OK. I cannot stand Greta Van Susteren’s new show on MSNBC. It is Morning Joe in the evening to me, but not as aggravating, which in this case, is not a good thing for her. IOW, vanilla Morning Joe, just nothing to even care about fighting against.
First and foremost, lest you think it’s an anti-former-Fox thing for me, or that it’s all partisan for me, let me assure you, it is not. I actually think that MSNBC needs more viewers from both sides to be considered legitimate. So, when Rachel implored us to give Greta a chance, and how great she was as a friend, and blah, blah, blah, I did.
I CAN handle Greta’s center right POV. What I can’t get my arms around is that I just don’t think she’s very good at analysis. Or very good at interviews. Or very good at establishing her own voice, and why we should listen. And NOT because I don’t agree with her on many a thing, but because I find her extremely shallow and unable in all the above.
Tonight I watched her interview Paul Ryan. They all but played footsie with each other. There were NO hard ball questions---even Tweety manages that now and then. Greta showed me in that interview that she either doesn’t know where to be aware of Paul Ryan’s glibness, or she doesn’t care to take it on.
OMG, there were SO MANY TIMES she could have cut in with a hard cold question, but she most certainly did not. She ended her broadcast with an “essay” about the secret service agent who said she wouldn’t take a bullet for Trump.
Now, I don’t care if you agree or disagree with that agent, but simply that this is VERY SMALL THINKING when you have only so much time and such a huge platform. It is cherry picking a salacious and individual thing, instead of doing the hard work of trying to put together a more important POV. It is easy, unchallenging stuff.
Rachel DOES the opposite every single night, imo. Why she think’s Greta is all that, I’ll never know. And I just want to say pre-emptively that I really don’t think Rachel did this at the behest of her corporate masters.
I think she did this because she’s, well, Rachel. And because she enjoys cozy press connections you and I don’t give a damn about. And I think she too, forgets the bubble she lives in.
I hope IF Greta continues as she has, she fails in this time slot. Not because she and I don’t agree, but because I don’t think she’s bringing shit or shineola to her hour. SUCH an opportunity! And I just don’t see her up to it.
She is filling in that hour that MSNBC has had a lot of trouble with. That TERRIBLE mating of Mark Halperin and John Heilemann in “With all due respect.” Can’t believe these two wrote a best selling book, but they did. But when this pairing showed up on air, it was such a bust, no sign of chemistry or interest in each other, or the will to fight back---although Halperin always did a better job at this than the hapless Heilemann.
LOL, where did you go Jack Kilpatrick and Shana Alexander. Yeah, it was humorous how much they disagreed, but compared to the milk toast of Mark and John, neither with the guts that either Jack or Shana had to GO THERE, it was sometimes, riveting TV.
NOTHING riveting about Greta’s show. And I mean NOTHING. She is not an interesting interviewer, she is not an interesting pundit. Her analysis seems scant to non existent. She is not interesting at all.
And when I think about the possibilities of Joy Reid in this space, and her razor sharpness, and how compelling she can be, I just say to MSNBC---SFX, big raspberry. I don’t think Greta will last in this space, but geeze, what a bore waiting for programmers at MSNBC to get it.