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he NY Times, in its frequent role of blind cheerleader to the left, called MSNBC’s radical swing into the depths of blatantly liberal broadcasting “bold,” and back when he decided to move Keith Olbermann and Chris Matthews to MSNBC’s news chairs, MSNBC president Phil Griffin said “I see no problem” arising from his decision.

But the experiment is over, and it’s generating a lot of words this a.m., with a total of well over 50 news articles and blog posts already showing up at memeorandum.

Before this weekend’s shakeup, while he was still In Denver where Olbermann’s on-camera temper tantrums (here, here, here, here – a lot of tantrums!) attracted much attention, Griffin donned the blinders and told Politico:

“MSNBCdoes not have an ideology. We hire smart people who are passionate about their love of politics and love of news.”

He seems to have forgotten that according to one Phil Griffin [familiar name], MSNBC does have a powerful liberal bias. As he told the NYT last year:

Officials at MSNBC emphasize that they never set out to create a liberal version of Fox News.

“It happened naturally,” Phil Griffin, a senior vice president of NBC News who is the executive in charge of MSNBC, said Friday, referring specifically to the channel’s passion and point of view from 7 to 10 p.m. “There isn’t a dogma we’re putting through. There is a ‘Go for it.’” [...]

But now it has no ideology? Is it just dogma? Going for it? Whatever, we now understand that it was “squabbles” that led to the reassignment of Olbermann and Matthews … even though Matthews wasn’t squabbling.

Announcing the shift today, the NYTimes, bless ‘em, never really comes out and says Olbermann and Matthews are lefties, even though it had carried Griffin’s quote a year earlier. But the network’s media bias is as hard to ignore as GOP delegates chanting “NBC! NBC!” when Sarah Palin talked about media bias.

The question of bias, though, becomes moot when one looks at the convention ratings – and convention ratings are the holy grail of network competition. Despite the change – or more likely because of it – MSNBC remained a distant, distant third in cable convention viewership.

While the liberal swing has helped pick MSNBC’s ratings from the gutter to the curb, it is apparent that Griffin had misunderstood Fox’s formula for success. Fox has become adept at letting its guests broaden the debate and gives them plenty of time to be partisan spokespersons for their cause. The anchors perform the function of giving the guests plenty of line, then jerking them in when they’ve gone too far. The most  hardcore conservative of the hosts, Sean Hannity, is balanced by liberal goofball Alan Colmes.

At MSNBC, Olbermann particularly but Matthews too were running and running without with the line without any counterweight until today, when Griffin decided the “bold” experiment had to end.

Ironically, it ended on the day that former Air America host Rachel Maddow is handed an anchor chair by MSNBC. The station is not done being in the tank for Obama, and its effort to carve out a position as a left-wing network isn’t over. Griffin and company have merely decided that until the election is over, ranting Olbermann and leg-tingling Matthews aren’t going anywhere near an anchor chair.

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he NY Times would have a big problem on its hands … if anyone watched MSNBC.

On yesterday’s Morning Joe show, the NYT’s star op-ed writer and Obama devotee Bob Herbert showed just how far off the deep end he has gone – to the point where all perspective and clear-headedness is gone. Now we normally would want perspective and clear-headedness from a major national columnist, but the NYT is going to ask itself: Is he us or is he bonkers? (I think the answer is “us.”)

Here’s the passage:

You guys have seen the ad a number of times I am sure, and I know you have it here in-house. First thing you see are a couple images of Britney Spears and Paris Hilton, right? [Wrong - Obama comes up first.] And we see an image of Barack Obama right after that. It comes quickly, right at the beginning of the ad, right?

Do you remember any other startling images right there at the beginning?

All right. There is an image right there at the very beginning of the Leaning Tower of Pisa and there is an image of the Washington Monument.

You look at the beginning of that ad again, and you tell me why those two phallic symbols are placed right there – POW! – right at the beginning of that ad. I really wish someone would answer the question, I think it’s really important. Why are these two phallic symbols in this ad run against Barack Obama, right after we see the images of Britney Spears and Paris Hilton?

See the whole clip here.

The images, of course, are of the the Victory Column in Berlin’s Tiergarten Park, which dominated the background of the Obama rally.

Whoa! Wait a minute! Is that a white chick on top of that phallic symbol? Stop the presses!!!

Either Herbert is blinded by GOP-hatred and Obama-love and is interjecting symbolism without rhyme or reason, or he spent no time watching the ad he has campaigned written so passionately about. Neither alternative is satisfactory for the writer of a prominent national column … at least it hasn’t been since the death of Hunter Thompson. Columnists like Herbert are supposed to be more studied and careful, heck, more rational and less prone to hallucinations than this.

