In my next life, I would like to come back as a mean-spirited mediocre white man because it seems impossible for them to not fail upward. Yes, friends, that disturbance in the force you feel? That’s the announcement that NBC News and MSNBC, the so-called “liberal” cable news networks have hired former Ohio governor John Kasich as an on-air analyst.
Kasich, a Republican, ran for President in 2015. He was anti-abortion (“Ban abortions after 20 weeks, with an exception if the life of the mother is in danger.“), wanted to gut the Affordable Care Act (“Keep the federal Medicaid expansion. Repeal and replace the rest of the Affordable Healthcare Act.“) is anti-union (“Limit union powers, especially for public employees.“) and wanted to “cut education spending.” In 2015, these seemed like really bad policies. In 2023, these seem like positively moderate Republican stances. However, they’re still not great, it just goes to show how positively fascist the GOP has moved in just eight years. Yikes on bikes. Does anyone else feel like 2015 was a million years ago, that’s how much the Trump presidency aged us, but I digress.
The thing that isn’t sitting right with a lot of people (including me!) is that MSNBC hung Tiffany Cross out to dry last fall and fired her over NOTHING. She called Florida the d*ck of the country. Kasich banned abortion in the second trimester when he was Governor of Ohio. You tell me which is more offensive. Unless your name is John Kasich, I’m hoping it’s the latter and not the former. For many people on Twitter, it is:
Harris-Perry was fired in 2016 after she wrote a “controversial” memo, and was frustrated her show kept getting preempted for 2016 election coverage. Per NPR:
In that now-infamous memo, Harris-Perry wrote, quote, “our show was taken without comment or discussion or notice in the midst of an election season.” She continued, quote, “I will not be used as a tool for their purposes. I am not a token, mammy or little brown bobble head.” Phil Griffin takes exception to those words. He’s president of MSNBC.
It should be noted that both Harris-Perry and Cross are Black women, the other contributors mentioned in the above tweets are all people of color or Black. John Kasich obviously is not.
I’m not a huge cable news person, but when I do watch it, it seems like Elie Mystal is on every time. Imagine my surprise when this man’s labor turned out to be unpaid!? Yet MSNBC was somehow able to look under its couch cushions and find money for John Kasich. Make this make sense!
The game is rigged, always. In this case, it’s particularly obvious and egregious: MSNBC is supposed to be “liberal” and yet it’s out here acting like Fox News.
Remember this the next time you turn on cable news. I would argue that unless we’re in the middle of a national emergency or disaster, you probably don’t need the 24/7 fear-mongering and talking heads a cable news network provides. If you do need that, the Bravo network is right there my friends. It has everything a cable news network has and is just as problematic and scandalous as they are, but at least all of that network’s on-air talent has the good sense to keep whether they’re Republicans to themselves. So in that regard, they’re at least more ethical than MSNBC is being right now.
(featured image: John Lamparski/Getty Images)
