Cable News Time - Part 1

When I decided to get my very own blog, this is one of the things I knew I wanted to do. I already said I watch way too much cable news, so for a couple of nights this week, I'll be watching cable news and keeping sort of a running commentary.

Before I start, let me say this. If you aren't watching the Glenn Beck show whenever you have time, you really should be. Now, some people will say you shouldn't watch Glenn, they'll say something like "he's a paranoid lunatic with, at best, a casual relationship with reality." Listen, if that doesn't sound like something you'd want to watch, you may be misusing your television machine.

Wednesday night I'll do the 8-10 block featuring the two largest heads on television, Keith Olbermann and Sean Hannity. But tonight, it's the 5PM hour. In the blue corner, the fightin irishman, the pride of Pennsylvania and quite possibly the loudest man on TV today, MSNBC's Chris Matthews. In the red corner, the mormon mauler, the self-described rodeo clown, Fox's Glenn Beck. The extra N stands for non-sequitur. Seriously, last week I was watching and Glenn was talking about SEIU and who would benefit from universal health care (spoiler alert: according to Glenn, it's definitely not the people who would get health care), I changed the channel for like 3 minutes. When I came back, Glenn was defending the 3/5 compromise because, according to him, it was the founding fathers' secret plan for ending slavery faster (and don't start with me about this, I know what he was saying, but if you're starting a new country and you have slaves, and your best idea for what to do about it is to count them as 60% of a person so that the slave holders have some extra power, but not too much, you may need to think a little harder, and people in the future certainly shouldn't talk like you had a brilliant idea). Honestly, on the Glenn Beck crazy scale from 1 to 10, that was only like a 4.

I have to mention this. Neil Cavuto is Glenn's lead in on Fox. He's reading viewer e-mails. Someone thinks we're making god angry by shooting rockets at the moon to test for the presence of water. I hope Neil will be dispatching a psychiatrist to that person's house.

Anyway, obviously, I'm starting with Glenn. Here we go. 3...2...1...Beck!

Apparently, the White House Director of Communications said something mean about Fox News today, so this should be fun. If House wasn't on tonight, I might switch the 8-10 block to tonight, just to see what Hannity and O'Reilly have to say about this, but they'll probably still be hyperventilating about it on Wednesday.

Glenn is showing us where Fox's offices are on a map of NYC, because he says the White House is at war with Fox, and if you're covering a war, even a fake one you just made up, you need maps. He's got a jar of M&M's and some toy tanks, and he's yelling pretty loud now. I'd describe this as a full scale tantrum from anyone else, but it's pretty standard for Glenn. And now we're talking about Barack Obama's secret evil plan to redistribute wealth. All roads lead here for Glenn. I can't type fast enough to mock all the stupid things he's saying, so let's see what Matthews is doing.

Matthews is talking about Rush Limbaugh trying to buy the St. Louis Rams. He's got Steven A. Smith as a guest. If there was a show with Chris and Steven screaming at each other, I'd never turn it off, even after my ears started bleeding. This morphed into a good debate between Steven and Kevin Blackistone (another sports writer) about athletes standing up for social issues they believe in. These sports guys didn't get the memo that Chris' guests are supposed to either agree with him or shout at him, not make their own insightful points. Then Chris says if they don't let Rush buy the team, Rush'll be happy because he gets to play the victim. Good call there by Chris. Back to Glenn.

Glenn's at the blackboard. This is one of his favorite things, he loves to use a blackboard on his show. I've often seen him preface this by telling the audience that Washington may think they're stupid, but he knows better. Then he conducts a segment of his show like he's teaching second grade. He's the best.

Beck's talking about SEIU again. He's criticizing President Obama because he consults SEIU leadership on issues that concern them. This would be a fair point, except that Glenn can't stop begging "Washington" to listen to "the people". Unfortunately, when Glenn references "the people", he's only talking about the people who agree with him. This isn't really Glenn's fault though, the voices in his head tell him everyone agrees with him.

Glenn hates Barney the dinosaur. Am I going to tell you how that came up? No, it's more fun if you use your imagination.

Glenn says Fox is representing you, and he's meeting the President and his Communications Director on the battlefield of ideas everyday at 5 o'clock. Um, OK.

Matthews is talking about Obama's Nobel prize with Christopher Hitchens and Mark Green. Green says the Nobel prize represents the world embracing Obama's approach to diplomacy, Matthews says it's more of a rebuke of George W. Bush (sometimes everyone gets to be right). Hitchens is talking about Ronald Reagan for some reason, but then he goes on to say the President hasn't done anything to earn a Nobel prize yet. Hitchens says Obama deserves a Nobel prize if he can turn Iran into a democracy in the next seven years. Oh, is that all?

Side note: I actually like Christopher Hitchens. It's either because he's a pro gay rights Republican or an atheist Republican, I can't remember. Unfortunately, when he's not talking about the thing I agree with him about, he's actually pretty hard to listen to and he never shuts up. It's like he was filibustering Mark Green.

