MSNBC's Geist: CNN has "doomsday on the brain"
On the "Beat the Press" segment of the July 27 edition of MSNBC's Tucker, MSNBC producer Willie Geist discussed a segment of the July 26 edition of CNN's Live From ... in which anchor Kyra Phillips talked about the Apocalypse and the Middle East with Christian authors Jerry Jenkins and Joel C. Rosenberg -- who share the view that the Rapture is nigh. As Media Matters for America noted, Phillips asked Jenkins and Rosenberg if we are "living in the last days" and whether she needed "to start taking care of unfinished business and telling people that I love them and I'm sorry for all the evil things I've done." Geist also mentioned a segment from the July 24 edition of Paula Zahn Now in which, as Media Matters noted, onscreen text read "End of the World?" Geist stated that Phillips "is getting a little nervous" and that CNN "certainly seem[s] to have doomsday on the brain." He concluded that CNN should "lighten up a little bit."
From the July 27 edition of MSNBC's Tucker:
GEIST: Next up: CNN, which seems to be giving undue attention to the Apocalypse theory. For some reason, they keep doing segments questioning whether what's happening in the Middle East is a sign that the world is coming to an end. Looks like anchor Kyra Phillips is getting a little nervous.
PHILLIPS [video clip]: So, Joel, are we living in the last days? I mean, let's talk about the specific signs to watch. You've written about them. What does the Bible say, and are we there? [...] Joel, do I need to start taking care of unfinished business and telling people that I love them and I'm sorry for all the evil things I've done?
GEIST: My gosh. Actually, I'd like to know some of the evil things Kyra Phillips has done. That's just me. I don't know if there is a morale problem over at CNN or what, but they certainly seem to have doomsday on the brain over there. Paula Zahn, three days ago, on Monday, had a whole segment with a banner that said "End of The World?" I know we're in the middle of a very serious war, I recognize that. But lighten up a little bit, guys.
when you make entertainment and no news. The end of the world has been preached for thousands of years, and to people who are in the middle of a war with their families it will certainly look like the end of the world. But here we see an escalation of a war on terror to a war in Iraq to the end of the world. Is this a new selling technique for this war, in which the end of the world can only be averted by this administration? Or is it that people enjoy that the end is near because they are convinced that they go to heaven and others not (just like Jahova's Witnesses and Muslims etc).
Alas. each time the end is hyped (last time in 1999 for the Y2K), people commit suicide or do other sad things. This biblical end however has been hyped for over 30 years and I think that these people are just thrilled that the end is in their days. What kind of rearing and schooling did they have?
They are old and burned out and on a collision course with Mortality, so if they have their druthers, they would rather see the world destroyed than a world without them and their ceaseless greed.
The second I heard a Led Zeppelin song used in a TV ad, I lost all hope for my parents' generation. They are irredeemably evil.
Some of us have been out there butting heads against theses clowns for a long time. Please don't blame all of us for the problems created by one nitwit and his evil minions. I just visited your website and noticed that you seem to be a Vonnegut fan. He's been fighting the sleezeballs even longer than I have. Some older people have younger minds than you realize. I see the problem being all generations. There are old and young people who just don't care.
-So It Goes
You have to generalize. I know there exists a contingent of BBs who are still dedicated to the values they held in the Age of Aquarius. Trouble is, they are not in control.
The curdled cream rises to the top.
The baby boomers didn't take long to go from protesting war and racial injustice to investing in their stock portfolios. There's a very thin line between the Yippies and the Yuppies.
The bright side is that since baby boomers have invested wisely, they'll certainly be retiring soon and, hopefully, relegating themselves to the country club where they can talk about Woodstock, or the Reagan years, or what's wrong with the youth of today.
Yikes.
Pretty crude assertion there, fellas. Say, when you guys want to dig a basement, do you use a nuke? Do you firebomb fireants? Do you pop a pimple with a Black and Decker 3/8ths inch drill?
Our base proclivities are to blame. What you've witnessed in the boomers you'll witness, sooner or later, in yourselves. We're all hardwired for greed and gluttony. We're not programmed to defer gratification.
Feeling smug and superior is gonna get you bushwhacked by greed, gluttony, etc.
There is plenty of blame to spread around here. No one generation is to blame. Apathy knows no age boundaries. I admit, GWB is a member of my generation, but his world and views are so far removed from most other members of my, or any, generation. He was born to wealth, privilege and political power.
In spite of what people think about the those times, it was not like you see in the movies and on TV shows which depict that era. Most people had jobs, values and responsibilities. Some of us also had deep convictions and worked to bring a living wage and a decent education to everyone, to end war, poverty, racism, sexism and all of the other ills of society. A lot of us, even those who hated the war, were caught up and ground up by it, then cast aside afterwards. All that I, or anyone for that matter, can say is that I did my part. We as individuals didn't fail. Our nation failed. Every age group was equally responsible.
