Not that you didn't know that.

Still, what I watched on MSNBC on Friday is beyond thought, beyond endurance.

Hardball has a new weekly feature - the Hardball All-Stars; Original, no?

The last segment of each Friday will feature "them," in a summary of the most significant happenings of that week, for instance, the losers and the winners, who's up and who's down; original, no? That, plus commentary identifying which stories strike the All-Stars and their master of ceremonies, that "Tweety" guy we've come to know and loathe, as being worthy objects of their gossip. Here's how they are described on Hardball’s homepage::

We have gathered together some of the strongest voices in politics today for their take on the hot news of the day.

Here's who was on this Friday’s panel: Joe Scarborough, Rita Cosby, and Tucker Carlson. Yeah, right, MSNBC went far and wide to gather those All-Star voices together on one spectacular panel. There remains the question of what makes them the strongest "in politics today," other than the fact that MSNBC has parked each of them on a prime hour of cable real estate five days a week, and whether or not their perceived "strength" is based on anything other than that fact, making the MSNBC lineup, with the exception of Keith Olbermann, on occasion, the journalistic equivalent of the Gabor sisters, famous for being famous, and little else, (with, to be fair, the possible exception of "Eva.")

Do I really need to tell you who the losers are here? That's right, it’s us, all of us. The American public, the American nation, the very idea of America, the very idea of the nation, anything good this country has ever stood for in its own view and the view of other nations, American journalism, the American mind, not an iota of an iota of which was on display on Friday’s Hardball, but then when isn’t that true on MSNBC? On copious display was the seemingly preternatural inability of this group of overpaid twits to accurately provide even the elementary facts of any story they touch.

Not that you didn't know that, either

I’ll bet you can figure out who the loser of the week was, too? Yeah, that’s right, and we do mean winger right.

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Hillary Clinton it was. Cause of her "plantation" reference to describe the way Republicans run congress, which, worse still, passed her lips on MLK’s holiday, in the company of black folks, and up in Harlem, yet, and we know how susceptible black folks in Harlem are to that kind of rabble-rousing. And just in case you might think that Matthews et al didn’t know that the word "plantation" has been used for years by Republicans as a standard slur on the Democratic Party’s relationship to its African-American base, Keith Olbermann made exactly that point on his own MSNBC show this Tuesday, while reporting, as one of his top items, the fact that Newt Gingrich had used the word "plantation" to describe a Democratically controlled congress, with video of the moment.

So, Matthews and his producers knew there was nothing shocking or "new" or particular to Democrats about the political use of the word "plantation," as did every one of their All-Stars; simply put, they made a conscious decision to pretend otherwise. Kabuki theater, anyone? Minus, the beauty, the skill, the talent, and the essential drama. And this is the cable news network that spent the week of the Alito hearings using that Kabuki reference to underscore the contempt being heaped, not merely on Democrats, but on the entire process of confirming a lifetime appointment to a pivotal seat on the Supreme court. But you can understand their fury; who and what do these Democratic senators think they are, upstaging what is really important to Americans, which in the MSNBC view is governance as political drama, and who are the important people in this drama, the playwrights and directors and stars who matter? Why, our brave new world of journalist-entertainers, and the cable venues where they ply their trade, or as I tend to think of them of them, with a shudder, our Washington clown corps.
By the way, Republicans were exempt from that contempt, during the hearings, and in fact, provided the overwhelming majority of guests who were asked to comment on the proceedings, because they were rubber-stamping a choice made by the Bush presidency, whose current approval rating is at forty % or less. Advise and consent, anyone?

Back to this Friday: "Chris" started out the bidding on the Hillary smack-down with Tucker Carlson, asking him if she had just made a dumb mistake. As you can imagine, Tucker had no idea he’d be asked that particular question, but with his typical bow-tied aplomb, he came up with exactly the right answer; Hillary calculates every word she says, every gesture she makes, nothing about her is ever a mistake, nothing she does is spontaneous, and despite appearances, presumably she isn’t really a human being, more like a self-programming, self-propelled wind-up doll. And why then, would Hillary make a statement that would get her in such hot water with that middle American heartland these multi-millionare, good-for-nothings assume they are so ably representing? To play to her base, of course, who have become increasingly impatient with her super-calculated move to the center.

