It has been impossible for any literate person beyond the generations of toadies and lick-spittles Martin Peretz has hired over the years to take The New Republic seriously for at least the last quarter-century.

...precisely why I've never had a subscription to The New Republic, and why I never will.

May the entire rag wither on its triangulating little vine.

Rachel Maddow clearly is doing something right.

Congratulations to her on her new show, and let TNR and the like buy themselves a new defibrillator.

In the meantime, I am hoping that Ms. Maddow will introduce two themes into her show: exposing the actions of msm, along the lines of GG's vigilant work; and holding the actions/policies/pronouncements of the "newsmaking pols" up to the standards of the United States Constitution. Both could make for interesting watching and neither would have to be "hysterical".

is maturity an idiot, or is it just me?

I must be a Hilary-hating commie. That must be it.

Maturity? You need to mature some more.

I too get sick of the '60s being blamed for everything and no credit given to those years when people in the streets and schools started a movement that has led to:

* an enormous expansion of human and civil rights,

* increasing gender and racial equality,

* a heightened awareness of how government can lie to its true authority (the citizens) and how politicians can subvert the Constitution,

* a burgeoning and vital focus on the environment and how it affects both personal and planetary health and well-being, and

* a cultural explosion that not only vastly broadened the scope of music and the arts but even gave people today the right to wear their hair the way they want.

And far too many of these people today - Barack Obama among them, with his manipulative put-down of '60s politics - are utterly, appallingly ignorant about how much of their freedom to live their lives as they see fit is owed to the civil rights activists, feminists and cultural rebels of the '60s. Every era has its good and bad sides, and so it was with the '60s - the over-emphasis on ideological correctness, for example.

But while the '60s will be remembered as a time of intense personal participation in the most basic duties of citizenship, this era could go down in history as a time when citizens retreated to the safety of cable television, celebrity worship, materialism and consumerism, and unthinking acceptance of such democratically damaging concepts as "post-partisan politics" - which only leads to things like the kind of "journalism" you find in The New Republic.

Hey people! Here's a no-brainer for ya: You can't have compromise unless you first have partisanship.

"So who are the great people on cable news who are better, who should have their own shows? Lanny Davis and Sean Hannity?" -- Glenn Greenwald

He just told you - Joe Scarborough, who isn't a "smug know-it-all" like that lesbian-denying "Divine Miss M"! (No dysfuntional anger issues there)

And as maturity pointed out, who can watch Chris "We're all neo-cons now" Matthews since he became so "far left"!

Note to self: Buy more locks for the front door

would of course be "concerned" about Maddow's new show representing a further polarization of the media. As Glenn points out these same trolls seem to have a blind eye to the extreme imbalance that currently exists. I dare any of the trolls posting here to document one falsehood uttered by Keith in his show or in his special comments. This "pox on both houses" crap regarding right and left in the media completely misses the bigger point: the conservatives in the media are serial, unmitigated, and unrepentant LIARS. The balance that Maddow and Keith bring is the unvarnished truth since the traditional media ignores the most egregious sins of the current cabal in the White House. It's not about right vs left; it's about fact vs fiction.

Hoooray for Rachel and Hooray for Keith. It's about time that we had some truth tellers in teh media. You certainly don't find them on Fixed Noise.

You're better when you don't jump into the "look how stupid the other side is" fray. There are a million other topics your article could have brought attention to today, but you chose to bash some commentators at TNR?

Great post dude. You are 100% correct.

a young commentator was that his Dad was a powerful broadcast wingnut allied w/ the bushies. Talent had nothing to do with it. Although maybe if he put me on TV I would have a different opinion & agree w/ you.

PBS is good at doing background (BBC is sometimes better and definitely beats most other American news outlets for background).

BBC does global news to an extent PBS does not.

PBS does domestic news/issues and "culture" very well.

Democracy Now covers many stories that rarely appear elsewhere on TV and their "slant" is often quite apparent by what they cover, who they have as talking heads as much as by what they say -- the Zapatistas and the conflict in Southern Mexico for example, or Free Mumia or the Palestinians (who very rarely show up on other news programs except with a clenched jaw trying-to-sound-neutral as-brief-as-possible just-the-facts reports of events -- apparently too dangerous to dip beneath "the facts")

True, Olbermann does not pretend to be news (as has been pointed out here in the past) yet I get the impression people regard him as "news" ... It would be easy to think, watching him, that 90% of what's worth thinking about has to do with the election and democratic/republican squabbles with much amusement at the hypocracy and idiocy of the latter.

Tone is a problem for me. I think serious issues deserve serious discussion. MSNBC -- from Matthews to Olberman to increasingly Abrams -- has forgone any pause in the hilarity and cleverness to actually engage in talk-listen-respond ... it's too much insider besting insider in bon mots .. it's too kool kidz for my taste. I DO NOT LEARN ANYTHING WATCHING MSNBC.

There really is a great big world out there beyond and besides partisan politics and the election. Democracy Now does a very good job at extended segments bringing issues, people and points of view otherwise absent on TV. PBS is far too self-censoring and timid for such divergent and/or "extreme" points of view.

I get only one NPR radio station that only carries the morning and evening news so I cannot speak to the other new programs available on radio which, in my past experience, are often excellent and more in depth.

I don't care what Howie Kurtz has to say about anything.