MS NOW (formerly MSNBC)

Lynn Sweet wants the Obama team to come clean over its contacts with Blago.  David Shuster has a different concern.  He's hoping the media won't get "adversarial" once the Obama folks get around to releasing their report about who said what to whom.Shuster made his pre-emptive plea for good media manners on this evening's 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, the MSNBC show Shuster has recently begun hosting…

Surely no one would view Rev. Jeremiah Wright as closer to the centerpoint of American politics than Pastor Rick Warren, right? Wrong.  Here's Chris Matthews on this evening's Hardball.CHRIS MATTHEWS: It seems like Barack Obama, as much as seems to inspire people, including me, has a problem with pastors.  I don't know what it is. You get him hooked up with a pastor, whether it's Jeremiah Wright…

On Thursday’s Countdown show, MSNBC host Keith Olbermann disputed Vice President Cheney’s recent contention that history would likely judge the Bush administration more favorably than current approval rating numbers would suggest, as the MSNBC host distorted the results of a July 2007 Rasmussen poll to discredit Cheney’s claim that views of President Ford have softened up over the 30 years since…

During this week, NBC’s Tonight Show host Jay Leno took a couple of noteworthy jabs at the anti-Bush mainstream media in America, on Monday joking that the Iraqi journalist who threw his shoes at President Bush was "offered his own show on MSNBC," and on Tuesday quipping that "he was so anti-Bush, at first people just assumed he was an American journalist."By contrast, CBS’s Late Show host David…

Next time you find yourself in a room with Andrea Mitchell, be careful what thoughts you permit to cross your mind.  The NBC correspondent evidently has the ability to read them.  Defending Caroline Kennedy on today's Morning Joe, Mitchell stated as a fact that Kennedy's press-evading performance in upstate New York was due to her desire not to appear presumptuous.Continuing her advocacy,…

Rick Warren had a surprisingly candid response to Ann Curry's question as to whether he would change his views on homosexuality if it were established that people are born gay.  The pastor of the Saddleback Church, explaining why such a finding wouldn't cause him to change his position, observed that he is inclined to want to have sex with every beautiful woman he sees, but that that doesn't make…

In an attempt to play Main Street against Wall Street, Rachel Maddow mocked and criticized the rate at which Goldman Sachs was taxed this year. The MSNBC host of "The Rachel Maddow Show" lamented that the investment bank Goldman Sachs, which reported a $2.12 billion dollar loss for the fourth quarter ending Nov. 28, paid only 1 percent in taxes for the entire year during her Dec. 18 show. "Five…

What a difference an administration makes. During the Bush years, if a spokesman or the president himself attempted to dodge a tough question, the media would go into their Sam Donaldson impressions and pundits would see a conspiracy of silence.But now that it's Obama, the dodging that was once denounced is suddenly celebrated.  Thus, appearing on today's Morning Joe, Larry O'Donnell declared "…

It's said that to work, humor must contain a kernel of truth. No wonder David Letterman's effort to wring humor out of the shoe-throwing incident fell so flat. The Late Show host joked that Muntadhar al-Zeidi had been offered a show on . . . Fox News.  Letterman was playing off the report that al-Zeidi is reported to be hot-tempered and possess poor journalistic skills.How lame was Letterman?…

It's times like this that make me wonder whether I inhabit a universe different from that occupied by the MSM.  This morning, discussing Pres. Bush's reaction to the flying shoe incident, I wrote:Short of going full Ninja hero and snatching the shoes in mid-air, it's hard to see how Pres. Bush could have been any cooler in his handling of the Hush Puppy Hurler.But on MSNBC this afternoon, host…

Must have been that full moon. Or "fool full moon" as Rachel Maddow stumbled in referring to it.If the Newseum is accepting suggestions for exhibits, a possibility comes to mind -- the Pantheon of Unfortunate Punditry. First submission -- Maddow's hilarious revisionism of Herbert Hoover on her MSNBC show Friday. I've watched the segment several times, each time in awe at Maddow's supreme…

"Red Eye" host Greg Gutfeld marvelously blasted the insufferable Keith Olbermann Friday for his "homoerotic obsession with Bill O'Reilly."This deliciously came hours after the "Countdown" host bashed former Nixon administration figure Chuck Colson for having the nerve to speak out in favor of California's Proposition 8 which defined marriage as a union between one man and one woman.What really…

Though there's not a ruble's worth of difference between their politics, I normally find Rachel Maddow a kinder, gentler, smarter version of Keith Olbermann.  Not tonight.  Granted, the Countdown host was on hiatus.  But even if Olby had been around, he would have been hard-pressed to outdo Maddow for sheer silliness.The preposterous proposition Rachel propounded?  Republicans just don't want…

Which would be the safer place to be for a political figure who's received death threats?:a. A school concert in a public venue.b. A press conference in the company of the President-elect of the United States of America.If you answered 'b,' you're thinking like me and presumably most people. If you answered 'a,' you're A.B. Stoddard.  The associate editor of "The Hill" offered up the strange…