NBC News White House correspondent and MSNBC daytime anchor Chuck Todd told Politico's Roger Simon that the Journolist scandal has been keeping him up nights, and he's especially frustrated that "the right" would use it as "a sledgehammer" against everyday journalists, "those of us who don't practice advocacy journalism."

Todd fretted: "Journolist was pretty offensive. Those of us who are mainstream journalists got mixed in with journalists with an agenda. Those folks who thought they were improving journalism are destroying the credibility of journalism. This has kept me up nights. I try to be fair. It’s very depressing."

The only problem, of course, is that Todd and other ostensibly neutral reporters at NBC have gotten "mixed in with journalists with an agenda" via the entire MSNBC project. Keith Olbermann, Rachel Maddow, the upcoming Larry O'Donnell show -- these are not programs designed to boost the "credibility of journalism." They are liberal agenda shows designed to push one side -- Journolist on TV, as it were.

For his part, Simon seems critical of Journolist for tainting the media's professionalism -- a "holy calling" (although the most directly critical statement is the headline, "Journolist veers out of bounds"). An excerpt:

Howard Kurtz on Sunday used a Keith Olbermann tactic of selectively editing and cherry picking from a Rush Limbaugh radio transcript to make the conservative talk show host look racist.

In a "Reliable Sources" segment dealing with the embattled Republican National Committee chairman Michael Steele, Kurtz played a highly-edited clip of statements Limbaugh made Tuesday about this issue.

Unfortunately, just as MSNBC's Olbermann did on his "Countdown" program, Kurtz never told his viewers that Limbaugh was referring specifically to comments that the Atlanta Journal-Constitution's Cynthia Tucker made on last Sunday's "This Week" (video follows with transcript and commentary): 

Newsweek's Howard Fineman, on Monday's Hardball, pushed Barack Obama to "overdo" and "overstep" in his efforts to get BP to plug the leak and stop the oil spill in the Gulf, something Fineman claimed Obama hadn't done yet because "he's usefully and rightfully dangerous about power. I think he thought...George W. Bush overstepped in terms of executive power...he's an observer by nature." This observation from Fineman seems particularly odd, as it comes at the same time the President has pushed for a $50 billion in additional domestic spending.

Fineman made the comment after the Politico's Roger Simon insisted there's only so much Obama can do, as he insisted: "He's not Iron Man. He cannot dive a mile underwater and stop this by himself." However host Chris Matthews asserted Obama could do more and he asked if the President will be "tough" and "really threaten BP" and openly wondered: "Does he know he's a powerful man?" After Fineman responded that Obama needs to "overstep" a concerned Matthews questioned: "Even at the risk of being called a socialist again?"

Chris Matthews, on Tuesday's "Hardball," ominously warned that the "activists on the radio," are "gonna pay," if "we have violence in this country against our president of any form," for having "encouraged the craziness." Matthews made that charge in a segment, with NBC News' Chuck Todd and the Politico, that began by the MSNBC host wondering if the GOP was "jumping the shark," with "these crazy town meetings," and declared "the clown show is over."

The following exchange was aired on the September 22 edition of "Hardball":

Chris Matthews, on Tuesday's "Hardball," invited on HBO's Bill Maher to mock GOP criticism of Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor as Maher accused them of being "racist," and Matthews marveled at how Republicans can admire Sarah Palin but not someone who worked as hard as Sotomayor to achieve her position, as he pondered: "Why do they like somebody who's shown no sweat equity against somebody who's shown nothing but sweat equity?"

Before discussing Republican treatment of Sotomayor Matthews asked Maher to rate the audiences that come to see him in the South. Maher, not surprisingly, belittled most of the region, saying the ones that do come to his shows are the minority as they are "marbled in and surrounded by a bunch of hillbillies and rednecks." To which Matthews rejoined: "Isn't it refreshing to meet Southern liberals? Because the great thing about Southern liberals is they don't, they're not competing for the latest nuance of sexual freedom like in Greenwich Village. They are liberals, meaning they're, they're for black equality for example. Things like that, that are pretty nice and wholesome." [audio available here]

Not long after that slam against non-liberal Southerners, Maher threw out the charge of Republican racism: