Tonight Maddow focused her whole show on the new coronavirus and our federal government's inept response so far. Some might consider her tone unnecessarily alarming but I think she and her guests made their case that the federal government simply is not sufficiently staffed up to cope with the crisis, and the staffing (and funding) shortfall is squarely Donald Trump's fault. (Perhaps needless to say, that doesn't surprise me: if I expected anything from the Ignoramus-in-Chief, it was a total inability either to cope with scientific fact or to take expert advice.)
Her show segued into The Last Word, guest-hosted by Ali Velshi. Velshi had Anthony Fauci, a noted public-health expert, as one of his two guests. Fauci had baarely completed his opening remarks when Velshi jumped in to mention that the Democratic primary debate had ended and that programming would now switch to post-debate coverage.
What the fuck?
It's bad enough that MSNBC, like its two major competitors, is fixated on the horse-race aspect of the presidential primaries. That's asinine but in general that's not too harmful. It even has one positive consequence: it frees up time I otherwise might spend watching Maddow.
However, when a substantial chunk of the network's audience has just spent an hour absorbing the gravity of an incipient public-health crisis, jumping back to the horse race isn't just jarring, it's journalistically irresponsible.
To the geniuses making editorial decisions at MSNBC I have one request:
Get your heads out of your asses!
Nobody will remember or care about the horse race a month from now.
However, we will remember the night you idiots decided to place your moronic horse race above a worsening public health crisis.
What is wrong with you?
Get your fucking priorities straight, for Christ's sake.
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