At The Nation, Dave Zirin writes—Thank You, Melissa Harris-Perry ( The most diverse, intellectually bracing show on network news was treated as expendable, and its host would not have it. She and her show will be sorely missed):
This weekend, a show that mattered to its audience as few programs on the vanilla ice-milk buffet that passes for news do, The Melissa Harris-Perry Show on MSNBC, was canceled, and it’s a tragic as well as angering turn of events. “Ties were severed,” as an MSNBC executive put it, after Melissa, who I am proud to count as a colleague, sent an email to her staff explaining why she would not be hosting her show this past weekend after several weeks of having the program pre-empted for election coverage. The “scorching” email, now public, is being cherry-picked in articles, particularly the part where Melissa wrote, “I will not be used as a tool for their purposes. I am not a token, mammy, or little brown bobble head.”
I want to encourage people to read it in its entirety, because that one section does not do justice to what she is trying to communicate. The part that stands out to me is when she writes,
MSNBC would like me to appear for four inconsequential hours to read news that they deem relevant without returning to our team any of the editorial control and authority that makes MHP Show distinctive. While MSNBC may believe that I am worthless, I know better. I know who I am. I know why MHP Show is unique and valuable. I will not sell short myself or this show. I am not hungry for empty airtime. I care only about substantive, meaningful, and autonomous work. When we can do that, I will return—not a moment earlier. I am deeply sorry for the ways that this decision makes life harder for all of you. You mean more to me than you can imagine.
Instead of responding to these concerns, network executives chose to simply kill the show, citing the email as “destructive to our relationship.” A nameless exec, speaking to The Washington Post, called her a “challenging and unpredictable personality.” [...]
It is certainly true that Melissa fought for her vision of what she wanted the show to be, but it is difficult to imagine that a white, male host would be attacked so personally and called “challenging and unpredictable” for exhibiting similar behavior. It also speaks volumes that such adjectives—“challenging,” “unpredictable”—would be seen as insults in the modern news media world, instead of high praise.
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At Daily Kos on this date in 2008—Republicans To Use The Troops For Political Gain:
Once again showing that "supporting the troops" is just a slogan, Senate Republicans unexpectedly agreed to debate Senator Russ Feingold's bill that would require troops to begin withdrawing from Iraq within 120 days and cut funding for further combat deployments. Is it because Republicans have finally decided to listen to more than 60% of the American people?
Or did they finally realize that the ever-increasing cost in blood and treasure is too high a price to pay? Of course not. It's because Republicans:
...want to highlight the security achievements over the past year under President Bush's troop buildup strategy.
That's right; they want to do a little political grandstanding on the backs of the troops that they claim to support.
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On today’s Kagro in the Morning show, Greg Dworkin parsed the SC results, told us what the polls say for Super Tuesday, and described the symptoms of the GOP’s Trumpmatic Stress Disorder. Will everyone knuckle under? And on just what planet were horrified GOP operatives up until now?
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