Talk about fresh insight. Can you calculate how many times you’ve heard that observation regarding Hillary; does any Washington wag ever say anything different about her? Will any such person say anything different this weekend, on the various gas bag panels?

Think about that for a moment. Why are there never contrary opinions expressed, ever, by big-time journalists, pundits, and news analysts? Because the facts are clear, and the conclusions inevitable? Can you say "wankers?" Will not Gwen Ifell and her merry band of Washington-Week-In-Reviewers find some way to include Hillary’s crazy use of a single word as if it was a genuinely significant news story, and would it be, other than the fact that people like Gwen Ifell are insisting that it is? Will any of these "serious" journalists be any more analytic or factual than the Hardball gang? Isn’t Washington Week an ultimate example of journalism as Kubuki? That odd pretence that the journalists who ask one another questions don’t already know the answers that are about to be given. The stale jokes about being "shocked" that politicians are political, the side chatter that begins to sound like it was written by Louis Carroll. Why is it that all Washington media journalists focus on the same facts, and how does it happen that they all seem to ignore the same facts?

And speaking of facts, let’s take a look at a particular fact, in the case of Hillary in Harlem, one that went unreported all week, a fact of which Chris Matthews had direct knowledge, but along with the rest of his journalistic brethren, failed to report, even during this Friday roundup.

On Tuesday, the day after Hillary’s "plantation" remark, Al Sharpton was a guest on Hardball, and he explained to Matthews, Sharpton having been at the actual event, the context of her remark, which was being ignored by everyone, and excised from reality by means of how the tape of her appearance in Harlem was cut.

First, Sharpton corrected all the miss-reporting that placed her at a Harlem church, a telling assumption in itself; Hillary was actually at a local meeting hall attended by local political activists, and ordinary constituents, who were demanding to know why the congressional Democrats were proving to be so ineffective in blocking GOP legislation, and in getting any Democratic programs through. Foolish of them to spend the holiday honoring Dr. King by engaging in the kind of political activism that he championed, I know, but it was in response to this line of questioning from her audience that she began to explain the realities of being the minority party in a Republican-run congress. So much for Hillary’s calculations. Newt Gingrich, on the other hand, used that plantation image in a talk he was giving, so I think we can assume its use was exclusively in response to his own calculation of its effectiveness, and the fact that he wouldn’t be criticized by anyone in the SCLM.

What Rita Cosby’s claim to political acumen is I have no idea. She’s a tabloid reporter, as crass and exploitative and surely as stupid as anyone currently on cable TV. That is what MSNBC was after, I assume, when its top brass decided to pay whatever was required to pry her away from Fox News. She agreed with Tucker about Hillary’s essentially calculating nature, and the reason behind the calculation.

To make sure this wasn’t getting boring, Chris upped the bidding, asking Joe Scarborough what it felt like, as a Southern white, to hear Hillary’s use of that "word." Yes, Joe did find it insulting, but he wanted to rise above that personal wound, to rise above the kind of ugly attacks that are so typical of the American left…I may have some of the language wrong, but that was the gist, if you can believe it. Said with a straight face, more in sadness than in anger.

Joe’s such an average Joe, don’t you know, and such a nice guy. And if, on any number of his own five-a-week hours of media prime time, he has found himself pointing out, no doubt reluctantly, that Democrats don’t get patriotism, are elitist America-haters who are anti-Christian bigots, more likely to be critical of America than of those who perpetrated 9/11, that’s not his fault: It’s the fault of Democrats and their soft-on-terrorism Hollywood pals, "Hollywood" being a particular obsession of our oh-so-average Joe. Actually the ritual attack on Hollywood came later in the segment.

