay. Get at me, O'Reilly.

Could it be that part of the reason that the online world has so much love for Maddow is that she loves the online world back? It's crazy, but it just might be true! For example, she Tweets. Presumably with her own hands! And you have to figure that her 6,000 Twitter followers include at least several thousand bloggers, some of whom run blogs that are actually influential. Since internet memes often grow out of groupthink, her mere twitterings may have had an outrageously large impact on her positive reputation in the blogosphere, which is now equally influential, in ideas at least, to the mainstream media.

Crazy! Further:

Ms. Maddow had cultivated an online fan base for years while at Air America, posting comments on blogs and creating videos for YouTube. “I practically live online,” she said in an interview.

She came up from the bottom of the media, yo. From a place where she had to build an audience herself wherever she could if she wanted people to pay attention to her. People who write blogs are familiar with this dynamic. You know who's not? Just about every traditional TV news person! That's because the process of rising up through the ranks in TV news usually involves a slow climb from local TV to the networks, which requires a totally different skill set than blogging does. Online self-promotion is not, traditionally, the way you get TV news jobs—you get them by wooing a select handful of decision makers, and getting your face on camera as much as possible.

What Maddow has proved is that being a Friend of the Internet from day one can pay off. Hell, she beat Larry King when she started. She already had a built-in fan base, and didn't have to rely on the network itself to promote her flashily enough to catch the attention of channel-flippers. So even if, for example, Katie Couric has a "blog" on the CBS news site, most people who read blogs regularly can damn well sense the whiff of corporate bullshit involved in it.

The lesson here is, people who are already known on the internet can be valuable crossover commodities. And media stars who think they're above having to hustle online will come to learn that, no, they still have to hustle online. The future is normal people with Twitter accounts becoming our trusted news stars. A good thing? Yes, except for the Twitter part. [TV Decoder; pic by Paul Shoul]

In this morning's Times it emerged that Maddow's new show doubled its predecessor's ratings "in a matter of days." Such gumption! It took the liberal pundit's mentor, Keith Olbermann, years to get to that point, and he probably never had to save up to fix a broken chimney. Maddow is also beating CNN's Larry King among 25-to-54-year olds. So the Times is calling on MSNBC to at least buy poor Maddow a TV set, already:

...Ms. Maddow insists that she has never watched either [Larry] King’s program or the 9 p.m. program on Fox News, “Hannity & Colmes...”
“I worry every day about the homogenizing forces at work in my professional life,” she said, adding that it can be difficult to preserve creativity within cable’s production process. It helps, she said, that she does not own a television at home.
Even so, Ms. Maddow said, she has finally committed to getting a set, primarily so that her companion can watch her program. With Ms. Maddow delivering MSNBC a record audience, it might seem that the least the network could do would be to deliver her a television.

Then again, Maddow is very superstitious, telling the Times, " A handkerchief can never be put in another pocket after it has been in one pocket." Ack, wait, actually maybe leave her living like a pauper! You're going to jinx her otherwise!

A special comment to Keith Olbermann: The American people do not appreciate being misled, SIR, by your branding lies. But they do think your Special Comments are kind of adorable, and your ratings will probably go through the roof, so no harm no foul.

Below, the first Special Regular Special comment, about the "divisive ugly paranoid bleatings of this presidential race."

They were running my stuff during the 2000 election] on all of the network news channels and each of the big three—CNN, Fox and MSNBC—would from the same sketch mine different elements. CNN always took the most left-leaning elements of my piece, Fox the most right-leaning, and MSNBC was kind of down the middle. That’s changed now. CNN has become the middle of the road and MSNBC the left.

...I think showing our clips permits them to let us make the point

Well, sure. That and David Gregory's Sarah Palin has nothing on Tina Fey's. But he can do a mean George W.!

DC is an incestuous town and everyone knows and is basically friends with everyone else. The media-political complex has lots and lots of intermarried "journalists" and "operatives" and everyone has politely agreed to assume that everyone else is totally professional about it. So they get a bit tetchy when the Columbia Journalism Review is all "disclose your relationships or just be more independent or something" because what do those kids know?

If Tom Brokaw wants to play golf with John McCain that is his business (note: we don't know if John McCain can play golf but the two are still definitely probably friends). The standard argument is that one has to find concrete evidence of "bias" before one can claim these chummy relationships are no good, but honestly the "bias" is so ingrained in the process that it's a useless task and one is best served by appyling a gimlet-eyed suspicion to everyone one sees on the TV and then voting for Ron Paul.

Starts at about 2:01.

Setting aside his tactical blunders, McCain heads a party deeply divided on the campaign's central issue, the economy. If the showdown between Bush and Congressional Republicans over the Wall Street bailout didn't illustrate the fissure clearly enough, the public loss of faith by populist conservatives O'Reilly and Scarborough should do the job nicely.