Beck seems to be zeroing in on a new message, President Obama's administration is just like the Nixon administration, only much much worse. Glenn is gleefully pointing out that lots of democrats watch Fox too, someone should tell him that's because they find it hilarious. The other guy on with Glenn just said "you don't persuade with threatening". That's right! You persuade people by invading their country, everyone knows that.

Time for the Hardball Sideshow. Barney Frank said yesterday's gay rights march was a waste of time, writing letters to Congress is more effective. Couldn't agree more, and neither could Chris. Hillary Clinton says she's never running for president again. If I ever believed anything she said, I'd be relieved.

Fox just reported that May 22nd will now be Harvey Milk day in California, and the anchor didn't even say anything sarcastic about it, but Glenn couldn't help himself. He's annoyed that we have a Harvey Milk day but no more Columbus day (isn't today Columbus day? Apparently it's called Fall day now, this is the kind of breaking news you only get on Fox. Tough break for Columbus).

Glenn's having his daily panic attack about the impending collapse of the US dollar, but his guest's audio wasn't working for a minute. Glenn was happy to keep talking himself, but now the guest is back. Glenn says the Republicans did just as much damage to the dollar as Obama is doing. This is a Beck speciality, he'll spend all day hammering Democrats, but, at least once, he throws in a little "Republicans are bad too". That's how you know he's balanced.

They're talking about how gold is so valuable now and you should probably invest in gold. On a completely unrelated topic, since Glenn lost a bunch of sponsors due to his racism (sorry, I mean, um, bold truth telling?), half the commercials on his show are people trying to get you to buy gold. Also, we're headed toward being Zimbabwe. I'm getting a headache, back to Matthews.

Ahhhh! Jim Cramer is on Hardball now. This won't help my headache. Jim says unemployment will be below 7% by 2012. I like Jim Cramer a lot, but he doesn't exactly have a long record of being right about stuff, so I'm a little nervous. Matthews wants to know where the stimulus money went, why no infrastructure jobs? He mentioned all the stupid things Democrats did with the stimulus package, but he didn't call out the Republicans for those useless tax cuts they put in. Good thing too, because my extra $36 a month is really stimulating the economy.

Glenn's got Vince Flynn on, he wrote a book. All I need to know about this book is that it's got a chapter 50, needless to say, I won't be picking it up. They're talking about Obama's Nobel prize. Glenn thinks he got the prize for "dismantling the United States one piece at a time" and that it's "the first Nobel prize given for attendance". I'm usually a pretty rational and quiet guy, Glenn's one of the few people who can get my to yell at the TV. If George W. Bush had won a Nobel prize (do they give a Nobel prize for brush clearing? What about one for folksy talkin? I'll have to look this up) Fox would have thrown a week long party and they would have destroyed anyone who said anything bad about it.

The author thinks Obama should give his Nobel prize money to the Wounded Warriors charity. I like this idea, Glenn takes a second to agree but then, instead of elaborating on why this would be good and possibly directing his minions toward a good cause, he makes a stupid joke. Can I get my own TV show?

Matthews is talking about health care with his "politics fix" panel. He points out that most of Congress' stance on health care has to do with wanting to get re-elected. Then he points out that politicians would rather vote against something that passes or vote for something that fails, so they never have to be held accountable for anything. Lots of good points from Chris tonight, he's on his game.

Beck's still talking to the author, they're talking about torture and they say we're selling out the CIA. I mostly agree with this argument. This is what you get sometimes when you compromise. Democrats want to prosecute Bush administration officials who authorized torture, but they're Democrats, so anything that involves some political courage is a non-starter. Republicans would rather pretend nothing ever happened, but they're out of power, so too bad. So the compromise is we hassle the CIA guys who were following orders. I'm not really a fan.

Glenn's back to this idea that Barack Obama is indoctrinating children. He's got footage of people protesting outside of a school. I'm sure this is really helping the kids learn. He also runs the footage of the kids singing the "Mm mm mm Barack Hussein Obama" song. By the way, this happened in February, but we're protesting it now, you never know when kids might start singing again. Ya know, there are a lot of bad public schools in this country, a guy with an hour long TV show five days a week could maybe take a night to spotlight this a little, talk about all the stuff teachers need but don't have, but no, we have bigger problems, the kids are singing about the President. Once again, can I please have my own TV show?

Matthews is talking about Limbaugh again. Liberals are obsessed with this guy, or maybe they just really care about the future of the St. Louis Rams. Rush lives on attention, I say we ignore him for a while and see if he goes away.

Beck wraps up by holding a sign that says "I have a right to be heard". He says Fox has a right to be heard. I agree, as long as the rest of us have a right to not listen, or, in my case, listen and then mock.

Alright, I'm done for tonight. I could spend the next hour making fun of the 6PM guy on MSNBC, but Family Guy is on another channel. Back for two hours Wednesday night.