Fairly Unbalanced: Those smart-ass policy wonks at MSNBC

[DeepModem Mom]

GQ: FAIRLY UNBALANCED
The only real winner in the endless Democratic primary? Those smart-ass policy wonks at MSNBC. Tom Carson straps himself to a barcalounger for days of infuriating coverage from the hottest political team on TV

....Here’s an inconvenient truth, Keith (Olbermann): You should be rooting for John McCain. Across the spectrum, openly partisan news coverage does the most good and has the most pizzazz when it’s at odds with power....

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As of now... — and just as O’Reilly and not Brit Hume became the face of Fox — it’s Keith who personifies the network, reducing (Chris) Matthews to the status of court jester even when they’re sharing the big desk. That’s partly because Matthews is unmistakably life-size even at his most bombastic, but Olbermann has grasped the O’Reilly formula for adversarial cable news: It lets court jesters act like kings. Chris opposed Iraq from the start, but lefties went right on thinking of him as a D.C. yahoo. By contrast, when Olbermann started coming on as Bush’s alternately chortling and sulfuric nemesis, liberals were thrilled. For brainy flair and dieting skills, he sure beat Michael Moore, and what he was saying needed to be said, and then some. But Countdown’s host is one Democratic victory away from turning as insufferable — and compromised — as his right-wing counterparts....

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No matter how often (Matthews's) mouth gets him in trouble, he’s still better at off-the-cuff zingers than Olbermann, who needs scripted diatribes to make his orotund delivery effective. By contrast, Chris is most eloquent when his buzzing, unreflective mind flicks out something that’s both perceptive and so tactless a second’s forethought would have muted it. One classic I’m surprised didn’t become notorious occurred when the Jeremiah Wright ruckus was at its height: Out of nowhere, Matthews blurted that Americans saw Obama and his pastor as Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Not unreasonably, his interlocutor tried to protest that Jekyll and Hyde were the same man—but that was the whole point, and you can’t deny Chris knows white Americans. Nor could much top his wondrous rundown of the flaws in Obama’s persona the night of the Pennsylvania primary: “It is too debonair, it’s too Fred Astaire, it’s too ‘Kumbaya.’”

His zest for politics for its own sake is what Olbermann is allergic to. Despite his affected ebullience, he can’t understand just loving the roller coaster, even though Matthews is giving him an encyclopedia’s worth of lessons in how political creatures digest reality. That’s why the tension when they co-anchor MSNBC is snooty on Keith’s side but plaintive on Chris’s. Matthews is never more of a Dickens urchin than when Olbermann, the outsider but the bigger star, pulls rank and reproves him.

All the same, between Countdown’s host and Hardball’s, I know who I’m rooting for to end up as the tortoise to the other one’s hare. While Keith is out to rescue a nation in peril, Chris just wants the game to go on and on. Yet Olbermann’s act is likely to turn fatuous or worse once the nation is either no longer in peril or in peril at the hands of someone he applauds, and make no mistake: The guy who just wants the game to go on and on truly loves democracy. So what if he loves it because democracy’s got big boobs — him included? Matthews passes the Dan Rather test: No matter how we mock him and how often he deserves it, we’ll miss him when he’s gone.

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