For most conservatives, it’s not that MSNBC is unabashedly liberal that angers them as viewers. Afterall, for as long as we’ve been consumers of mainstream media in America we’ve taken for granted that the elitists sitting behind desks in New York talking down to us on a daily basis are liberals who secretly hold the rest of us in contempt.
The problem with MSNBC is not that they make no secret of their progressive position, it’s that they make no secret of their contempt for those who do not share their enlightened views.
Take for instance the case of Melissa Harris-Perry: She is a progressive host of a progressive show on a progressive network. Fine. Go in peace, Melissa, hyphen and all. But, for Harris-Perry and her producers, it’s not enough to espouse progressive views on a routine basis, she has to insult, degrade and offend non-progressives whenever possible.
Saturday she wanted to illustrate her views on abortion with a visual aid. As Mediaite reports:
Perry mocked abortion opponents when she broke a part the fertilized egg portion of the model and expressed amazement at how people could view the egg as a person.
“Oh, no. That might be bad. I seemed to have popped open the fertilized egg. We’ll put that back together. But the very idea that this would constitute a person, right? And that some set of constitutional rights should come to this,” said Perry.
Perry went on to say that those who believe life begins at conception have a “particular kind of faith claim. It’s not associated with science.” This despite the fact that millions of expectant parents see and her the heartbeat of their “clump of cells” on sonograms within weeks of conception and know very well that life is on that screen beating away. She might as well have said believing in life at conception was like believing in unicorns. She then went on to refer to a fertilized egg, nascent human life, something sacred in the eyes of so many Americans, as “this thing.” Finally, she turned to her panel, made up entirely of pro-choice advocates, to discuss just how incredibly correct she was about this issue.
One is reminded of a time when Fox News (yes, Fox News) stopped Matt Drudge on his weekly show from showing a picture of a 21-week-old unborn child reaching out and clasping a surgeon’s hand from the womb as a procedure to cure his spina bifida was being performed. Out of principle Drudge resigned from Fox News. Fox News was so sensitive to the controversial subject that they refused to air the picture. Yet, MSNBC is fine with their host insulting and offending Americans from the other end of the abortion topic.
And that’s really where NBC News Executives are going to have trouble in the future. How can you grow your brand, and, for that matter, separate the wing-nuts at MSNBC from your valuable NBC News brand if your on-air personalities are hell-bent on pissing off half of the viewing public. Brian Williams should be worried… I bet he is.
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