As Michael Moore had been the first thought the new Osama Bin Laden tape brought to what passes for Chris Matthews' mind on a previous much-discussed Hardball this week, Hillary was a natural way to slither over to the next big story of the week, not as big, presumably, as Hillary’s plantation comment, but big. Chris wondered why Bin Laden sounded like Democrats, yes again, and Joe couldn’t wait to point out the fact that he was parroting Democratic criticisms of Bush policy…in fact, all three All-Stars were so excited by the prospect of tying the Democratic Party to Bin Laden, this section is hard to reproduce. Of most interest, Chris Matthews seemed to have gotten some kind of message from emails our side of the blogisphere generated this week about his Michael Moore comment. Not the actual message, of course, but he did say that some people had misunderstood what he’d meant to say, which was that Bin Laden was parroting Michael Moore. That out of the way, Carlson and especially Scarborough went about blaming Democrats for Bin Laden’s tape, and Joe went so far as to note John Kerry’s "attack" on US troops recently, whom, according to Joe, Kerry had accused of terrorizing Iraqi women and children was being used by Bin Ladin.

Yes, we all know that is not what Kerry said, or what he meant, and we all know that what Kerry pointed out, in that moment on Meet The Press, I believe, were documented incidents in which US troops found themselves being forced to carry out military maneuvers that made no sense, if our goal is to win Iraqi hearts and minds, and which are, in fact, feeding that part of the insurgency which is local, estimated to be between 80 and 90 %, last time I looked.

The universal Bush-like smirk on the faces of Chris and his three guests was all about the fact that the Bin Ladin tape was bad news for Democrats. What kind of news it was for Americans as a nation apparently at war, wasn’t an issue for these bozos. Nor did it seem to occur to anyone that Democrats have been critical of the administration’s use of torture, it’s flailing attempts first to flatten Falluja, for instance, and then to regenerate it, its roundup of innocent Iraqis, it’s dependence on local militias, its inability to bring any kind of security or even civil order to Iraq since May of 2003, e.gl, going on three years now, despite the expenditure of unaccounted for billions, precisely because those failures are so useful to the Bin Ladins of this world. Nor, let us remind ourselves, is this critique exclusive to Democrats; time after time we have seen reports from our own government, at least from those agencies not directly under the thumb of the President and his crew, who have told us that Iraq has become a low-cost training ground for the Jihadist movement.

I’ve gone on at such length, because this one program contained so much of what is so awful about our current media, because like so many others this week, Jane, Peter Daou, Digby, we at Corrente believe that we have to figure out something to do about it…directly. With this kind of press, there is no hope for progressive ideas to get a fair hearing.

I don’t have any quick fixes in my pocket, but I suspect it’s going to take some old-fashioned organizing, and maybe even some aggressive, old-fashioned type of protests, too…maybe an informational picket line or two outside of NBC in Manhattan. People with hand-outs, willing to stand and talk with any passer-byes who are interested. Maybe letter-writing campaigns to local newspapers. Chris Matthews is going out next week on another college tour; students, picket lines, why not? The point is to make a big enough stink that an outlet like MSNBC is forced to report on it.

Let us know your own thoughts, emotions, and especially concrete ideas about what is to be done. Any of you who have essays on the subject, let us know, as we’ve mentioned often, it is our desire to publish the work of our readers, and indeed of anyone who happens by who has something to say about the issues we cover, or who wants to tell us about issues we’ve not covering, and especially those of you who have local reports for us from around the country.

UPDATE: Digby covered this, at considerably less length, yesterday, and he suggests calling MSNBC; I couldn’t agree more.

Here’s the number for HARDBALL: 202-824-6707 I called; you’ll get an answering machine on which you can leave a message.

Please do so. Pick what issues you want to emphasize. Don’t be afraid to express outrage, but do it politely, and emphasize your indignation as a loyal, loving American citizen. And let us know what message you left.

One last note; it's going to be important to know how many calls of this nature are generated by our side of the blogisphere, because we can't count on an outfit like MSNBC to bother to report, or keep track of how many they receive. We hope to have some further ideas about that subject in the near future.