For all his problems, one can't escape the uneasy feeling that McCain may very well sacrifice what remains of his dignity in a desperate, last-ditch shot at victory-via-dirty tricks. It almost certainly wouldn't work. But an October Surprise — well beyond the attempt to brand Obama a Bill Ayers-loving terrorist — would cause real pain in a nation that has already had more than enough this month. And that, my friends, would suck!

As we all know, NBC news, because of MSNBC, has been taken over by lunatics. Left-wing fanatics like Keith Olbermann and, uh, Rachel Maddow, and just-plain-crazy people like Chris Matthews. The Olbermann-Matthews ticket briefly covered the conventions as if they were real newsanchors and not circus sideshows! This outraged everyone, because they are intemperate and say what they think too much (especially Matthews, who says literally every thought he has, out loud). And no one was more outraged than Brokaw, who politely pulled rank and made his bosses give the serious news back to the serious people.

He had to! John McCain and the Republicans were in open revolt against NBC (and the rest of the media, as always, but "NBC" was what they chanted when they called for media blood). And Brokaw is friends with John McCain! Well, not "friends." It's complicated!

Last week during the Clinton Global Initiative in New York, Mr. Brokaw said, he spoke briefly with Mr. McCain, who has not appeared on “Meet the Press” since Mr. Russert’s death. While Mr. Brokaw said he and the Republican nominee are not personal friends, he did say they are “friendly” and “always had a great relationship.”

Which means, yes, they're friends. In much the same way that the serious-minded people of Washington are all friends with the other serious-minded people of Washington, once they've been there long enough to establish their serious-minded cred. This serious-minded fairness is what makes Brokaw basically useless, of course, but in that he's no different than Matt Cooper and Joe Klein and Richard Cohen and David Broder and Candy Crowley.

He's the sort of guy who'll only say what he feels—or even say what he knows to be true—when the cameras aren't rolling (or when they are, but he's off the air). He reportedly couldn't stand Bush (not only an arch-conservative and a buffoon, but also an impolite interloper into Washington, like the Clintons eight years earlier), but as the consummate professional he and his news organization made sure to give the president the benefit of the doubt, over and over and over again. And honestly, on television at least, that era of simple-minded fairness is over. People want to know when something is bullshit, and Keith Olbermann and Bill O'Reilley will tell you when something is bullshit, even if it's not.

The odd thing then is you have a Russert or a Brokaw, two steadfast educated liberal coastal elites, who'll bend over backwards to give a fair shake to the Vice President selling a war with obvious lies, because the Vice President is a serious-minded Washingtonian, like them, and they're all doing their jobs.

And McCain? The ultimate in respected elder statesmanship! He is intemperate, increasingly unhinged, and his gaffes and lies are an embarrassment to anyone who wants to take him seriously, but Brokaw remembers that Senator McCain was the independent maverick who never bullshitted the press back in the day (only the voters, remember), and he is a man to be taken seriously. So he apologizes for the wayward unseriousness of his network and promises McCain's camp that Keith and crazy Chris aren't in charge anymore.

"One of the things I was told by this person was that they were so irritated, they said, 'If it's an NBC moderator, for any of these debates, we won't go,' " Mr. Brokaw said. "My name came up, and they said, 'Oh, hell, we have to do it, because it's going to be Brokaw.' "

See? Then everyone wins! Except you, the viewer. But it's your fault for not being born in the Greatest Generation, and for not experiencing the 1960s, the most important decade ever.

At the panel, O'Brien asked Immelt about diversity at NBC Universal — primarily, its lack of it.
Immelt responded, according to our tipster, that he hires who he is "comfortable with." He followed up that statement by listing, in order, the "type" of people he trusts. And they are:

1) White Men
2) White Women
3) Black Men
4) Black Women

Jossip asked O'Brien about the remarks, and she wouldn't deny them — but she also pointed out that the panel was off the record.

If the comments are false, O'Brien should find a way to say so, not only for Immelt's sake but for her own. As a leading CNN correspondent on race issues, she'd look irresponsible keeping these kind of inflammatory sentiments quiet on behalf of a major corporate leader.

GE flacks haven't denied the comments yet either, although spokesman Jeff DeMarrais called Jossip's report "an unrecognizable and unbelievable post" in the comments section.

[Jossip]

Now word was spreading at MSNBC day side: Edge was out, caution was in. “Every day-side anchor, every producer, everybody was told the word on high is that no more edge,” said our source. “Be especially careful not to inject any sort of opinion or ridicule or anything like that. Play it straight down the middle. If you say something is not true, you have to say who’s claiming that it’s not true. The managers were saying, ‘Go for boring. That’s all we care about right now, be boring.’”

