Donahue

I finally caught Donahue's new show on MSNBC tonight and was not terribly impressed (the show's transcript is here).

His first guest was Ann Coulter and, frankly, I thought Phil was way out of line for confronting her as aggressively as he did. Basically, he attacked her with prepared material that wasn't relevant to her reason for visiting the show (to plug Slander) and rarely allowed her to get a word in otherwise.

Now, I'm not going soft here and if anyone deserves to get attacked on television, it's probably Coulter. But Donahue seemed to use the same bullying techniques you normally see at work on Fox. If liberals want to get tough, surely they don't need to resort to the same deplorable tactics used over at that fair 'n' balanced network. I would hope Jeff Cohen and Co. could do better.

To be honest, I didn't pay much attention to the rest of the show, except to tune in every once in a while. What I did see, beyond Coulter, was better - more informative, probing, and "civil" - but nothing that shook my world.

To get an impression of the way others have reacted to the show, check out what Eric Boehlert, Ben Fritz and Mark Jurkowitz have to say. For more reviews, browse some of the links over at PEJ from the past 3 days or so.