The news broke this past week that Cenk Uygur was going the way of Keith Olbermann, at least insofar as being shown the door at MSNBC. Al Sharpton is now on in Uygur's 6 pm hour, and is said to be Uygur's likely permanent replacement.
I like Sharpton, but am once again dismayed at the short shrift MSNBC gives to its hard-working, passionate anchors. Uygur, though sharing a strong progressive perspective with Olbermann (which I generally share as well) actually ran a show which had little in common with Countdown on MSNBC. Uygur happily interrogated Republicans (Olbermann by and large only had guests who agreed with him) and dished out plainspoken logic in contrast to Olbermann's often florid hyperbole.
But what both also had in common was a stubborn, refreshing insistence on calling events and issues as they see them, including criticizing the President, even though he's obviously part of the party the two usually support. And this, apparently, was too much too much for the frightened, shallow people who call the shots at MSNBC.
But that's ok. We now have Olbermann on Current TV, and Uygur will no doubt show up there or somewhere else, and if Current TV would only get itself into a few more cable lineups, there would be even less reason to watch MSNBC than there is now.
No comments:
Post a Comment