I had meant to show this clip from Up With Chris last week and somehow forgot. I was reminded of it when I reviewed the show this morning over coffee. His take on the Supercommittee says it all:
This is why I like Hayes so much. He completely rejects the conventional wisdom but ably synthesizes our ongoing conversation on the left into a form that works on TV without sounding ... how shall I say it ... threatening. There is much to be learned from young liberal pundits about how to talk about these ideas.
Contrast what you just heard with this, and you'll see what I mean.
It's true that young Russert isn't supposed to be a pundit, but he sure sounds like one --- Cokie Roberts. Or his late father. Or Gloria Borger or David Gergen or any other Villager who constantly pounds home this message that the people are wrong and the elites are right and the only problem is that damned democracy standing in the way of the "tough medicine" that privileged celebrities like this prince of nepotism all agree must be swallowed by the polloi.
MSNBC is a becoming a funny sort of network. It truly is balanced between the Village insiders like Russert, Matthews and Andrea Mitchell, who can all be counted upon to carry the stale beltway CW and the upstarts like Maddow, Ratigan and Hayes who are lefty iconoclasts. It isn't conservative but it is certainly not a Democratic Party house organ like Fox.