•••The Phil Griffin (who fired Keith) gratitude thread. Stop the candlelight vigil at Rock Ctr!•••

breadandwine

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Sat Nov-06-10 10:53 PM
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•••The Phil Griffin (who fired Keith) gratitude thread. Stop the candlelight vigil at Rock Ctr!•••

Now that MSNBC's Phil Griffin just fired Keith Olbermann, it is time to weigh in with our appreciation for Phil Griffin. I'll start here:

Dear Phil,

To begin with, Phil, while some people might buy a couple of shares of your parent company's stock so they could crash your stockholders meeting (as Naderites used to do) and demand a vote to fire you, rest assured that as far as I am concerned, you should keep your job.

Peters and Waterman wrote in their celebrated book, "In Search of Excellence," that a key factor in the success of a company is its determination to "stick to the knitting" - the business the company knows best. If a company is in the business of making wooden furniture it shouldn't suddenly divert its focus and start making plastic laminates.

In your case, Phil, you are in the business of providing an alternative to FOX.

But forget that. Try to become just like FOX.

Phil, Harry Truman once said, "If you run a Republican against a Republican, the Republican will win every time." In our context, if you run a Republican TV network against a Republican TV network, the Republican TV network will win every time. One could argue that if you try to be like FOX your network will lose its nitch, become an irrelevant wannabee and get steamrolled and driven out of business by FOX. Why should people watch FOX lite when they can watch the real thing?

But don't worry about that.

You have put immediate gratification for money for five minutes ahead of winning. After all. By firing Olbermann you might be able to butter up a right wing advertiser for five minutes before they go back to the real thing - FOX. And Machiavelli said in "The Prince," chapter 14, "When princes think more of luxury than of arms, they lose their state." But don't bother ensuring that your station is a progressive, crusading, courageous, fighting alternative to FOX that viewers so love. Forget about that. Instead, enjoy your yacht. Have some more caviar. After all, with all the fish in the sea dying, the price of caviar is bound to go up. Besides. If those pesky libruls start calling up advertisers demanding they stop advertising on MSNBC, not one of those advertisers (some of whom are publicity averse) will probably drop your station for DAYS to come. SO DON'T WORRY.

Fact is, Phil, in between your perusing the want ads and sending your resume over to FOX, you're doing a smashing job.

Now, I know that there will be calls for your firing or resignation, even from stockholders. Don't listen to them.

You need to be ruining everything that made MSNBC loved by its viewers. Keep in mind that nothing energizes the public more than hatred for those in power. For the last two years Obama has been in power, energizing the right wing. But now, with the GOP jihadist takeover of Congress, it will energize the Democratic base, offering a fertile ground for enthusiastic support for progressive television.

But don't think about that. It's really unseemly for you to be a profit maximizer. You need to sh*t on the viewers and go out of business.

Now, Phil, you do not need to worry about protests or a candlelight vigil at MSNBC studios at Rockefeller Center demanding your resignation and reinstatement of Keith. Don't worry about that. Who's going to protest against you in the largest city in the United States, a leading progressive center, with 8 million people in the largest metropolitan area of the country, the tri-state metropolitan area where 19 million people live, most of them liberals, all living a stone's throw from Rockefeller Center, a city with the most extensive subway system in the world with 468 subway stations with 842 miles of track and over 1.579 billion rides annually and a vast bus system so even the poorest person who doesn't have a car can get anywhere, even from Staten Island which connects to the subway system via the Staten Island Ferry which is now FREE OF CHARGE. Just walk right on the Ferry. A subway ride itself costs only $2.25 to and from ANYWHERE IN THE CITY, the largest city in America, but a guy like you doesn't need to worry about that in your LIMO, Phil. Rockefeller Center actually has its very own subway station, "47-50 Sts/Rockefeller Ctr" which can be seen on every NY subway map, a map available for free in every station, a map that is also online and thus available to millions of visitors from out of town, and the Rockefeller Center station is accessible to any subway rider from anywhere in the city by transferring underground for FREE to the B, D, F or V lines all of which stop there, and also Rockefeller Center is walking distance from the huge central subway hubs of the subway stations of Times Square and Grand Central Station in midtown.

In fact, DON'T WORRY, Phil, because there are only 19 million people in the greater New York City Tri-State Metropolitan Area, most of whom work in the city and are entirely familiar with how to get to Rockefeller Center, smack dab in the middle of the city, 19 million mostly progressive people, EVERY SINGLE ONE OF WHOM CAN GET TO YOU, Phil, for peanuts, in fact, without even missing a day of work by coming to a nightly candlelight vigil on their way home on the subway, thanks to the best transportation network/infrastructure in the Western Hemisphere. Those lousy socialist New York librul urban planners. . . .

Who cares, Phil?! Keep driving MSNBC into the ground.

Again, remember, Phil. If you run a Republican network against a Republican network, the Republican network will win every time. So continue me-tooing FOX. That's really gonna work.

Gratefully,

Rupert Murdoch