In other news, the sun will rise in about an hour

Maybe it's all those job cuts at the New York Times. But tucked away below the fold today is a rather peculiar article expressing wonder that MSNBC, which despite three hours of the Idiocy of Joe Scarborough (or if you prefer, Joe Scarborough's Presidential Exploratory Committee's Fifteen Free TV Hours Every Week), and Chris Matthews' Excoriation of Bad Girls Who Get Themselves Pregnant (sic), is regarded as "the liberal network" actually criticizes the Obama Administration -- from the left:

While much attention has been paid to the feud between the Fox News Channel and the White House, the Obama administration is now facing criticism of a different sort from Ms. Maddow, Keith Olbermann and other progressive hosts on MSNBC, who are using their nightly news-and-views-casts to measure what she calls “the distance between Obama’s rhetoric and his actions.”

While they may agree with much of what Mr. Obama says, they have pressed him to keep his campaign promises about health care, civil liberties and other issues.

“I don’t think our audience is looking for unequivocal ‘rah-rah,’ ” said Ms. Maddow, who calls herself a liberal but not a Democrat.

The spectacle of Democrats sniping at one another is not new, but having a TV home for it is. MSNBC — sometimes critically called the “home team” for supporters of Mr. Obama — has even hit upon the theme with a promotional tagline, “pushing back on the president,” in commercials for “Hardball,” Chris Matthews’s political hour.

“Our job is not to echo the president’s talking points,” said Phil Griffin, the president of MSNBC. “Our job is to hold whoever’s in power’s feet to the fire.”

I suppose that when you're in a profession which has decided that "some say..." is an authoritative source, and that known lies have to be given the exact same weight as the truth simply because some lunatic in Pocatello said it at a teabag rally (or Fox News said it at any time of the day or night), the idea that it is possible to knock your own teem must seem rather alien. Or perhaps it's just that "journalists" like Brian Stelter, who write this piece, are no longer capable of stringing two thoughts together. But the fact that it is news that the most liberal of MSNBC's hosts are ctiticizing Barack Obama ought to underscore just HOW much Fox News is nothing but a water-carrier for the GOP.

For all that lazy so-called journalists elsewhere insist on the meme that MSNBC and Fox News are exactly the same, the Liberal Trinity of MSNBC in the personae of Rachel Maddow, Keith Olbermann and the I Still Don't Trust Him Ed Schultz, are quite open about the fact that their shows are offering analysis of news through the perspective of their shows' hosts, rather than God's Own Truth As Reported By Sean Hannity and Glenn Beck. Fox News will trot out Greta Van Susteren, who I guess constitute "balance" simply because she's not totally off her rocker, or the pathetic Alan Colmes or the embarrassing Juan Williams, as evidence that they're "balanced." But that's sort of like saying that a school's pupils embraces diversity because the school's star linebacker beats up the kid with cerebral palsy every day. Every day at MSNBC, after I Got My Job Because My Dad Is a Raconteur Willie Geist fills up a half-hour of airtime, you get three hours of Joe Scarborough clutching his pearls about Barack Obama bowing to the much-shorter Japanese Prime Minister or whatever offends him that day.

The day that Fox News replaces its Three Morning Idiots with Break Room Live with Maron & Seder, then we can talk.