Thursday, February 10, 2011

Reason for hope

I just found out Cenk Uygur (pronounced Jenk Yoo-ger) is taking the 6PM slot at MSNBC. This is so great. Jenk is the smartest guy around and a truly powerful progressive voice. There's an interview with him on Alternet today. Here are some excerpts:
"I think defeating Fox -- and more importantly, getting the rest of the media to understand they do not do legitimate news -- is very important. I hope to do that through pointing out their hypocrisy, propaganda and general foolishness. But I also plan to beat them in the ratings and make them fear me."
And his take on Obama is spot-on:
"The only hope we have is that Obama is a much more progressive person when he is running for office than when he is actually in office. So, perhaps as he is pretending to be a strong progressive on the campaign trail he will accidentally beat the Republicans on some issues he didn't even expect to win on."
I love this guy. He created The Young Turks, the most popular internet news show, and now he's branching out into "classic" TV. He'll be on weekdays at 6 PM on MSNBC. Give it three thumbs up and start watching the show. (I'm not sure if he's on yet or this is a future development. I guess I'll find out tonight. The guide doesn't specify who's doing the 6 PM hour today.) I'm very hopeful about this development. Cenk's way better than Olbermann. Net gain here, not loss.

Update: Seems he got bumped by Tweety, because you really need a guy like Tweety when Egypt goes wild. Sigh. This man doesn't know up from down. Let's hope they let Cenk near the microphones tomorrow.