Brooklyn Mutt

“Particularly for liberals, this is a defining moment in the Obama presidency. If he gives an inch on Medicare you will hear the roar in Washington and around the country.”

“He made three personal political donations to candidates in this last election cycle,” she said. “The reason that resulted in Keith’s suspension is that, here at MSNBC, there is an explicit employee rule against hosts making contributions like that. You can do it if you ask in advance and management tells you ‘O.K.’ That’s what I understand what happened with our morning show host’s political donations in 2006 under previous management. But if you do not ask in advance, you are bound by the rule.”

She said, “I understand this rule. I understand what it means to break this rule. I believe that everybody should face the same treatment under this rule. I also personally believe that the point has been made and we should have Keith back hosting ‘Countdown.’ ”

Ms. Maddow said the following point had been missing in much of the coverage:

“Let this incident lay to rest forever the facile, never-true-anyway, bullpucky, lazy conflation of Fox News and what the rest of us do for a living. I know everybody likes to say, “Oh, that’s cable news. It’s all the same. Fox News and MSNBC, mirror images of each other.”

Let this lay that to rest forever. Hosts on Fox raise money on the air for Republican candidates. They endorse them explicitly; they use their Fox News profile to headline fund-raisers. Heck, there are multiple people being paid by Fox News now essentially to run as presidential candidates. If you count not just their hosts but their contributors, you are looking at a significant portion of the whole lineup of Republican presidential contenders for 2012. They can do that because there’s no rule against that at Fox. They run as a political operation. We’re not.

Yes, Keith’s a liberal, and so am I, and there are other people on this network whose political views are shared openly with you, our beloved viewers. But we are not a political operation. Fox is. We are a news operation. And the rules around here are part of how you know that.”

“The Republicans have their first Senate pickup in Indiana. Evan Bayh — the only Democrat that could have held that Seante seat right now – Evan Bayh knew that, resigned anyway, decided not to run again, helpd onto all his campaign money and did not give any of that campaign money to other Democrats in order for them to try to win their seats, now essentially reinventing himself as a pundit who talks smack about Democrats and how badly they are as a party and how that is seen in the seats they lose, one of which he gave away. So the Democrats are going to miss Evan Bayh’s seat in Indiana. I cannot believe they are going to miss Evan Bayh.”