Palin disses President on Today! How dare she?

Out of curiosity, and I must be a fool with masochistic tendencies, I tuned into the Today Show.

It took about five minutes of Sarah Palin's high-pitched, whiny voice that said nothing of substance, to make me return to Good Morning America which for years has been my early morning news standby. Five minutes of commercial advertising caused me to turn that off too. 

As a side note: I did watch GMA yesterday. I found the addition of Katie Couric to be a breath of fresh air. Together with George Stephanopoulos and Jake Tapper doing the news was the kind of professional programming I want to see more of. 

Too many advertisements detract from the programming however, so if I want news, the internet is and will remain, my medium of choice. 

There, I can watch what I want and ignore that which I don't. Fortunately, I am smart enough to choose to read and/or watch even some things I disagree with. To me, the internet is a learning tool. It is not just an entertainment resource, although it does an admirable job of that as well. 

This morning, I saw a clip of the Today Show. To see what I missed, I listened as Matt Lauer interviewed Palin just prior to her taking the seat as his co-host. He asked her if she was happy that Mitt Romney would be the GOP nominee. She stonewalled him, just like she did Katie Couric so long ago. Lauer pressed her. Not only did she refer to the "lamestream media," but she referred to any GOP candidate when she said, "anybody but Obama." 

Palin's blatant rant really annoyed me. Perhaps it is because I once did news reporting for a living. When I interviewed someone, I always put my personal feelings aside. They have no place in professional news gathering. It wasn't always easy, but to me, credibility was much more important than simply spouting my opinion. (Perhaps this is why I love blogging.) There is a big difference between news and commentary. To me, both my personal opinion and news requires credible research, but that's just me. 

NBC, which was once a credible news outlet now has stooped to the level of Fox News, which is not news at all. It does little or no research on its news stories and obviously its television personalities require no credibility for which to derive their opinions. 

Back to Palin, the Fox News transplant to NBC's Today Show, I was appalled to see a co-anchor diss the President of the United States that I plan to erase NBC from my programming lineup.

It is frightening to think there is a relationship between the mundane NBC and the brilliant MSNBC, which is chock full of news and opinion that is really worth listening to. The difference here is that opinions on MSNBC are backed up by real facts, rather than the kind of made up stuff, like what is on Fox. 

The good stuff must come from the Microsoft portion of the arrangement. The NBC side must be the one that requires advertising for the Keystone Pipeline and the beauty of natural gas extraction or fracking. ARG!!! I feel as though my senses are being assaulted by these greedmongers.

If NBC wanted to have better ratings, which is obviously why it pulled this stunt to put Sarah Palin on the morning news, why didn't it just put out a better show?

I suppose eyes affixed with dollar signs simply cannot see what is plainly in front of them. 

The bottom line isn't really making money. The bottom line is earning money. Put out a good product that is worth buying and people will buy it.