True, the junk salesman is Lawrence O’Donnell, who is not only Trump Deranged but a serial killer of facts, fairness, objectivity and responsible news coverage who been running amuck on MSNBC, aka. MSNOW, for decades. But even partisan propagandists masquerading as journalists should have some standards enforced on them by their bosses, shouldn’t they? How can the network justify keeping someone employed who offers audiences junk like O’Donnell’s rant yesterday over Stephen Colbert being told by CBS that he had to abide by the FCC’s “Equal Time” regulations?
Here’s O’Donnell, ranting…I think I’ll intersperse my comments in red this time:
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Ethics Alarms 
From his wiki page:
In a 2005 interview, O’Donnell called himself a “practical European socialist” O’Donnell also declared himself a “socialist” on the November 6, 2010, Morning Joe show, stating: “I am not a progressive. I am not a liberal who is so afraid of the word that I had to change my name to ‘progressive’. Liberals amuse me. I am a socialist. I live to the extreme left, the extreme left of you mere liberals.” On the August 1, 2011, episode of The Last Word, O’Donnell further explained: “I have been calling myself a socialist ever since I first read the definition of socialism in the first economics class I took in college.”
Also, he graduated from Harvard. And his father was a lawyer! Kids of big deal lawyers generally get a lot of exposure to legal issues. O’Donnell clearly knows better.
Lawrence O’Donnell bashed Mitt Romney in 2012 to the point where I said Romney’s oldest son should pull a Will Smith on him (although that incident hadn’t happened yet).
I think MSNOW, CBS, and ABC need some longstanding bloviator to spin the settlements to Trump so that their base doesn’t start thinking, “Maybe there is something to the accusations that these ‘news’ stations are nothing more than party propagandists, like Fox News…” At least, that explains why you don’t have management imposing any standards on O’Donnell, at least in this case. The fact he has been around for decades should mean that the base trusts his analyses, no need for independent research on the topic.
Jack wrote, “In short, O’Donnell misrepresented the issues, passed along ignorant assertions and biased analysis, expressed little of substance but the usual MSNOW Trump hatred, and was legally, factually, and logically wrong without passing along anything of value to his audience.”
I completely agree and only have this to say about it…
They, the political left, keeps going out of their way to prove the truth to that statement.
O’Donnell is appalling, but there are many in that basket. This is another example of the Left reacting moronically to simple enforcement of laws that have been on the books for decades. And a critical reason not to let them in charge again.
As a tangent, why did CBS not just let Colbert go immediately? Usually when someone is fired a security team watches as he gathers his personal belongings, then walks him out the door. Update security protocols, lock him out of the computer system – SOP. Colbert is already doing damage on his way out, and could sabotage even more. He has nothing to lose, so the smart thing is to cut him loose.
With apologies to Billy Madison, but some things just cannot be improved on:
Mr. O’Donnell, what you have just said is one of the most insanely idiotic things I have ever heard. At no point in your rambling, incoherent rant were you even close to anything that could be considered a rational thought. Everyone in you audience is now dumber for having listened to it. I award you no points, and may God have mercy on your soul.
It speaks volumes about the state of our society and especially our media that people are actually paid to say things like this. More tragic is the fact that there are actual willing consumers of this dreck, and even more tragic is that a significant portion, perhaps even an outright majority of those watching it actually find it an accurate and reasonable commentary.
There is no need to ethically analyze deliberately biased and misleading blather like this, it is per se unethical. But any audience who is so jaded and biased that they will, even for a minute, entertain this crap as true and rational is either so mis-educated that they need immediate intervention or every bit as unethical as O’Donnell.
This is depressing on so many levels.