On the west coast, it was just 9 PM!

WEDNESDAY, MARCH 1, 2017

What our own "news channel" did: Donald J. Trump finished his speech at roughly 10:15 Eastern.

Until midnight, Brian, Rachel and Chris—and the whole rollicking gang, of course—proceeded to pretend to discuss the speech.

Jocularity continues to be a stock in trade for this rollicking gang of "our MSNBC friends," as Rachel tagged them last week. Last night, the network's suits finally stopped pretending about their programming thrust.

We refer to the hour Chris Matthews hosted at 12 midnight. Which is, just for the record, still 9 PM on the coast.

In Los Angeles, San Francisco, Seattle, it was just 9 PM. How was The One True Liberal Channel reviewing the ballyhooed speech?

The suits had Matthews do an hour with no one but comedians and actors for guests! One long segment belonged to Kathy Griffin, who has no political background, expertise or knowledge. Her lengthy chain of "analyses" started off like this:

MATTHEWS (2/28/17): What did you think of the show tonight, the show that went on in the Congress? What did you make of it?

GRIFFIN: Well, it was actually shorter than I thought. I actually thought, "Oh no, this fool is going to go on for four or five hours. I'm going to have to give him the light?"

But you know Chris, what an idiot! I mean, we've got to watch this idiot for, you know, an hour and nine minutes. He just says one hateful thing after the other. He's so embarrassing.

Just from the beginning, you know, Melania comes in with the sequin jacket, and all the white guys are like, "Hey, she's hot! Maybe if I'm like him, I can get her." The whole sham from the beginning!

But you know, as I was watching the so-called speech...

"But you know!" Ladies and gents, in her opening minute, she said it two different times!

Meanwhile, were all the white guys saying that about Melania? Was Schumer saying it? What about the blacks?

At any rate, this is the bullshit you were served if you tuned to the "liberal" channel at 9 PM on the coast.

Griffin said that she'd been forced to watch a "so-called speech." Two hours later, we watched her on a so-called news network, a so-called network which was conducting a pseudo-discussion.

It was still just 9 PM on the coast. People tuning in on the coast saw a full hour of crap like this, on the cable news channel which once gave us Our Own Rhodes Scholar.

The dangerous dumbing-down of the culture has been a widespread corporate choice. The hour Matthews ran last night was about as dumb as it gets.

Matthews spoke to no one who wasn't a comedian or an actor. Only one guest was a Trump supporter. We didn't catch his name, but he came on right at the end of the hour, speaking for roughly one minute.

As bad as Griffin was, Rob Reiner may have been worse. On balance, we'd have to say that he was worse, because he has a political background and Griffin doesn't.

(By the way: when did Michael Moore become a starry-eyed Hillary lover?)

Your culture is being dumbed way down so people like Matthews, Williams and Maddow can continue to roll around in big giant piles of cash. With the hour that Matthews did, MSNBC surrendered any semblance of any pretense.

They're running a gong-show, just like Trump. Warning:

Trump does it better.

Horrible, terrible stuff: Griffin was a corporate-culture embarrassment. To watch her twelve minutes, click here. In fairness, she didn't book herself.

Reiner may have been worse. For some of his masterfully hackneyed remarks, you can just click this.

This program was an embarrassment during the midnight hour here on our sprawling campus. It was still just 9 PM on the coast. What did it look like there?