Time’s TV blogger, James Poniewozik, on MSNBC’s inauguration day coverage:
Remember during the campaign, when MSNBC decided to pull Keith Olbermann and Chris Matthews from anchoring its coverage of political events? Remember when it seemed someone had realized that maybe it wasn’t the best journalistic idea to have straight-news coverage anchored by two hosts who so clearly had a dog in the fight?
Well, that decision has been suspended for the Inauguration, for which they, along with Rachel Maddow, will lead MSNBC’s coverage. MSNBC president Phil Griffin defended the decision, saying that Jan. 20 will be “a whole day of color commentary… a day of watching the festivities and pomp and circumstance.”
Or: a day on which MSNBC has decided it’s OK to relax and let its pro-Bama [sic!] freak flag fly. As if to confirm every “real vs. fake America stereotype” Sarah Palin and company perpetrated during the campaign, MSNBC’s inauguration coverage will even run in Starbucks in New York, San Francisco and Seattle. (Seriously: did David Brooks think up that promotion?) On one of its incessantly running Inauguration Day promos, a narrator gushes, “When a new President inspires the nation, one day Americans will ask: where were you when Barack Obama became President?”
Besides the confusing timeline of that sentence, there’s something almost bludgeoningly hortatory about it. Mind you, I voted for Barack Obama enthusiastically, in the primaries and the general election–and yet hearing stuff like this (Obama = The Moon Landing) I can empathize with the people who didn’t.
The rest here.