This young man might have a bright future in comedy, providing he doesn't mind that people laugh only when he's not kidding.
You might remember Cenk Uygur -- pronounced "Jenk U-Gur" -- hosting an evening show on MSNBC for several months in 2011 after the network booted Keith Olbermann within weeks of the Tucson massacre, when liberals like Olbermann blamed Sarah Palin for creating a sulfuric "climate of hate" that led to the rampage. Turns out Olbermann wasn't entirely wrong, he was simply looking in the wrong direction.
Anyway, things didn't work out for Uygur at MSNBC, so after leaving the network he shifted his focus to an online news site called The Young Turks that he had launched in 2002. The site's offerings have nothing to do with Uygur's Turkish ancestry and all to do with leftist politics.
On the site's YouTube channel Friday, Uygur cut loose in response to news that MSNBC has booted two of its anemically rated afternoon hosts, Ronan Farrow and Joy Reid, amid speculation of more shakeups to come as the "Lean Forward" media outlet has decided to "move away from left-wing TV" --
There is drama at MSNBC. Ronan Farrow and Joy Reid have been moved out of their time slots. They're nominally still with the network but obviously that experiment did not work. And there are now rumors that Chris Hayes is going to be moved out of his 8 o'clock time slot. That would be a much bigger move.
Now, more importantly, an MSNBC source told The Daily Beast, 'the goal is to move away from left-wing TV.' Well, I got bad news for you. First of all, you were never left-wing TV in the first place. If you had done a truly progressive network, you would be in much better shape.
Textbook liberal analysis -- when something doesn't work, such as liberal polemics on television or "stimulus" spending for the economy, do more of it.
But instead you had Joe Scarborough on in the mornings. That's a former Republican congressman doing three hours of conservative talking points in the morning.
.... while the remaining 15 hours of programming per weekday (starting at 6 a.m. and ending at 11 p.m.) consists of drumbeat liberalism, much of it embroidered as "news" to appear genuine. And is Uygur remotely aware that many conservatives see Scarborough as epitomizing RINO politics? (All that time spent at 30 Rock was bound to rub off).
Second of all, you didn't do left wing, you did DNC talking points. You never criticized the Democratic Party or the president.
... Except to prod Obama leeward on gay marriage, drone warfare, climate change, closing Gitmo, entitlements, defense spending, guns ...
And you know what that cost you? Credibility with the audience. If you were actually honest and said this is the progressive stance, whether Democratic Party agrees with it or not, well then you would have had more of a following. The idea that left-wing TV doesn't work is ridiculous.
It's like suggesting that left-wing radio doesn't work. Whoops, bad example ...
It worked ... on MSNBC, for years and years!
And it can again, providing that George W. Bush gets back in the White House! Or Jeb! Or their dad!
Obviously you are no longer doing it right. And by the way, I don't mean to be too self-aggrandizing here, but I will a little bit, we've got nearly 2 billion people that watched The Young Turks. It's the largest online news show, by a country mile.
That's nearly one-third of the planet!
We've got a news network here that is enormous, it's progressive, and it crushes the competition!
Namely MSNBC!
So obviously, people are interested in watching that. Look, overall I should be happy about this news because they're going to hand us more of an audience here by stopping being, quote unquote, left wing, which again they never were. But I'm not happy about it. This is not the right direction and trust me when I say the final judgment on this move and on MSNBC is that it will be a disaster. You cannot go more bland, more milquetoast and try to copy CNN?! That is a terrible idea! You've lost your soul, you've lost your identity and from here on out it will just be a sad slide down.
Truly impressive production values over at The Young Turks. Did they outsource the work to ISIS?
One thing I'm a bit unclear about -- if MSNBC is not left wing, as Uygur emphatically claims, why would the "progressive" Young Turks expand its audience as MSNBC shifts to the center?
Now I remember where I've seen this before -- aging young Turk named Ralph Nader condemning greener-than-thou Al Gore as not liberal enough.
Correction: This posted initially claimed that Uygur created The Young Turks online news site after leaving MSNBC in 2011. The site and a radio show of the same name were launched by Uygur in 2002.
