What Is Wrong With Cable News?

How is it that people like Cliff May keep showing up on MSNBC-TV after comments like this on the Tucker Carlson show yesterday? I thought I had heard it wrong but evidently not. I want some women on TV--are you listening, Mika Brzezinski?--to try calling Rudy Giuliani a Penis-American and see how long you remain on the air.

At least you'd get some respect, which you don't get from the boys on the Morning Joe show.

I understand MSNBC is trying to be provocative. Hence the Keith Olbermann and Dan Abrams' routines of attacking Rush Limbaugh and other rightwingers. (Dan's mocking of one of Fox's "you rock" guys was hilarious; Olbermann succeeds in eviscerating the rightwingers almost every time he opens his mouth. But there's provocative and then there's just tasteless; Tucker Carlson and Joe Scarborough routinely, and even Keith when he uses Michael Musto, are simply tacky.

Here's what happened when Tucker Carlson began talking about Hillary Clinton and her alleged attempt to woo the women's vote:

...this is an amazing statistic: 94 percent of women say they'd be more likely to vote if a woman were on the ballot. I think of all the times I voted for people just because they're male. You know? The ballot comes up, and I'm like, 'Wow. He's a dude. I think I'll vote for him. We've got similar genitalia. I'm -- he's getting my vote.' "

After saying that "the Clinton campaign says: 'Hillary isn't running as a woman,' " Carlson said: "Well, that's actually completely false, considering the Hillary campaign -- and I get their emails -- relentlessly pushes the glass ceiling argument. 'You should vote for her because she's a woman.' They say that all the time.

And Clifford May, ex-New York Times reporter and alleged pundit and serious thinker, replies:

At least call her a Vaginal-American, as opposed to --

Tucker:

Is that the new phrase?

MAY:

I think that is, yeah.

Somedays watching cable is like having a front-row seat at peep show in a men's locker room.