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Oprahs self promotion turns lost family member into found ratings.

So much for any scintillating future chit-chat between Rachel Maddow and Don Imus. Imus cut loose with a withering broadside today against Maddow for what he perceived as her disloyal initial response to news of colleague and mentor Keith Olbermann's abrupt departure from MSNBC -- Having nothing to do with her politics, she is a gutless coward and I'll tell you why. Because everybody…

It's enough to make you miss Ed Schultz's elegant, elevated tone.  OK, I jest, but Cenk Uygur, usurper of Schultz's 6 PM ET slot, hit a vulgar new low on MSNBC this evening.  The self-styled 'Young Turk' used a variation of the f-word in fulminating about Paul Ryan's response to the SOTU. Watch the video after the jump and note that Ugyur's crassness came during prepared remarks, not in an…

Prior to President Obama's State of the Union address Tuesday night, CBS Evening News anchor Katie Couric wondered what the message of the midterm elections was, to which political analyst Jeff Greenfield replied: "You've got 87 new members of the House, many of whom are fired up with a kind of militancy we very rarely see, even among new members."

MSNBC's Contessa Brewer on Wednesday blamed Republicans for obstructionism, complaining about the "attention grabber" Michele Bachmann and her Tea Party response to the State of the Union. Talking to Democratic strategist Mo Elleithee, she derided, "Mo, is Michelle Bachmann ruining the chances for bipartisanship?" Before playing a clip of Bachmann stating her opposition to excess spending,…

"[F]or all the surface civility [of the State of the Union], Obama wants to pick a fight, or at least draw a stark contrast, between his jobs-centric philosophy and the GOP’s determination to cut government first and ask questions later." That's how Politico's Glenn Thrush and Carrie Budoff Brown described the main difference between the president and his Republican congressional opposition…

Prior to calls for civility and what turned out to be a disastrous "date night" for the Democrats, Barack Obama was nicely set up to catapult himself into a fabulous 2011 approaching next year's reelection campaign with an enviable head of steam. Having been all but considered dead - am I allowed to say that post-Tucson? - after his shellacking at the polls in November, the President eked out…

NBC's Today show, on Wednesday, used the occasion of two responses to Barack Obama's State of the Union speech, by Republicans Paul Ryan and Michele Bachmann, as an opportunity to portray the GOP as a party divided. Despite a historic victory by Republicans in last year's midterm elections NBC anchors, past and present, on this morning's Today show, took pains to portray the Republican Party in…

Leigh Giangreco of The Eagle, the student newspaper at American University in DC, reported that disgraced former CBS news anchor Dan Rather spoke to students on Monday and claimed "The increasingly biased media will threaten the U.S." since "independence" of Rather's self-admiring sort is in short supply. Who keeps letting Rather "inspire" journalism students? It's like inviting Bernie Madoff…

It appears NBC's Matt Lauer is not happy about Barack Obama's failure to exploit the Tucson shooting to push for more gun control as on Wednesday's Today show, he seemingly expressed disappointment to former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani that the President "missed" an "opportunity" to address it in his State of the Union speech. Lauer's anti-gun question to Giuliani came on the heels of…

David Gergen not surprisingly believes that increased federal spending on education - or "investments" as Democrats like to say - is essential irrespective of our nation's current fiscal crisis. On "Anderson Cooper 360" following the President's State of the Union address, former Bush press secretary Ari Fleischer did his darnedest to explain to the CNN senior political analyst that our…

During coverage of President Obama's State of the Union address Tuesday night, all three broadcast networks, CBS, NBC and ABC, managed to compare the tone of the speech to that of Ronald Reagan. Reporters and pundits uniformly praised the supposed optimism of Obama. [Audio available here] On CBS, Evening News anchor Katie Couric touted how political analyst Jeff Greenfield thought it was "…

ABC on Tuesday introduced Barack Obama with an opening that looked and sounded more like a movie trailer for an action film. As dramatic, pounding tones played throughout, an announcer began, "The State of our Union. We heard this, just two years ago." Then, images of the President, firework-style graphics and people crying appeared onscreen. A clip from 2008 showed Obama proclaiming, "…

In his January 26 article "MSNBC's Sarah Palin Sickness," Hollywood Reporter's Paul Bond tackled the left-lurching network's obsession with the former Alaska governor. "MSNBC’S dependence on Palin was best displayed with the recent shootings in Tucson that left six people dead and Arizona Rep. Gabrielle Giffords critically wounded. MSNBC was crucial in driving the narrative that the killer…