SteveSilver.net

There's a Cancer on MSNBC- And It's Growing

Anyone catch Keith Olbermann's tribute to Peter Jennings the other night, when the MSNBC anchor shared the tale of his own cancer scare a few weeks earlier? The graphic description of having spit up blood in MSNBC's newsroom reportedly drew the ire of network president Rick Kaplan, who immediately rushed onto the set and yelled at Olbermann.

Kaplan's concern? That Olbermann's monologue would draw viewers away from the debut of the new talk show hosted by former Fox News reporter Rita Cosby, the woman who -with her hours and hours of interviews with inconsequential hangers-on of the Chandra Levy and Laci Peterson cases- has done more than anyone else to steer cable news towards the celebration of young-gals-in-peril.

If Olbermann gets fired, expect MSNBC to replace him with yet another conservative-leaning mediocrity, to go along with Cosby, Joe Scarborough, and Tucker Carlson. Hey, I hear Bob Novak is free these days...

And speaking of the third-place network, this amusing bit appeared in The New Republic last week:

Conservative complaints about the liberal media die hard, and now Accuracy in Media (AIM), a group whose raison d'être is to make such complaints, is targeting MSNBC. AIM's beef? Carlson and Scarborough are being muzzled! "Shows featuring conservative hosts like Carlson and Scarborough seem designed to prevent them from speaking to issues of concern to conservatives," AIM editor Cliff Kincaid griped this week. Kincaid pointed out that Carlson is sometimes joined on his show by liberal guests--one of whom "is a lesbian with hair so short that she looks like a man"--while Scarborough "has been endlessly covering missing-person cases." Poor MSNBC. Sometimes joining 'em doesn't even work.

For the record, I'm much less offended by Tucker's short-haired sidekick (Rachel Maddow) then I am by the inexplicable inclusion on the show of former "Around the Horn" loudmouth Max Kellerman.

Posted by Stephen Silver at August 10, 2005 03:38 PM