MSNBC's Chump Change

Let me preface this scathing review of MSNBC's Massachusetts Senate election coverage with this:  recall this week how new Obama comm dir Dan Pfeiffer parroted the Anita Dunn line that Fox News isn't a real news organization because it has a "point of view."

Now comes Miami Herald's Glenn Garvin with this stunning rebuke and vid to back it up:

Watching coverage of the Massachusetts senatorial election Tuesday night, I wondered if MSNBC was getting ready to cut off its cable signal to the state. Keith Olbermann and Rachel Maddow, positively enraged that Massachusetts dared to elect a Republican, delivered two hours of nonstop bilious rage toward the state's voters, calling them "irrational" and "teabaggers," engaged in "a total divorce from reality," and hinting that they're vicious racists to boot.

It may be too much to expect NBC, these days reduced to a national wisecrack, to be embarrassed over the frothing lunacy that passes for news coverage at corporate stepchild MSNBC. But both networks are part of the same news division. If news boss Steve Capus thinks his reporters can continue to appear with Olbermann and Maddow without suffering credibility contamination, he's dumber than whoever was behind the Leno/O'Brien late-night shuffle.

The bigger picture, in my view, is  liberalism is dead.  MSNBC's "point of view" harangues will reach fewer viewers.  Scott Brown's election effectively rendered MSNBC impotent.  Both Keith Olbermann and Rachel Maddow found themselves figuratively castrated Tuesday night.  Or put it this way, MSNBC's election coverage was nothing more than a primal scream. 

Within hours of Brown's election, Barack Obama ripped off his Hart Shaffner & Marx custom suit and wrapped himself in a false cloak of populism.   Don't expect MSNBC to follow suit.