What do the thought leaders in the liberal blogosphere think about Mark Halperin? Well, Markos Moulitsas says he’s “a useless piece of shit who is always wrong about everything,” “has no political acumen,” and has been “engaged in a long-running jihad against the truth.” Duncan Black says that Halperin “sucks ass” and is “proud of the fact that Matt Drudge rules his world.” Gawker’s new boss, Alex Pareene says Halperin is “the world’s laziest dispenser of conventional wisdom” and “the worst hack in America.” Also he’s so bad at what he does that “the most offensive thing about the existence of Mark Halperin is that he’s the worst possible version of himself.” Esquire‘s Charles Pierce says Halperin is one of “the worst two things that have happened to American political journalism in the past 30 years” because “he long ago invented the kind of Beltway insidery railbird bullshit that passes today for analysis.” Heather Digby Parton says that Halperin is “the quintessential Villager, a man who exhales conventional wisdom the way the rest of us exhale carbon dioxide.” Ed Kilgore is especially brutal on this subject:
Mark Halperin is one of the most famous, and certainly one of the most richly remunerated, journalists in Christendom—yet is capable of writing graph after graph and page after page of palpable nonsense, expressing not only an indifference to but an active defiance of any objective evidence that transcends the “insider” information he purveys…
…He writes what Villagers want to read, and is rewarded with unequaled access to their most avaricious thoughts and intentions. And because they do matter in politics, albeit not as much as they would wish, there is a sort of “journalism” going on, but not of the sort that should be taken seriously…
I bring this up because MSNBC wants to do something very silly.
The talks, first reported by New York Magazine, center around rebroadcasting Bloomberg’s 5 p.m. show “With All Due Respect” at 6 p.m. on MSNBC, sources at both networks who are familiar with the discussions said.
“With All Due Respect” is hosted by “Game Change” co-authors Mark Halperin and John Heilemann, who are regular guests on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe.”
For many at NBC, the idea of rebroadcasting a competitor’s show feels desperate. “Talk about out of ideas,” one on-air talent at MSNBC said. “We’re going to run a rerun of another rival network’s show? As a programming decision that is completely insane.”
That last quote there is pretty easy to put in Rachel Maddow’s mouth, don’t you think?
In any case, who’s the audience for MSNBC’s political programming? Who are their fans? Who do those fans read on the internet? Who do they respect?
And even if much of the MSNBC audience has never heard of weird names like Atrios, BooMan, digby, and kos, they’re still cut from the same kind of cloth. They do not want to listen to Mark Halperin for ten minutes, let alone a full hour. If they don’t already, they will hate Halperin with the white hot heat of a thousand suns.
Maybe the management should ask the greatest blogger of all time, The Rachel Maddow Show producer Steve Benen, what he thinks about airing Mark Halperin Bloomberg reruns at 6 p.m.
Here’s what Benen had to say about Halperin back in August 2008:
It’s difficult to identify with any real certainty the single worst political analysis of the presidential campaign, but if you missed ABC News’ “This Week” yesterday, you missed Time‘s Mark Halperin offering analysis that was so bizarre, it was tempting to think it was intended as satire. Only in this case, Halperin was serious.
So, if this is what MSNBC Chairman Andrew Lack wants to do, he should resign before he humiliates himself and pisses off all the actual talent he’s already assembled.
It’s also unclear that either side would get a significant ratings boost from the deal. MSNBC’s 5 p.m. show, “MTP Daily,” hosted by Chuck Todd, has floundered in the ratings. The show has averaged 499,000 viewers since it launched, and just 65,000 of those viewers are in the coveted 25-to-54 year-old demographic.
But sources at NBC say Lack may be less concerned with ratings than with relevance. Halperin and Heilemann are big names in New York and Washington, and their addition could buy MSNBC a greater stake in the political discussion during the 2016 campaign. To that end, sources said, he may be willing to overlook the hurdles.
Trying to be more relevant by running reruns of Mark Halperin that first aired on a rival network that no one watches?
Good luck with that.
They should rename the network “Joe Scarborough and Friends” at this rate. Doesn’t Scarborough get shit/terrible ratings? Yet somehow the people cut from his cloth are the ones who continue to get promoted. Ratings don’t seem to matter there if you’re peddling Village Material.
The only one worth watching is Chris Hayes, and I don’t even do that. Cable news is in general a dead-end for me. I find him odious, but I still watch Bill Maher on a semi-regular basis. I watch John Oliver regularly. Why isn’t MSNBC emulating that? Yeah, HBO versus Cable, freedom from advertisers, etc…but you can still do similar things.
MSNBC’s management doesn’t seem to understand that people can change the channel to FoxNews if they want to see stuff like that. There’s no constraint on how many people can watch it – there doesn’t need to be a knockoff of FN due to some shortage or other.
But them not understanding their viewers is nothing new. They fired Phil Donahue and Keith Olbermann.
