Have you had a chance to rate anything lately? JK! I know you have because I have. Every visit to a retailer, every online purchase, every interaction with customer service results in an email requesting feedback, and often several if I don’t reply. I rarely do. It’s sort of like reading those legal agreements associated with every software upgrade, which is to say, it could take up your entire life if you actually did it.

Just check I Accept! They already have all your data anyway.

However, there are some things I would LOVE to rate yet I can’t. A lot of those are news programs I hear on the radio or watch on TV, which don’t even offer the thumbs up/down you get with streaming shows. NPR is usually the main offender. I have a habit of listening to it from years past, when it didn’t have commercials and employed actual journalists who interviewed principals on air live.

Now of course, NPR has regular commercials by sponsors, celebrity hosts with neither radio nor content skills (eg Ira Flatow or Meghna Chakrabarti), and a stable of young radio announcers who “interview” each other using scripts.

I’m not sure I’ve ever heard a journalist-journalist interview that was informative or interesting, but I am positive I haven’t heard a scripted one that was. Those kids may have journalism training, but they aren’t actors or writers, and you can practically hear the paper rustling. JK! Of course they are reading from their tablets.

The gang I really want to rate is MSNBC. While NPR is still trying for the neutral voice in a foolishly rigorous way–every climate change feature includes someone from the opposition, probably because these kids do all their research online where Mother Earth and World 2 have roughly equal coverage–MSNBC has always been unapologetically partisan, politically blue and very woke. I think NPR correspondents are overpaid, but I know MSNBC anchors are, since some MSNBC salaries are public. They’re mostly 7-figure amounts, though rumor has it that Rachel Maddow’s is now into 8-figures.

I stopped watching MSNBC during the pandemic, when the bubble enclosing their anchors started choking their brains. Every night they were ranting about people who wouldn’t stay home from work to keep others “safe.” Later we found out that over 90 % of workers were unable to work from home. I was one of those, working in a provider’s office for a while, then for Cal-Fire, then in a grocery store. All essential jobs! During the pandemic and after, there was nary a word of thanks or even acknowledgement to all of us who enabled those bubble babies to work from home.

After the recent presidential debate MSNBC doubled down. Big Biden backers until then, its anchors lined up to throw Biden under the bus. Partly it was the need to let everyone know how many Dem decision makers each had on speed-dial, since like all modern journalists they compete on follower counts and insider access.

However, they weren’t alone. NYT has jumped on board, as has the entire continent of Europe. This must be an extraordinary moment for the MAGA movement, as the Blue press competes to cancel Biden. It’s a classic shoot-yourself-in-the-foot move, since no Red state is going to put a non-primary-winning Dem on the ballot. Continuing with the self-inflicted wound theme, this wasn’t even necessary: Is it really impossible to make the case that a reality TV star glibly spouting a fictional script is a worse choice than a seasoned politician with a record of accomplishment who had a badly-timed cold?

Blue Media could learn something about loyalty from Trump supporters.