The NYT and Herbert have a real problem on their hands. Will they even acknowledge this farcical yet insightful error? Will there be a terse correction or a Herbert column in which he attempts to explain or justify this truly condemning error? Will the thing pass as if it never was said?

Any option is unpleasant. My recommendation: Time to fire Bob Herbert, or at least put him on leave for a month or two so he can get the help he needs. My guess: The NYT and Herbert will both blow it off.

hat-tip: NewsBusters

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he only way you can make John McCain’s campaign the racists in the recent Britney/Paris ad flap is by being racists. And the NY Times editorial board pulled out all the stops this a.m. to prove the point. Writing about the ad, it said:

The ad gave us an uneasy feeling that the McCain campaign was starting up the same sort of racially tinged attack on Mr. Obama that Republican operatives ran against Harold Ford, a black candidate for Senate in Tennessee in 2006. That assault, too, began with videos juxtaposing Mr. Ford with young, white women.

Mr. Obama called Mr. McCain on the ploy, saying, quite rightly, that the Republicans are trying to scare voters by pointing out that he “doesn’t look like all those other Presidents on those dollar bills.’’

But Rick Davis, Mr. McCain’s campaign manager, had a snappy answer. “Barack Obama has played the race card, and he played it from the bottom of the deck,” he said. “It’s divisive, negative, shameful and wrong.’’

The retort was, we must say, not only contemptible, but shrewd. It puts the sin for the racial attack not on those who made it, but on the victim of the attack.

So the first test is “does the ad put black and white people together,” or specifically black men and white women? Sort of like Heidi Klum and Seal, who we regularly see on those racist programs Entertainment Tonight and Access Hollywood.

Well, the imagery was just a bit different from what I’m showing here. Say out loud, “He’s the biggest celebrity in the world.” That was how long it took the McCain ad to dispense with the images of Obama, Britney and Paris. We see Obama walking onto the stage in Berlin as “He’s” is said, then Brittney flashes by with “the biggest” and Paris with “celebrity,” then back to a waving Obama in Berlin for “in the world.”

The intent was clear: To show that like other famous headline-grabbers, Obama knows how to dazzle an adoring public. Putting him with Britney and Paris was inspired: They are the ultimate paparazzi fodder; they play well to the cameras. The intent of the Harold Ford ad was quite different: To remind voters that Ford had partied at the Playboy mansion, along with some other accusations: He takes money from pornographers, he’s anti-gun, he’s pro-tax.

Watch them both and see if you get “an uneasy feeling that the McCain campaign was starting up the same sort of racially tinged attack on Mr. Obama that Republican operatives ran against Harold Ford, a black candidate for Senate in Tennessee in 2006.” First, the Ford ad:

Cheesy and worthy of contempt, for sure. Now let’s turn to the scary black man is gonna rape your wimmin McCain ad:

Sorry, but who are the racists here? Who’s seeing racial overtones and is being judgmental about it? Certainly not the McCain camp.

Next, the NYT says Obama called McCain on the ad “quite rightly.” You’ve heard the quite rightly quote:

“They’re going to try to say that I’m a risky guy, they’re going to try to say, ‘Well, you know, he’s got a funny name, and he doesn’t look like all the presidents on the dollar bills and the five dollar bills,’ and they’re going to send out nasty e -mails. And the latest one they got me in an ad with Paris Hilton. You know, never met the woman. But, you know, what they’re going to try to argue is that somehow I’m too risky.”

“Risky” is a substitute for “black,” which Obama used earlier in the dollar bill comparison, but dropped because it is too obviously race-baiting. Obama raised race by saying the GOP was making a point that he’s black, and different, and you know, black. But all McCain played was the celebrity card; there was no race card in sight, so Obama had to manufacture it. The only ones who are buying it are the racists who are always seeing the world in racially charged black and white.

The snip I pulled from the editorial ends by quoting McCain’s campaign manager saying Obama dealt the race card, then calling the McCain camp “contemptible” and “shrewd” for “putting the sin of the attack” on the victim, Obama, not on McCain himself.

What sin of the attack? Showing three celebrities together? Why is that contemptible? Here’s the test: If the McCain ad had shown Beyonce and Halle Barry with Obama instead of Brittney and Paris, we wouldn’t be talking about NYT editorials here today. Lesson: It’s OK to show blacks together, but it’s race-baiting to show blacks and whites together.

I said when the Obama campaign first started getting traction that it would become impossible to criticize him in any way without being called racist. The Times proved me right today, by proving that they are the most contemptible sort of racists themselves.

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