Rachel needs editors to tighten up her 20 minute monologues that can be reduced to 10 with no loss of information. Or they need to revamp the show so she does a segment with a 10-15 minute long interview with one person every night. She has many strengths – getting to the point without beating it to a pulp isn’t one of them.
Hayes needs to reduce his caffeine intake about 90% and quit trying to have a sensible segment with 4 people in 3 minutes. He needs to stop talking on top of his guests. But those are minor quibbles in the greater scheme of things. And he needs to come home from Paris. We’re not stupid – we know that LIVE BREAKING NEWS FROM PARIS about something that happened 12+ hours earlier, isn’t.
Oh well, I don’t think my life in particular is diminished by gaining back those 2 hours in the evening.
I hope Rachel and Melissa jump before they’re pushed, or before they’re forced to become “even more balanced!” or something…
Relatedly, I just came across Joe Conason’s National Memo news web site. It seems pretty good so far.
My $0.02.
Cheers,
Scott.
I think people should watch WADR, before dismissing the show according to prior judgments passed on Halperin. For one thing, co-host John Heilemann is an equal presence. It’s true that Halperin often focuses on style, leans palpably right and is sometimes “kind of a dick”. Heilemann balances this out in some respects. He has none of Halperin’s reptilian cool, but comes across as actually caring about the substance of issues, as opposed to just political advantage.
In any case, the show has conducted a lot of news-worthy interviews over the last few months. Halperin, for his shortcomings, is pretty brazen in probing candidates’ vulnerabilities: For example, in asking Ted Cruz to speak Spanish and Donald Trump to name his favorite book of the Bible. I don’t see a lot of other reporters with access to these candidates going there, and this provides a service, just as “Game Change” was an important, maybe indispensable, chronicle of the origin of the GOP insanity which is now center stage.
It’s not a business decision. It’s a political decision.
Wouldn’t filling an hour with a rerun, only hours old, purchased from another station be cheaper than producing a show of its own? That would make it a business decision.
It would be even more lucrative to run a one hour infomercial.
Anyone open to buying the 2015 version of Ginsu knives at 6:00 PM is already glued to QVC or HSN.
We all understand what MSNBC management thinks, and we all understand which shows are on tight leashes and which aren’t. They want those latte liberal rich progressive eyeballs for a certain class of advertiser. That’s the value proposition for putting on and promoting people like Rachel Maddow.
It is too bad that networks don’t have enough power over against the parties to have independently sponsored and solid debates this year. Both the DNC and and the RNC are scared little rabbits when it comes to answering the real questions that the public has. That’s what happens when you think your success depends on constructing a world out of touch with reality. Which Republican-world and New Democrat World both are.
Wall Street Media is pretty close to dead as contributor to political decision-making. I let the voter-watchers like BooMan keep up with what they are up to.
Nice to know that they are after Halperin; they deserve each other. Next AdNags will crossover to the toob.
ot: Man arrested after refusing to leave Mosque, disrespecting property at Islamic Center of S.A.
Texas man arrested at mosque after wiping boots on prayer rugs and cursing worshipers
Update: 20 NOV 2015 AT 10:12 ET
A Texas man was arrested earlier this week after walking into a mosque and wiping his feet on the carpet while screaming obscenities at worshipers.
Witnesses said Mariano Talavera wore military-style clothes and carried an American flag and a large backpack Tuesday afternoon into the Islamic Center of San Antonio, where he then started rubbing his boots on prayer mats, reported KENS-TV.
Worshipers asked Talavera to remove his boots out of respect, but he instead walked into the nearby women’s prayer room — dragging his feet with every step and screaming obscenities about the Islamic religion.
Muslims typically remove their shoes before praying to avoid tracking dirt from outside into the sanctuary’s symbolically clean space, and visitors are also asked to do so before entering mosques.
Witnesses called police, who arrived and asked Talavera what business he had at the mosque.
Talavera claimed he was there to worship, but officers were skeptical and arrested him on criminal trespassing charges.
Police seized his backpack, but they haven’t said what he was carrying inside it.
http://www.kens5.com/story/news/2015/11/19/man-arrested-after-refusing-leave-mosque-disrespecting-pr
operty-islamic-center-s/76080996/
Won’t be the last time something like this, and worse, will happen. The red base has been revved up higher and higher on hate, fear, and rage for too long, too intensely, and there will be blood.
This is excellent news for John McCain.
Excuse me, but can anybody explain to me what this sentence means? For MSNBC, the third biggest producer of right-wing propaganda in American TV, behind only Fox and CNN [Oops! Should have been fourth, I forgot CNBC], what would be a “greater stake?” I have noticed more and more over the last fourteen years, people are saying things that do not make any sense to me. I’m pretty old, I was a kid during the “Greatest War.” Maybe that has something to do with it. Language changes over time, maybe that has something to do with it. Maybe the language these people are speaking is no longer English but the descendant of English. I managed to pick up at least a reading knowledge of L33t, but never became fluent in it. Maybe it’s like that.