Working as a reporter for the election night coverage on Glenn Beck’s Insider Extreme webcast the other night, I spent five solid (and painful) hours tuned in to the cable network that uses the word Progressive so often that one expects Flo to pop in every hour with a cheerful quip about saving money on your car insurance.
Back to MSNBC’s live coverage of the midterm elections. I’m not certain on the exact definition of torture, but I know it when I sit through five hours of it. Yes, for five truly torturous hours I was unable to tune away from NBC’s failed experiment in the news channel biz. I did persist, making it all the way to midnight Eastern time when most of the significant races had been called. Chris Matthews, Keith Olbermann, Rachel Maddow, Lawrence O’Donnell, and Eugene Robinson were considerably less jubilant than two years ago when the 2008 elections offered a markedly different result. This broadcast initially had the tone of a wake as all assembled knew what was coming down the pike.
Here are the Top Five things I learned while being force-fed MSNBC’s election night coverage.
1. MSNBC – when faced with an overwhelming and inevitable sea change as was happening in the House does make changes to it’s tone. For example, the pejorative term TEA BAGGER was nowhere to be heard. After 18 months of overuse and trying to slap this insulting label on the representatives of this rising party of the people, it was gone. Maddow and Olbermann, the two biggest (ab)users of the derogatory phrase were probably loathe to use it as they now face at least two years of having to deal with Tea Party Senators and Congressional Representatives. It might be kind of difficult to seem reasonable when you are openly and vulgarly deriding those on whom you are reporting.
If you find it hard to believe that MSNBC called anyone by a nasty name, please revisit this clip.
lAcTMepFLhA2. It’s NOT historic. (yes it is) As the evening’s reality began to set in, the MSNBC Progressive Posse knew that this night was going to be as much fun as a five hour root canal sans anesthesia. And yet they were in denial. NBC’s network pundits were crunching the numbers from the exit polls and the early tabulations and declared that the GOP would likely end the night with 240+ seats in the House. An astounding change from 2008. But Olbermann would not accept this, he emphatically declared; “This is a big swing, but it is not HISTORIC, not historic!”
Keith… have you seen the front page of the New York Times website this morning?
3. Glam is in! I believe this also was a first for the network, but it was obvious that Rachel Maddow was wearing more makeup than Chris Matthews. (not an ad hominem attack, just an observation)
4. One Minnesota Mom Beats A Progressive Full House. Michelle Bachmann proved once again that she is quicker on her feet than a room full of overpaid, ratings-challenged, MSNBC hosts. The Congresswoman woman who faced and defeated one of the broadest attacks from a vindictive Pelosi machine that was so well funded reasonable minds wondered how Bachmann could win, proved her naysayers wrong. She did win, but more importantly, she won the hearts and minds of many during this live segment asking Tingles if “the thrill was not so tingly on his leg anymore.”
5. And finally, there is no Stockholm Syndrome. After being liberated from my MSNBC prison, I was concerned that I might feel separation pangs and crave Rach, Keith-O, Last Word Larry, Gene Gene the Progressive Machine Robinson, and the ubiquitous Tingles Matthews. I did not. I still don’t. In fact, actually I feel a pressing need to walk naked though a car wash in hopes of scrubbing all this supercilious snarkiness off of me. Sadly, I live in Manhattan and we don’t have car washes here. New Jersey, here I come!