I haven’t watched CNN or MSNBC for a single second in the month since the 2024 presidential election. I’ve been a loyal viewer of CNN pretty much since it started, through the bullshit times of enforced patriotism, like the first Gulf War or after 9/11, and through the transition from being a news channel to being, in its current state, an extended talk show, one long episode of The View or the Sunday political chat fests, with occasional breaks for a news story.
With MSNBC, I’ve had a more tortured relationship, vacillating between appreciating the early weirdness of the channel as it featured shows hosted by liberals like Phil Donahue and crazed conservatives like Pat Buchanan, to being a semi-regular viewer of Keith Olbermann and an occasional guest on Ed Schultz’s show. But as it descended into a kind of smug insider party with smirky outrage expressed in the most pin-headed way possible, it lost me. And not just because of Morning Joe. I’ve never been able to handle the most recent primetime lineup, probably since the failure of Mueller Report to do anything that it was hyped to do by the hosts on that lineup.
