Who Will Replace Russert on Press the Meat?

Joe Scarborough, currently a morning host for MSNBC and who could be using his tv time much as Ronald Reagan did, to help the nation become comfortable with him in preparation for either a Seanatorial (VERY likely) or presidential (look for GOP elders to buttonhole him about 2012) run, has been mentioned as a possible successor to Tim Russert on Meet The Press.

That would be a kind of Fox News move for MSNBC, which is attempting to differentiate itself from the Rupe-a-dupe" propaganda outlet, and would draw howls of protests from Democratic viewers. It is one thing to have been a Democratic operative, as Russert was for Mario Cuomo, but it is another to have been a conservative Congressman with a record that moderates and liberals may find distasteful heading up the leading Sunday political interview show.

The chief question here for me is whether or not out of professional courtesy Tom Brokaw will be offered the seat. Brokaw, who I remember from his days as a local anchor for NBC in L.A., is a pompous ass and will turn viewers off. Again, it is one thing to be a newsreader and quite another to be quizzing political leaders week after week for however long the show lasts.

Another candidate for the job, Keith Olberman, should stay right where he is. If he doesn't, MSNBC is out of business in a year.

Brian Williams is too vapid to be taken seriously and also too respectful of those he will be interrogating. Well, it won't be an interrogation so much as a slow pitch softball game.

Andrea Mitchell-Greenspan was way too friendly with the Bush Administration and her marriage to Alan Greenspan, Bush's former federal reserve chairman, only further hurt her objectivity. Plus let's face facts, many people just don't want to see women being hardasses. Ask Hillary Clinton.

Katie Couric is an airhead. Her stint at the anchor chair of CBS was also such as a disaster and still present in the audience's mind that she has no chance. Really, if they want a woman, they need to hire Rachel Maddow. But Rachel is a lesbian and sharp as a tack, someone that political figures, especially on the conservative side of the aisle, may find nettlesome to want to confront. Rachel is clearly the most qualified to do this job in terms of no nonsense temperment and high intellect, but lack of access will kill her chances here. She has been rumored to perhaps getting her own MSNBC program during weeknights. Please let that happen.

So I believe, and this is hardly original thinking, that if Brokaw turns the job down, White House correspondent David Gregory will be tapped to succeed Russert. Gregory earned the favor of the yellow elephants at GE by fondling Bill Clinton's cock during the Monica Lewinsky episode and his johnny come far too lately to be of any actual import tussles with Scott MacClellan have set him up to move over to Sunday.

Gregory is a bit of an empty suit, but he is brash and in today's news environment of all heat and no brains, he could end up being a long running staple.

Conservative Correctness Rears Its Ugly Head in Calling Iraq a Civil War

Has anyone been scratching their heads over why the media has been so tentative about labeling the Iraq conflict a civil war? They shouldn't and there is a lesson in it.

The media is so full of cowards now that even stating what should be obvious to an eight year old is fraught with fears that the mighty rightwing Wurlitzer will bury them in an avalanche of criticism. So many of these media companies are seeded with Republicans in their executive ranks that reporters and headline writers are running scared that their necks are on the chopping block if the conservative echo chamber reverberates with the sound of grumbling.

Shit, look at Joe Thugborough accusing Danny DeVito of engaging in, and I quote, "political hate speech." First, it was on The View, who nobody above a room temperature I.Q. gives a tinker's cuss about. Thugborough also had some paint fall off of his macho facade by admitting that he cares about anything emanating from that yenta-fest.

Keep that in mind then you read today's headline about how a rightwinger is making a serious bid to buy the NY Times.

Republicans believe, much how the black community does, that it should be entitled to immunity from scrutiny from non-members of the populace by virtue of who they are because they each fraudulently claim that they have been victims of unfair portrayals in the media.

The actual truth is that in inner city America as well as in corporate boardrooms, criminality tends to be coddled and even, in certain circles, thought of as cool and they scream like stuck pigs when the police and prosecutors show up to interdict that and the media appears to capture it for its viewers, listeners and subscribers.

The media has, in fact, been way too timid in forthrightly dealing with both groups because they don't want to be accused of being racists on the one hand and being liberal stooges on the other.

Consequently, the time is more ripe than ever for the emergence of an American Hitler or Mussolini because the watchdog that is supposed to help prevent that from happening is either bought off by the problem party (NBC by GE, Sinclair, Disney, Fox, Clear Channel, etc) or have been scared into toeing the line (CBS, which is owned by Viacom). CNN is such a bore that it is hard to take seriously and it, too, has begun listing rightward.

So idiots like David Gregory, Chris Matthews, Tim Russert, Katie Couric, Charlie Gibson, John Gibson and Brit Hume aren't just cowards, they, in a very real way, end up being collaborators and should be reviled as such.

By the way, Thugborough, Barbara Walters is a horse's ass. She's about as venerable as a can of sardines.