“NBC Flees from Lefty MSNBC Cable Network,” Emily Miller writes at Human Events:
The niche audience which Griffin is targeting is the small number of Americans who identify themselves as liberals. He is unabashed in describing his audience as East Coast, blue state, urban, elite.
Griffin said that the “Lean Forward” campaign targets “the entire East Coast corridor, where we know we have a large audience.” He said you’ll see the “Lean Forward” ads “at Grand Central Station… Penn Station, Philadelphia…in Washington because we know that’s a really important corridor.”
MSNBC isn’t even attempting to advertise outside of the insular world in which its anchors and producers live themselves. Basically, if you live anywhere outside of the D.C. to NYC corridor, MSNBC doesn’t expect you to watch.
However, the president of MSNBC.com is not happy with the limited audience targeted by the cable TV outlet. Tillinghast wrote that the “Lean Forward” campaign “only exacerbates the brand misalignment problem” and leaves the website an “impartial news product.”
“Fox is obviously more right of center but no one is running from the Fox name,” says a network insider of the MSNBC brand-name hot potato.
“It’s just so funny that MSNBC is now tainted. It’s the danger of picking a direction like that.”
And what sort of direction would that be?
Sounding more like “male chauvinist pig” Norman Mailer circa 1969 than a “progressive” broadcaster in 2009, MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann once called conservative author Michelle Malkin “a big mashed-up bag of meat with lipstick on it.”
Media Matters, the “watchdog” group that constantly calls for the heads of Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh for making imaginary offensive statements, were silent on Olbermann’s outburst, which sounded like something you’d read in Ted Bundy’s diary.
NewsReal’s own Jenn Q. Public wrote the definitive reflection on this incident, which includes Malkin’s exquisite reply to Olbermann’s serial killer stylings:
In case you were wondering what kind of lipstick we big mashed up bags of meat wear, I prefer M.A.C. Lustreglass in Ornamental or Lipglass in Spite. Because nothing goes better with fascistic hatred!
Malkin’s response is a textbook example of how women can respond to these irrational attacks, the likes of which are a job hazard for female conservatives.
Fortunately, Olbermann’s just a rogue anchor at MSNBC, right?
No, of course not! Or as Jim Treacher writes, “Lawrence O’Donnell congratulates self for apologizing for being a racist:”
The other night, MSNBC’s Lawrence O’Donnell said this:
“As the first congressional election during his party chairmanship approaches, Michael Steele is dancing as fast as he can trying to charm independent voters and Tea Partiers while never losing sight of his real master and paycheck provider, the Republican National Committee.”
Anybody with a lick of common sense could’ve told him how racist this is, which must be why nobody at MSNBC stopped him.
The once well-respected brand names of General Electric and NBC, and the never as well-respected but once politically neutral brand name of Microsoft must all be proud of the petty little hate machine that they’ve engineered.
(Bumped to top; earlier parodies of MSNBC’s stillborn new ad campaign can be found here.)
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