But those days are gone. There is work to be done TODAY! I don't see enough conviction and determination from anyone or any age group today.
Now, I'm going to exaggerate for effect, as Fantagor and Raskol77 seemed to do:
The only difference between GW and Fanta77 is circumstances.
Just as the only difference between the Auschwitz guard and the Auschwitz inmate is circumstances.
Fanta77, if you're not afraid of your base proclivities, then you're just flat-faced, big-eyed puppies, but one day, you'll be passing some storefront and catch your reflection and see that you've become larnyx-crushing pitbulls...or pension-crushing CEOs. Everything that you loathe in the boomers is in you, unless, you're keyboard-saavy dolphins: especially talented members of an entirely different species.
But from the tail end of the baby boom. My long experience indicates that I couldn't have less in common with most of those of the front end of the boom (like Bush).
My mom went to high school with Vonnegut, and growing up, our family read everything he wrote as fast as he wote it. Maybe that helps explain the difference among the boomers: our societal values skipped over a half of a generation.
I like Cadillacs (the new ones) AND Zep. Then again, I missed being a boomer by a couple of years.
Not all baby boomers are evil. I was born at the end of the baby boom. When I was a little girl I marveled at the conviction of the 60's generation. Nothing like that has ever happened again. They really made a difference. But like you, I am also bothered that some of these same people that wanted to preserve our rights then are now so willing to forget all that in the name of greed
Not to ape Boomer Boy Don Henley, but I saw a Deadhead sticker on a Mercedes station wagon the other day. It then disappeared into a vortex of irony.
Thank God, one of the cable network presumed "News Shows" has had their coffee today instead of the "talking points koolaid."
Onward Christian Soldier marching as to War!!
Happy Thoughts;
Dan Grady
Face it, it's the only way to prevent Armageddon.
perhaps since republicans wants to militarize space, we can say: SAVE THE UNIVERSE, VOTE DEMOCRAT!
The end is seemingly only coming in the US, because I have not seen others bother about it. This war in Isreal is relatively minor considering all the other heavy fighting they did against the neighbours to defend their country.
We have people in leadership positions who not only believe in the coming "end of days", but they seem to be pushing us in that direction.
Oh, how I long for the days when the biggest spiritual question in the White House was whether or not Nancy Reagan consulted astrologists...
whether Eleanor Roosevelt could fly (or was gay, I don't remember).
The flying issue was the subject of a Saturday Night Live Skit, pre-1980, and as one of my friends has noted over the decades, "I don't believe it was ever conclusively proved that she couldn't."
The gay isue has been discussed in a number of books, with conclusions ranging from possibly to probably not, with most writers, no matter where they stand, noting that women raised or born in the Victorian era expressed themselves differently in letters (the basis for questions about ER's sexuality).
That and more on tonight's eleven o'clock eyewitness news!
I wanna be... I wanna be... I wanna be like FOX.
'nuff said
Maybe they just don't get Fox News where Geist lives. What CNN is doing is trying to outFox Fox. Nobody talks about the End of Days more than Fox News.
If you believe this is the end of the world, then the terrorists win.
Can't blame the conservative media for everything- even Christopher Columbus got warned about the end of the world, and Fox wasn't around then.He didn't sail off of it,but his detractors probably explained that somehow.
Good to see 500 years of science hasn't got in the way of the true believers.
Maybe Fox was around back then.
The last thing that this smirking greedhead wants to see is Jesus' sorrowful eyes. Fooling christians is not the same thing as fooling Christ.
Besides, what could heaven heaven even offer a Bush? Paradise would be a severe reduction in his living standard. If he couldn't be rich & powerful & lording it over the 'common' element, then what's the point of even going? And passing through the eye of a needle would naturally ruin all his best & most expensive threads.
No, Bush would be happier in hell. He'd be in his own element. He & satan would no doubt get on famously. Sure, there'd be a little tension when Dubya' would mirthfully challenge Old Scratch to match HIS accomplishments in Iraq & New Orleans, but the devil would understand.
Yes, all you fundies! It's the End Times, just like in the bible--or at least the arbitrarily cut'n'pasted version of same perpetrated By Hal Lindsay. Yep, wars and rumors of wars, and the Antichrist is hov ering in the wings! ((I hear the smart money is on it being Lance Bass.)
But--uh-oh, what's this? Gosharootie, still not Raptured?
Hmmm. You know, the faithful are all supposed to be yanked aloft before any of the bad stuff really starts!
And if you, my friends, are still down here, there's only one conclusion, isn't there?
That you're a bunch of stinking hypocrites , and you've missed out, and are going to die amid the tribulations with the rest of us wretched sinners?
Is that what's bothering you?
*which is a sacred honorific applied to the perfectly ascended slackmaster, J.R. 'Bob' Dobbs.