Howard Kurtz of The Washington Post reports, you decide. It's quite an interesting tale that Kurtz tells, detailing how MSNBC has deliberately avoided using Tucker Carlson and Mike Murphy because of their right-of-center views. Why? Because, as MSNBC chief Phil Griffin told a staffer, "our audience hates [George W.] Bush." And so any sort of conservative presence would drive the audience away.
(Although maybe Carlson is getting a bad rap here. After all, he has made a career out of being the useful-idiot "conservative" that liberals most want to see and hear, because he reliably damns Republicans with faint praise and equally reliably says something nice about the Democrats, allowing Dems to begin sentences with "Even the conservative Tucker Carlson admits..." But if even Carlson is verboten in Olbermann's MSNBC, then geez, they must really being going left.)
Olbermann defended his network to Kurtz, citing the omnipresence of the highly opinionated Pat Buchanan on MSNBC. But of course, Buchanan, too, hates Bush and the neoconservatives who dominate the Bush administration and the McCain campaign--albeit for somewhat different reasons than the Moveon-ers and Kos-sacks who have taken over MSNBC. Still Buchanan and his paymasters at MSNBC are objective allies--they hate the same people.
Griffin gamely attempted to defend MSNBCers Keith Olbermann and Chris Matthews as "neutral," but Kurtz shot that down. How? By quoting them:
On his "Countdown" program, which almost never includes conservative guests, Olbermann has told President Bush to "shut the hell up," urged McCain to "grow up," and mocked the Arizona senator with such headlines as "McSame" and "Double Talk Express." ...
After Hillary Clinton spoke, Olbermann said: "Grand slam, out of the ballpark, across the street." And after Obama's acceptance speech, Olbermann said: "Not a sour note and spellbinding throughout."
Interestingly, for all these craven efforts at seducing an audience by traducing what's left of NBC News' reputation, MSNBC is still mired, as Kurtz notes, deep in third place.
Still it's hard not to admire MSNBC for stiffing Carlson.
