Wednesday, August 31, 2011
The TV Watch: Sharpton Brings His Pulpit to MSNBC
The Rev. Al Sharpton began his new career as an official MSNBC talk show host on Monday by telling viewers not to expect James Brown.
“I’m not going to be a robotic host reading the teleprompter like a robot,” he said. “Nor am I going to come in here and do the James Brown and do the ‘electric slide’ to prove to you that I’m not stiff,” he added, waving his arms in a rough approximation of a dance move. “I’m going to say what I mean and mean what I say.”
And that may be the problem with Mr. Sharpton’s cable news pulpit: what he means to say is in lockstep with every other MSNBC evening program, making the stretch between 6 p.m. and 11 p.m. a nonstop lecture on liberal values and what is wrong with the Republican Party.
MSNBC long ago cast itself as the liberal counterpoint to Fox News. Its star muckraker, Keith Olbermann, left MSNBC and took his show to Current TV in June, but other progressive hosts, particularly Rachel Maddow, have continued to attract viewers — not nearly as many as routinely watch Fox News, but more than for less partisan shows on CNN. MSNBC, which found success by preaching to the converted, has now hired an actual preacher.
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And in the evening at least, MSNBC is less a news provider than a carousel of liberal opinion — potential conflicts of interest are swept aside in the swirl of excitable guests.
Unfortunately, so is conflict. There is almost no real debate on any of these evening shows: a conservative is brought on and put on the spot, then in a different segment two people who agree with the host on a given issue answer the host’s questions, usually, with words like “you’re so right.”
Full article: http://artsbeat.blog … tw-nytimes&seid=auto
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