That just goes to show you, Rachel can be lauded over and over as the best the left has to offer and barely gets her own show. Any crackpot on the right can spout all kinds of offensive racist crap, or the like and easily gets a show.

Iconoclast = weaselly backstabbing Vichy DINO contrarian stalking horse for crypto-neoconservatism.

Fuck the New Republic. That rag started sucking ass at least back in the early 80's. Does anyone even read it anymore?

It's interesting how you condemn one of the very few actual journalists who earned a show on TV, when you have probably spent little if any time listening to what she has to say. I would like to hear some facts and quotes of hers like Glenn has provided in his excellent article about the so called M$M experts who shamelessly want us to believe Faux News is not a propaganda arm of the RWAs.

I have listened to Maddow extensively especially when she has been among the pretender journalists like Gregory and they are at a loss to counter her observations based on sound reasoning and facts, so they try to brush her off with blather.

What Rachel's critics hate the most about her and also KO is that they show up the pompous propagandists who want us to believe nonsense or believe them because they claim to be "experts" so that they can use sensationalism or campaign horse race leveling to gain ratings.

It's interesting how far the ratings of Bill O have fallen and KO's have risen in head to head competition. That says much more than all the rhetoric from the M$M defenders that Glenn has proven is BS in his article.

has never been downsized in his life, and here's the proof:

"... People who "reminds them of the Ivy League whiz kids they've dealt with at work during the latest downsizing."

It seems that Bob is saying that the only trustworthy pundits are those who are kept off the air. That's rather silly.

I am thrilled that Rachel Maddow will have her own show. She hasn't shown any pulling of punches yet, other than making sure her language is clean. The important point about Maddow, Olbermann and Stewart is that although they are witty, amusing and sarcastic, they are covering serious news in detail that other "news" shows just ignore in favor of sensationalism and Republican talking points.

when I want "plain" news, I watch PBS or BBC ...

As a shrieking scold, Olbermann began to approach O'Reilly territory, although he's pulled back from that apparent, at least when I've seen him recently. There's still DAMN LITTLE NEWS in his broadcast.

It will be very interesting to see how Maddow uses her time. I have not enjoyed her substituting for Olberman and have found her, like him, "too loud" to actually watch for more than 15 minutes before I move on to anything/something else, but my appetite for snark and cynicism has always been small.

I am suprised that concerns about political flavor should "trump" excitment that this intelligent, well-educated and articulate individual has been given her own hour.

Abrams and Olberman spend waaaaay too much time doing celebrity tabloid fluff of a marginally political nature, pandering to some sort of demographic I'm not part of.

Best wishes to Rachel Maddow.

I like Rachel Maddow a great deal, but when I want "partisan" NEWS I watch Democracy Now ...

when I want "plain" news, I watch PBS or BBC .

What is "partisan news?" And who exactly at PBS -- or BCC -- doesn't practice it?

When I watch Democracy Now, I believe I'm getting news -- not "partisan news." What is that?

Something that I am continually frustrated by is the argumentum ad nauseum that it was somehow the fault of the dirty fucking hippies that there were problems in the Democratic Party, or the US, in the 60's and 70's. The dirty fucking hippies were not the ones who nominated or supported George Wallace. The dirty fucking hippies were not the ones who supported a police riot at the 1968 democratic convention. The dirty fucking hippies were not the ones who lied our country into the escalation of an unwinnable war in violation of treaty and international law in Southeast Asia. The dirty fucking hippies were not the ones who manuevered to have the Democratic Party contribute the most transparently reluctant support to a presidential candidate from a major party in American history. The dirty fucking hippies were not the ones who shot Medgar Evers or Martin Luther King; were not the ones who rioted when James Meredith had the temerity to want to get a fucking college education in his home state at a school that bore the name; did not savagely beat, burn, and intimidate passengers on a bus whose sole affront was that they were attempting to participate in a society where human was more important than white or black or man or woman.

The quote you use from Jonathan Chait is completely illustrative of the type of mentality of which I speak. These are exactly the sorts of fanatics who tore the party apart in the late 1960s and early 1970s. They think in simple slogans and refuse to tolerate any ideological dissent.

Yes - slogans like "Make Love Not War" and "All we are saying is give peace a chance" were the real problems in the 60's and 70's - not a completely dishonest war policy; widespread and rampant government abuse of domestic intelligence gathering powers; or our unconscionable behavior towards black people trying to exercise such revolutionary rights as sending their children to a decent school, voting for a democratic represenatative, or standing up for your family without being shot. Oh, or access to an abortion without having to risk your life becasue that is one medical proedure that cannot be performed in a proper medical facility. life liberty and the pursuit of happiness - unless you are a Negro, or a dirty fucking hippie, in which case it apparently reads, sit down, shut up, and put out that fucking joint.

These people are the ones who want to lecture me about the lack of civility in modern discourse. Maybe if they would stop fucking lying so much, I would think about fucking listening to them.

I don't have any problems if someone wants to espouse a conservative viewpoint; if you think that government is not the way to improve societal woes, and find the traditional Liberal agenda to be oppressive, burdensome, and inefficient - fine. But don't try and tell me that societal woes don't exist, or that some poorly planned or executed program or failed policy caused them in the first place.

Sorry for the rant. Just got on my nerves.