Oh, a brilliant maneuver! You are attracting attention and buzz, you say? Angering some partisans and pleasing others? Just like Fox did when they started? You'd better immediately start being boring, lest people begin to care about your third-place network.

But who is really to blame for all this? Who may be more at fault than Griffin, Capus, and Zucker? You'll never guess!

“After Russert died and Brokaw appointed himself the custodian of the Russert legend, he began beating on Steve Capus and Jeff Zucker and Jeff Immelt that MSNBC was an embarrassment,” said the aforementioned source familiar with the inner workings of the newsroom. “It wasn’t a platform that Brokaw found dignified enough for his presence.”

Boo-hoo! Let Brokaw keep up his "elder statesman of respectability-through-longevity" routine on the network news and keep him off our cable shout-fest. Hell, bring on Dan Rather if you want an old-school anchor—he's got moxie. Crazy, crazy moxie. Which is what you need, MSNBC, in this time of strife.

Hard Fall: What Happened to NBC? [NYO]

One knowledgeable source told us: "Shareholders were calling up NBC and GE - a lot, maybe thousands. They were saying, 'What the [bleep] is wrong with these guys?' . . . Chris Matthews just got stuck in the middle of it all."

Supposedly GE chairman Jeff Immelt got involved, presumably in the decision to replace Olbermann and Matthews with David Gregory. NBC denies this, but Immelt personally decided to let go of shock jock/bigot Don Imus that last time Imus acted like a racist tool on NBC's dime, so maybe there's some truth in the idea.

There's an alternate theory: Olbermann and Matthews were pushed aside simply because their squabbling was an obvious mess, but NBC chief Jeff Zucker invented the story about shareholder pressure to link the name of Jeff Immelt — rather than his own — to the MSNBC mess.

The Post never comes out and says Matthews is on his way out at MSNBC, but one has to wonder about his future there, and about what his next move might be. CNN? ABC? Start an angry ex-anchors network with Dan Rather? Beg a slot on Ana Marie Cox's YouTube thing? Anything is possible!

Whatever happens, Fox will continue to obnoxiously gloat about all the liberals' misfortune, as the network did yesterday:

[Post]

• Ratings Are Up "MSNBC nearly doubled its total audience compared with the 2004 conventions," Brian Stelter points out. Though they're still in third place, building an audience does actually take time, and their demographic numbers are great.
• This Won't Make Conservatives Shut Up. MSNBC is embarrassed that Republicans are holding up MSNBC as a prime example of liberal bias, and tying poor NBC News to the crazy rantings of its cable arm. Hah, yes, and David Gregory, the guy who became famous for abusing Bush spokespeople, will fix that! Remember how conservatives have spent 100 years decrying the liberal bias of CNN? The CNN that is now represented by the apolitically moronic Wolf Blitzer and the inoffensive cuddly unicorn Anderson Cooper? Both of whom are useless and boring at covering politics? This won't shut up any critics, at all. Show some fucking backbone.
• Matthews and Olbermann Are Smart We already called Blitzer a moron, and we meant it. The man's journalistic expertise is limited to an ability to stand up for a long time and babble at length without too much dead air. Matthews and Olbermann are blowhards and egomaniacs, yes, and they're far too pleased with themselves when they do something like reference some 70-year-old Capra movie, but they actually know a lot about history and politics.
• The Bitchery Is Great Television Duh! Bickering and barely concealed contempt are the stuff of high drama! No one talked or cared about MSNBC, except as a third-place loser joke of a cable network, until Olbermann and Matthews began making headlines by pissing people off. Matthews, remember, spent most of the primary campaign pissing off liberals, even though he's clearly an old-school conservative Catholic Democrat himself. But it created buzz! Which is the only point of cable news, really—entertainment, not edification.
• Now We Have to Watch Fox. Because if we can't crack up at the clashing egos of MSNBC's crazy mascots, we'll have to go back to cringing and cackling at the unrepentant assholish coverage of Brit "Sick of This Shit" Hume and his all-star team of interchangeable white dudes and blondes, plus Bill Kristol looking like a weasel and giving you a preview of the next day's Republican spin on everything.

So, MSNBC President Phil Griffin, be a fucking man for once and hold your ground against Zucker and NBC News President Steve Capus and even Original Blowhard Tom Brokaw (seriously, why did the act of "retiring" bestow respectability upon that hack?). If people wanted Brian Williams and David Gregory to cover everything quietly and politely they'd actually watch your evening news. Scarborough, Olbermann, Matthews, and Maddow are the best of cable this year, because of their unique ability to annoy the shit out of each other and also to generally know what the fuck they're talking about, which is basically unheard of on television, let alone cable news.