We give a hymn when someone important passes by. But MSNBC is dying, and that calls for a different kind of tribute. MSNBC is undergoing what marketers call a rebranding process as the outlet changes a few initials and becomes MS NOW on November 15. It looks like a gender transition, and it costs them $20 million, according to The New York Times, but their brand of left-wing madness isn’t going away. Anchor Rachel Maddow told the crowd, “We’re not going anywhere and we’re not changing anything other than our name.”
That’s the claim, even as they try to wrap themselves in patriotism in their first rebranding commercial, the very one that introduced Maddow. It shows her reading the preamble to the Constitution as if she were doing a propaganda version of “Schoolhouse Rock.” As Maddow read each word, images flashed by, many of them protesters, some masked, all interspersed with clips of the MS NOW team.
The Times quoted future MS NOW (stands for: “My Source for News, Opinion and the World”) network president Rebecca Kutler, who said some hopeful/changeable things: “When I look at the ads, I feel all the feelings of hope, of community, of unity, of what I think about what it means to be an American citizen right now.” And if that’s not enough left-wing nonsense, they’re even planning an ad featuring so-called President Martin Sheen, who played President Jed Bartlet on “The West Wing.”
MSNBC STAFF DIVISION OVER NEW NAME BUT ‘CAUTIONALLY OPTIMISTIC’ ABOUT LIBERAL NETWORK’S POST-NBC FUTURE
With that said, the network turns 30 next year, fully embracing the midlife crisis. Let’s think about what MSNBC has been: a network dedicated to hating the right. Hitler comparisons with Trump, claims of dictatorship and a mountain of terrible things that this column barely touches on. We’re talking about the network of Keith Olbermann, Joy Reid, Jim Acosta and more. This is where disgraced NBC anchor Brian Williams was sent after admitting he lied about coming under sniper fire, a sort of mini-Siberia.
No list of the many insane things the network has done in those nearly thirty years of television could ever do it justice. So here are five special moments that I couldn’t forget.
1. Hunka hunka Obama love: There was an almost infinite amount of love in the press for the first candidate and then for President Barack Obama. But MSNBC host Chris Matthews had the quote that defined the entire presidency. Discussing Obama’s speech, he told viewers, “I felt the tension go through my leg. I mean, I don’t get that very often.”
That “sensation in my leg” perfectly summed up the love journalists gave to the first black president. The news channels were filled with photos carefully taken to show Obama with his head in front of light sources to give him a halo effect. The “sensation” quote was the verbal version of that love affair. The quote followed Matthews for years and was quoted as if it came from “Blazing Saddles” or perhaps “Network.”
2. How can we forget Keith Olbermann?: Okay, we tried, but he was a good indication of how bad MS THEN was as host of “Countdown with Keith Olbermann.” He was known for his cruelty towards his enemies, which included about half the nation. A memorable punch from Scott Brown even offended people on the network.
But that wasn’t his worst. That happened during an attack on talk radio icon Rush Limbaugh on April 19, 2010. He blamed “talk radio” for the Oklahoma City bombing, “specifically Rush Limbaugh hate radio.” He continued, “Honestly, Rush, you’ve got that blood on your hands now, and you’ve had it for fifteen years.” He declared him the ‘Worst Person in the World’, a device in which he chose three people on each broadcast. (Unfortunately, I only came third in my performance.) Years later, Rush is known as one of the great Americans. Olbermann is better known for a Ben Affleck impersonation of his, one of the great moments of “Saturday Night Live.”
3. And then there’s “Morning Joe”: Just as the hot leg comment defined the Obama era, Joe Scarborough, the host of “Morning Joe,” served up the garbage that defined the Biden presidency. We had a president who people knew was incapable of speaking coherently and incapable of governing the country. We’ve all seen it. Biden held an embarrassing press conference in February and was fond of saying he had spoken to foreign leaders who had already died.
None of that mattered to Scarborough. It wasn’t long after that when he defended Biden. On “Morning Joe” in March 2024, Scarborough said of Biden, “I’ve been saying it for years, he’s compelling. But I underestimated when I said he was convincing, he is much more than convincing. In fact, I think he’s better than he’s ever been, intellectually and analytically, because he’s been around for 50 years.”
Then he put the icing on the cake: “Start your tape right now, because I’m going to tell you the truth. And you, if you can’t handle the truth. This version of Biden is intellectually and analytically the best Biden ever.” He eventually apologized, but the damage to his reputation was great.
4. Hating Charlie Kirk: It’s hard to count the number of horrible things the left and the media are saying about the death of Charlie Kirk, co-founder of Turning Point USA. One was so bad it cost an MSNBC employee his job. The network fired political analyst Matthew Dowd for his comments about Kirk. Dowd, a rhetorical bomber, said Kirk “has been one of the most divisive, especially divisive younger figures in this world, constantly encouraging this kind of hate speech or targeting certain groups. And I always go back to: hateful thoughts lead to hateful words, which then lead to hateful actions.”
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It was so terrible that Kutler had to apologize: If you lost MSNBC…
5. Then there’s Joy Reid: I had considered making the column all about her, but there was too much else. Reid, who also let go of MSNBC, compared the “American evangelical right-wing movement” to “an American Taliban.” She said she didn’t want to go out on the Fourth of July because America is “awash in guns” and has ruined the “myth” of Thanksgiving.
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But she outdid herself in 2024 by comparing Trump to crazy cult leaders. “What Donald Trump is doing is an equivalent force of positive thinking, which is the church, to the extent that it’s the church he grew up in, but it’s also a kind of David Koresh. It’s a kind of Jim Jones. Because those two men started by saying, ‘You’ve got to come to Jesus.’ They started out as Christian evangelizers. But ultimately their evangelism said, “No, I’m getting your wife. No actually, I have to tell you to kill these federal agents standing outside. I’m asking you to get a machine gun and shoot them because I don’t want to go to jail.'” She added by comparing him to Charles Manson.
Boy, MSNBC, we’re not going to miss you, except for the comic relief. And that’s why we have MS NOW.
