Another person commenting on this story has asked Joan Walsh to spring to the defense of Michelle Obama, whose comments and attitude have led to a team being appointed by the campaign to deal with criticism of her.

I agree that she seems to be a loving wife and mother and I'm sure she's a great attorney. However I think she is a liability to the campaign.

She has an edge that turned off voters in the suburbs of Philadelphia who were interviewed after hearing her speak at an area college. During that speech, her answer to charges of elitism was saying that she and her husband just paid off their student loans and that showed they are "in touch" with struggling families. Both Sen. and Mrs. Obama are lawyers with Ivy League educations, I would have thought they might have been able to afford paying those loans back earlier.

She told working mothers in Ohio that the Obamas spend about $10,000 a year for their daughters' extracurricular activities. Few working class people see that as an example showing she feels their economic pain.

Her remark that for the first time in her adult life, she felt proud to be an American, is no more defensible than the comments of the Rev. Jeremiah Wright.

Her sarcasm about her husband, saying she let him run for president because he said he'd quit smoking, would be funny among friends but doesn't make him look like a strong leader in the eyes of those just getting to know him.

She comes across as angry and resentful and that's the last thing Sen. Obama needs right now to convince those of us who aren't at all sure he's the leader this country needs.

For months, I emailed Phil Griffin and everyone else for whom I could find an email address at NBC and MSNBC regarding Keith Olbermann's increasingly biased coverage of the Clinton campaign.

I never received a response.

Now I know why. Griffin figures I have no place else to go so I'll return to this "difficult, brutal jerk," just as I'll forgive and forget Chris Matthews' attacks on Sen. Clinton and his well-documented problems with professional women.

But my family and I have found that there are lots of other things we can do instead of watching "Hardball" and "Countdown."

We can watch baseball, walk the dog, water the plants, read a book or turn on CNN.

Now in a household where MSNBC for years was our "must see TV" every night, we watch "Morning Joe" and that's about it.

I miss seeing unbiased guests such as Joan Walsh but I can always read her opinions on salon.com without wanting to throw a shoe through the screen.

Perhaps MSNBC's ratings are so strong that it makes no difference that they are permanently losing viewers like us who prefer that their show hosts not be cheerleaders for one candidate.

I'm sure Oprah Winfrey's producers once thought her show was invulnerable. But her unfavorable ratings have gone from 17 percent to 26 percent since she decided to endorse Sen. Barack Obama rather than the strongest woman candidate the nation has ever seen.

I think Ms. Winfrey can afford the loss of viewers better than MSNBC however.

When I read comments from men telling women that we are wrong about Keith Olbermann and Chris Matthews being sexist, I fear they will never understand, no matter how many quotes or examples we cite.

They don't know what it was like to be a woman in this country when equal pay for equal work was a fantasy, when women could be fired for being pregnant and sexual harassment was found in nearly every part of society.

Some African-Americans have posted comments that white people cannot fully understand what they have gone through, and that this impacts our understanding of Sen. and Mrs. Obama.

In many respects, they are correct.

I will never know what it's like to be pulled over by the police for "Driving While Black," for fearing that whenever I achieve something, people will claim it's only because of "Affirmative Action" nor have I ever been judged solely on the color of my skin.

But one thing older women and African-Americans have in common is knowing how it feels to be treated as second-class citizens in America.

That is something few white men have ever known. They want it to be explained in terms of specific quotes when women know it's far more than that.

It's people like Olbermann and Matthew's whole sensibility or lack thereof and I doubt if we can ever make you comprehend. But as Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart once said of pornography, we know it when we see it.

And with people at MSNBC like Olbermann and Matthews, the sexist attitude goes far beyond Sen. Hillary Clinton, we just didn't realize it until now.

I hope David Plouffe isn't taking Pennsylvania for granted.

Sen. Barack Obama's comments about Pennsylvania working-class voters ("They get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them etc. to explain their frustrations") still resonate in many parts of the state.

While the city of Philadelphia will vote for him overwhelmingly, that happened in the primary and he still lost the state by nine points.

Although the state has been in the Democratic column in the most recent presidential election cycles, there is a strong history of Republicans carrying the governorship.

Many Pennsylvanians tend to consider the person rather than the party, choosing Republicans like Dick Thornburgh and Tom Ridge as well as Democrats like Ed Rendell.

In addition the state has more older voters than anywhere else except Florida, a demographic Sen. Obama has had trouble reaching.

Rachel Maddow is so biased in favor of Sen. Obama that she nearly equals Keith Olbermann in her zealotry, being one of the few who defended his "bitter people" comments.