Well its a mixed bag. With certain points, I agree completly; Sean Penn is an absolute douche, Michael Moore, who's been relegated to silence as of late is less so, but he intentionally misleads which might be worse.

The Left crowd also has an alarming degree of racism, that it generally gets away with because they tend to be more supportive policy-wise of minorities. But I find the most arrogant and elitist to be the least intelligent.

Where I'd disagree is how arrogant the Comedy Central crowd is. They use humor, but very few get away with much on their show, regardless of position in the political spectrum.

When I think arrogant humor, I tend to lean toward Bill Mahr.

But arrogance aside, the issue that tends to bother me on these boards, and the one I think that we will come to a head on, is the slant of the media, speciafically the three big ones.

If you want my opinion, this is how I look at it.

MSNBC is the liberal network, Ed Schwartz and Keith Olberman being left in a strong direction. Rachel Maddow, who I think is the standard on how interviews ought to be done, comes in left of Chris Matthews and to the right of the other two.

Keith and Ed are liberal in no matter what they do. The "Psycho Talk" and "Worst Persons in the World/Bushed" segments are testaments to that.

Maddow is left-leaning, but only in her selection of coverage. And these days its hard to hold it against her.

Matthews, who I make a point to watch every night is decidedly moderate. If you go on Youtube, you can find both sides calling for his resignation, he's been offensive in his commentary of both Hillary Clinton and Cheeney. He's tore into just about every guest on his show, and he regulaly features Pat Buchanon.

Their news coverage with Contesa Brewer is the People magazine of news, and I don't know what the **** they do on the weekends, but someone ought to be fired.

With Fox. The most honest folks on there are Shepard Smith, who's relegated to the news desk, and the Beltway Boys who at least pretend to get both sides. There are no moderates on Fox, and after the Tea Party stunt, they should be questioned as a news organization.

Heres where the Brawl comes in...

CNN to me, is Wolf Blitzer, and wolf alone. Lou Dobbs is horrible, he made up the whole act, and he tries to be as snarky as the other guys on other networks, but half his show is him tripping over words on his teleprompter and him trying to insert larger words than is needed.

CNN has been going down a path of panels and the blog/text information superhighway. They generally stay away from anything that lands them in hot water because their trying to be objective. They go out into the people and get what they can.

But Wolf and Cafferty (who is the "people" version of the situaiton room) are often lumped into together (harkening back to my original post) with news media who are't doing anything wrong.

There isn't anything wrong with covering Obama positivly. He's the president, its his first year, he's passed major legislation, he's working to reverse a major crisis, and for the first 6 years, the news media didn't say **** about Bush.

But everyone expects to have the media, who was bullied and beaten by Bush, attack Obama or be called Liberal. The man is a lefty, but he's not a socialist, and CNN doesn't have to question his every move to be "fair and balanced."

I'm not sure we differ much at all.

I do tend to feel like Comedy central has a liberal slant at gets away with it because it is comedy. But it's not something that bothers me that much, it just bothers me when people give it too much credence a news source.

As for the cable news networks, I won't dispute any of that really. You forgot too mentioned Fox has the hottest news girls. I am pretty much apathetic to them however. That was my original contention in this thread. Essentially who gives a fuck. I don't think anyone smart enough to anything about anything takes their cues from Sean Hannity or Anderson Cooper or Mo Rocca for that matter. I don't mind Matthews, but sadly I prefer Daryl Hammond parody of him to the real thing.

As for CNN, I prefer positive coverage of the president as long as honesty is not jeopardized. CNN is fine, my biggest beef is that it's boring. Larry King is deader then Elvis and he's the most controversial figure on the network these days. If you don't count the people waiting for Anderson Cooper top come out of the closet as I don't. My only minor contention would be with the anti-bush stuff. They and MSNBC had guests ripping Bush on a nightly basis following the 2000 election and I can't say for sure but seemed to be pretty Al Franken friendly from 2005 on.

I'm not sure we'll clash on this really.

Those posts were amusing to read.
To JayJamJah, I understand the feeling of disenfranchisement by political elites (left or right).

I would probably classify my own views as falling extremely left, and I've probably practiced political elitism in the past, although I live in a conservative area (justification?).
IMO, the most annoying elitists are probably on the side of the left, but from personal experience I think a lot of elitism comes from extreme liberals having to constantly defend their positions to moderates or conservatives.

A lot of liberals are very sheltered (not counting myself out) but I think this makes a lot of extremely elitist individuals look for very particular characteristics in people.
Example: if you don't look liberal, you can't possibly be liberal. This is probably one of the most aggravating aspects of this elitism.
I have friends who don't care about politics whatsoever, and I also have friends who are moderate/conservative.
One of my friends going to NYU said that for most liberal elites, this is unacceptable: people can only make friends with other liberals.

I understand where that sense of exclusivism comes from too though. It seems totally counter-intuitive to befriend someone who stands in opposition to the very things you value.

Yes, I can see it from the perspective of conservatives too.
But honestly, it's hard enough being an extreme liberal in America without having friends who are against you as well.
I enjoy talking to my friends who aren't political or on the left because they're good to talk to; unlike most conservatives who either call you stupid or homosexual when you divulge your personal beliefs.

I consider myself far more liberal than most, but I'm also weird in that the democrats don't seem socially liberal to me. Liberal in what they're willing to do, but not liberal in what they're trying to accomplish. It seems to me that if you're going to be liberal you have to stand for liberties, and you can't stand for them if you're going to over-regulate them once you get them.

My grandma is conservative as sh*t and she watches Daily and Colbert all the time.

Colbert is playing a character, he's a comedian, there's always a bit of subjectiveness to political comedy, that's just how it is. He pokes fun of O'Reilly and Hannity, but that's his job, he never talks about his real views on anything, and while people assume he's left on everything, that might not even be true. He's satirizing a specific kind of pundit, he's supposed to be similar to O'Reilly in a superficial sense.

At the same time he's pretty fair, he has both democrats and republicans on his show all the time and he treats them all the same way, jovially.

People who spend all their time criticizing the media should do something better with their time (e.g. read a book.) Seriously, bitching about Fox News and the unreliability of the media is so post-Iraq War Jon Stewart aka so 2004.

I'm not really bitching about it anymore. More or less I just like to mock it now.

And when stupid people say stupid things. They should be made fun of, that's all. I'm tired of people making up political excuses on behalf of the idiots in the world.

"Lets not discuss this anymore, FoxNews isn't relevant anymore (which is not actually true IMO), lets not offend the Christians, etc"

If Hannity says something retarded on TV in front of millions of people, I don't think it's gonna be the end of the world just to talk about it. Make an MSNBC thread if you feel like I'm being unfair.

lol, yeah I agree with the yes man on this one. Piss poor journalism complaints aren't exactly a fad.

Just because Obama was elected doesn't mean things are cool again, in fact, i think they've gotten worse since he won.