Did anyone see Mark Halperin on Anderson Cooper? He was apparently great.

[Hamlette]

and he's been awful for a couple of years now.

From Josh:

What alien invaded Mark Halperin's body? On AC360, he trashed McCain/Palin for being phony and dishonest. Then he went after the press for talking about lipstick on the pig, for not calling Palin out on the Bridge to Nowhere, and for letting her get away with such tight press restrictions.

Hardball also went hard on the bridge to nowhere.

and this

Shocked, absolutely shocked.

Watching AC360 on CNN, the last segment ~10 minutes in, Mark Halperin actually made intelligent points regarding the coverage of Palin. In essence, the other 3 candidates have been on the scene for months if not years. Sarah Palin is new to the scene and instead of wasting time on silly stories (putting lipstick on a pig), the real record of Palin has to be discussed.

I can't watch anymore news today. I'm afraid I'll go nuts if I see something like this:

At the gym, I watched a Hardball segment in which Reps. Peter King and Debbie Wasserman Schultz were debating whether it’s true, as Rep. Schultz was claiming, that Barack Obama’s proposals would cut taxes for 95 percent of Americans or whether it’s true, as Rep. King was claiming, that Obama would raise taxes on 100 million Americans. The host, Chris Matthews, just kind of sat there as the two congressmen yelled at each other. Then he brought the segment to the end, remarked on how heated it was, and how both members of congress talk really quickly. Did he sum up by noting that independent analysis from the Tax Policy Center and even the conservative ideologues at National Review have concluded that Schultz is right and King is wrong? Of course he didn’t. And Matthews is a better-than-average TV host.

I think people in the news business ought to ask themselves some questions. If a campaign sends a surrogate to appear on my program and lie to my audience, is that more helpful to the campaign than it would have been to send nobody? If it’s more helpful to send someone, then aren’t I structuring my program in such a way as to encourage campaigns to send people to the studio and lie to my audience? Did I get into this business in order to be complicit in campaigns’ efforts to lie to the American public? Meanwhile, viewers need to take some responsibility of their own. Anyone who has a Nielsen box and watches these kind of shows on cable is doing serious harm to the United States of America and if you can count any Nielsen families among your circle of friends you have a duty to try to make them see the light.

http://yglesias.thinkprogress.org/

Anyway, if anyone saw Halperin.

[feddup]

1. Caught the tail end and he was awesome...

finally someone is calling them on their bald-faced lying and the media's complicity.

[jillan]

2. He was awesome - he said that the other 3 candidates have been under scrutiny for some time, and if

she doesn't think she needs to be held up to the same standards than the media needs to report on that too.

That there is only 57 more days left and the media needs to start talking about issues not distractions (like the pig).

Totally paraphrasing here, but that's the gist of it.

[AtomicKitten]

3. The Media Heathers aren't going to put up with being left out of the loop.

[dchill]

4. Exactly.

[dkf]

5. Debbie Wasserman Schultz kicked Peter King's butt!

She made him so upset he was practically screaming. hahaha.

[Raine]

10. Debbie was just TERRIFIC

that guy was falling about, I loved it! :bounce:

[dkf]

11. She was so calm too.

Damn that was impressive.

[GrizzlyMan]

6. Umm....wait a second

I may not have seen the entire portion(s) of Halperin on 360, but what I saw was him talking about how the Obama campaign "is really off its game" and that the day was a loser for Obama because the media is talking about the piggy line.

[onefreespiritedchick]

7. I saw that

But, during the first segment he was still refreshing for a change.

[MadBadger]

8. He called McCain out twice, using the words Crocodile Tears to describe the Repuke reaction.

[Awsi Dooger]

9. I saw it

Halperin was surprisingly forceful and balanced. Normally I click the channel immediately. But tonight he overshadowed David Gergen from the outset, saying the lipstick on a pig topic was an absurd waste of time by the media, and that Palin warranted serious scrutiny. At that point his slant was pro Obama. But Halperin quickly emphasized that Obama was way off his game.