Newsbusters reports that Morning Joe brought on Terry Jones, the Gainseville, Florida pastor now famous for the Koran burning hubbub, so that he could be lectured on Christianity by departing Newsweek editor Jon Meacham.  So far this is all SOP at MSNBC.  Then, in what will strike most of you as a surreal (and perhaps unprecedented) occurrence that ought to go down in MSNBC lore, Jones’s feed is cut off before he gets in a single word.

From the Newsbusters write up:

In what had to be the ultimate in condescension and elitism, MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” brought Pastor Terry Jones on the show merely to lecture him on Christianity, cutting him off before he could even respond. Co-host Mika Brzezinski explained to him “we don’t really need to hear anything else, so thanks.” Newsbusters’ Mark Finkelstein first briefly reported on this segment this morning.

Panel member Jon Meacham, the departing editor of Newsweek, briefly preached to Pastor Jones on Jesus’ New Testament message of love and forgiveness and then appealed to him “as a fellow Christian” to not follow through with his threats to burn the Koran. Then, before Pastor Jones responded, his live feed was cut and co-host Mika Brzezinski continued with the show, saying that they did not need to listen to Pastor Jones.

Now all radio and television shows have to cut off a guest from time to time due to time constraints, etc., but it’s not every day you see a guest invited on, talked at, then cut off, all before he has a chance to utter even a greeting, much less a defense.  What’s more, Brzezinski emphatically explained MSNBC’s treatment of their guest by stating, “we don’t really need to hear anything else.”

You know MSNBC has sunk pretty low if they can make the nutty Pastor Jones seem like a sympathetic figure, even if for just a brief moment.

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As a proud former staffer of Time Magazine, where I spent 16 mostly terrific years working with some of the finest writers and journalists who ever graced the business — you’re not going to get any snark from me about Time at the end of its glory years in the 1980s under the supervision of Time Inc. editor-in-chief Henry Grunwald and the magazine’s great managing editor, Ray Cave — I read the following story with a touch of sadness:

The Washington Post Co. is putting Newsweek up for sale in hopes that another owner can figure out how to stem losses at the 77-year-old weekly magazine.

The publishing industry has been struggling as businesses cut back on ad budgets during the recession. But Newsweek, along with Time magazine and U.S. News & World Report, faces a particular challenge finding a relevant niche in the age of up-to-the-second online news. Once handy digests of the week’s events, they have been assailed by competitors on the Web that pump out a constant stream of news and commentary.

Despite staff cuts, Newsweek has remained a drag on its parent company, which is also struggling with ad declines at its namesake newspaper.

Translation: Newsweek is pretty much dead, and now the only question is who’s going to rouge the corpse for a few more years, if anybody, to keep its collection of Morning Joe talking heads with at least the fig leaf of meaningful employment before the final axe falls.

In the New York Times, David Carr has some thoughts: (more…)

You probably already know that Sam Tanenhaus, the editor of the New York Times’s Week in Review and Book Review sections, published a book last year that must have seemed like a good idea at the time he pitched it and wrote it.  Called The Death of Conservatism, it won Tanenhaus rapturous reviews from the usual suspects on the left side of the aisle. Newsweek’s Jon Meacham even published a sympathetic interview in Aug. 2009 with the author, headlined Requiem for the Right: the biolgrapher of Whittaker Chambers and William Buckley on a dying movement. An excerpt:

One criticism of your book will no doubt be that you are an egghead sellout from The New York Times and aren’t a true conservative anyway.

Egghead? I wish. I’m a working journalist, plus biographer and self-taught historian. I claim no expertise as a political thinker, and even less in the realm of policy. As for my having sold out to the Times, anyone masochistic enough to review my writings over the years will see my point of view has changed very little.

Some on the Right immediately took exception to Tanenhaus’ argument, such as James Piereson in the pages of the The New Criterion:

Conservatism, moreover, is now a permanent and enduring aspect of American political life, supported by millions of Americans and defended by a large network of writers, journals, and think tanks. There is, however, a more important reason for its enduring appeal among Americans. Conservatism in America deploys the principles of tradition, reason, and orderly change in defense of liberal institutions—the Constitution, representative government, liberty and equal rights, the rule of law. It is generally the conservative, not the modern liberal, who emphasizes the inspired example of the founding fathers, the words of the Constitution, and the sacrifices made to build free institutions.

Well, that was last year and this is now: (more…)