Chris Matthews, The Interviewer As Mugger

[Catchawave]

http://www.swans.com/library/art11/cmarow18.html

Chris Matthews, The Interviewer As Mugger
by Charles Marowitz

(Swans - May 23, 2005) The recent retirement of a batch of dominating TV anchors (Dan Rather, Ted Koppel, Tom Brokaw, etc.) is a convenient opportunity to consider the personalities of those men and women who regularly confront us at different hours of the day and night to keep us abreast of current events.

We know that in all cases they are simply spokespersons for producers, station owners and media moguls, but it is easy to assume that what they are telling us emanates from themselves rather than the corporations for whom they are front-men and women. We either invite or disinvite certain personalities into our homes via the TV screen and the basis for those choices are as personal as the reasoning and instinct that goes into our choice of friends, lovers or colleagues. As much as we expect journalism to be objective, impersonal and fact-based, personality preferences cannot help but influence who we beam into our living rooms.

As for me, I find myself regularly rendezvousing with Keith Olbermann on CNBC's "Countdown" -- mainly because I know that no matter how grave the issues, a certain levity will always be there to lighten the mix. Too ponderous a dose of news can easily burden the spirit, and there is so much of that during the day that, in the evening, it is a wicked respite to commune with an anchorman who seems to recognize that behind every major national and international conflict, there is an inescapable element of the Absurd. Sometimes I feel guilty about those assignations because I know they are displaying in bright tints what should, by all rights, be conveyed in more somber tones. But Olbermann, who started life as a sportscaster, is articulate and consistently amiable to all of his guests and because he relaxes them, they open up to him and one usually gets the true dimensionality of both the people and the issues. These are still meager sound bites, a topographical rather than a close-up view of complex questions, but they don't, as a rule, stick in one's craw.

Bill O'Reilly on Fox is certainly the most odious, as he wears his right-wing prejudices on his arm as if they were a massive splint. One can always predict precisely on what side of any issue his reactionary indignation will be coming down and hence, being utterly predictable, he is irretrievably boring. His evil twin Sean Hannity, who, if he is not in the employ of the administration and the Republican National Committee is supplying his propaganda-services without due return, is so patently a stooge for the Extreme Right as to relinquish all claims to serious consideration. He is the raucous Abbott to his benighted Costello (Alan Colmes) and has elevated equivocation and mendacity into a fine-tuned art form. Like almost everything on the Fox channel, it desperately cries out for demolition which, as we all know, it will never get.

...more, much more...

[goclark]

1. Rove arranged their "retirements"

Bet the replacements will be more in keeping weith the Bush thoughts.

Remember Matt Lauer and Kitty Kelly interview.

He was doing a try out for Rove.

[Pacifist Patriot]

2. Can you imagine the likes of Roger Mudd or Walter Cronkite...

interviewing Brittney Spears or reporting on the Michael Jackson trial? It is that mental image which tells me how far we've fallen.

[bobbieinok]

6. or Edward R Murrow?????

[Cha]

3. As a mugger!

matty is so tough.

[Catchawave]

4. Should have highligted this paragraph:

As for me, I find myself regularly rendezvousing with Keith Olbermann on CNBC's "Countdown" -- mainly because I know that no matter how grave the issues, a certain levity will always be there to lighten the mix. Too ponderous a dose of news can easily burden the spirit, and there is so much of that during the day that, in the evening, it is a wicked respite to commune with an anchorman who seems to recognize that behind every major national and international conflict, there is an inescapable element of the Absurd. Sometimes I feel guilty about those assignations because I know they are displaying in bright tints what should, by all rights, be conveyed in more somber tones. But Olbermann, who started life as a sportscaster, is articulate and consistently amiable to all of his guests and because he relaxes them, they open up to him and one usually gets the true dimensionality of both the people and the issues. These are still meager sound bites, a topographical rather than a close-up view of complex questions, but they don't, as a rule, stick in one's craw.
========

Keith rules!

[goclark]

5. Keith and Jon Stewart rule nt

[Catchawave]

7. More than MSM knows....they (Olbermann/Stewart) DO rule....

...and it's up to us to watch their backs.

I'd like to take up a cause for Ron Reagan...he's being pussy whipped by Monica Crowly on Connected. <<snort>> I hate that.