In your book, “Knowing Your Value,” now in paperback, you write that every TV executive who has ever insulted your appearance has been a woman. Is there no sisterhood in television news?

No, there isn’t. Women play into each other’s weaknesses. Women worry about being liked, about making sure everyone’s comfortable in the room and about being seen as bitchy. We worry about that stuff, and it gets in the way of the goal that we’re trying to accomplish at the negotiating table.

Obviously this is a bit internally contradictory—you can’t both be worrying about pleasing everyone and shivving every lady within knifing distance. But it doesn’t seem precisely implausible that in an industry with a lot of male executives—7 of MSNBC’s 11 executives—and, Rachel Maddow and Melissa Harris-Perry notwithstanding, a sense that women fit into certain slots and have to look certain ways, women might get competitive with each other in ways that could turn from the professional to the personal. Women are entirely capable of doing (or as we’ve seen in this television season, producing) bad, sexist things. And there is a core contradiction in the idea that we’re supposed to be all sisterhood is powerful and also be more assertive and look out for our own because no one will do it for us. And of course, this is a clever way for Brzezinski to suggest that it’s other women in the media who are a problem. Some days, being a woman in the media is like living in an Escher painting of infinitely looping wrong moves and second-guesses.

“Jarrod works for a company that the government contracts through, and we live in New Mexico — we’re actually protected, we don’t have to worry too much about being discriminated against. However, in June we’re moving to Florida where that protection, we’ll no longer have that,” Sewell said. “Without this administrative action, Jarrod could lose his job and then where would this family be?” Watch it:

Last week, a group of 72 lawmakers led by Rep. Frank Pallone (D-NJ) called on Obama to sign the measure. “This order would extend important workplace protections to millions of Americans, while at the same time laying the groundwork for Congressional passage of the Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA), a goal that we share with you,” the lawmakers wrote, noting that the initiative would also build on President Johnson’s Executive order “prohibiting federal contractors from discriminating against employees based on race, color, religion, sex, or national origin.”

As a candidate in 2008, Obama committed to supporting a “formal written policy of non-discrimination that includes sexual orientation and gender identity or expression … for all Federal contractors.” Meanwhile, over 100,000 have signed a Freedom To Work Change.org petition urging the President to take action.

CUPP: Here’s what I find infuriating. We have a long and glorious tradition in this country of questioning science. We’ve been questioning science in fact for centuries, asking is science right on this? The idea that science is some unimpeachable institution that cannot be questioned flies in fact in the face of the bedrock of the scientific method, which is skepticism. Whether we are trying to disprove science as junk science or exposing certain science as immoral. I’m thinking of eugenics here, population control. The idea that when a Republican does it is somehow scary or backwards, is exactly why the public is skeptical of science as having been politicized because of suggestions like this that Republicans writ large are afraid of science.

WAGNER: I mean honestly. We have seen Newt Gingrich on the couch with Nancy Pelosi talking about climate change.

CUPP: There have been, to quote Rick Santorum, phony studies on climate change. East Anglia University I should mention!

WAGNER: And that study –

CUPP: Every time science has been corrupted by politics, everyone in the scientific community should be worried!

Watch it:

As Wagner was evidently trying to point out, the hacked emails from East Anglia University were shown by repeated independent investigation to show nothing other than private conversations among ethical scientists doing valid scientific work, despite a well-funded smear campaign to distort the contents of the emails.

“It’s good to be open-minded,” Mooney responded, “but at some point you have to respect the process and the scientific consensus that emerges. That’s what doesn’t happen from the right.”

“The Island President” opens this weekend in New York City, San Francisco, and Los Angeles, and next week in Washington DC and San Diego.

Martin has merited coverage by the New York Times, the Washington Post, and USA Today. The story has been covered by all three broadcast networks and extensively on cable. But there is one outlet that has barely mentioned Trayvon Martin — Fox News.

Here’s a breakdown of the coverage of Trayvon Martin on the three major cable networks from the day of his death through today at noon:

“So were it me, and I ran a radio station or whatever, I would make him go down there and apologize to her face-to-face. He owns a Gulfstream 4, get on it, go to Washington, take her lunch, tell her, ‘look, I’m sorry I said this stuff and I’ll never do it again,” Imus said. He recalled that when he made offensive remarks about the Rutgers women’s basketball team, referring to them as “nappy headed hoes,” “Look at what I did. It was a lame attempt to be funny, and it was three words. And I went and met with these people after I’d been fired…If he was on my radio station, he wouldn’t be on it.”

Imus’s criticism also illustrates that Limbaugh is held to different standards than his fellow commentators on radio and television. Here are some of the punishments Limbaugh’s counterparts have faced for ugly sexual remarks about women:

-In 2009, after Imus made his remarks about the Rutgers basketball team, CBS Radio suspended him for two weeks without pay, MSNBC stopped simulcasting the program on television, and CBS eventually fired him even though his program netted $15 million in annual revenue. Imus apologized at the time and publicly acknowledged his comments were “really stupid.”

-Last May, MSNBC suspended host Ed Schultz for a week after he used language similar to Limbaugh’s during his radio show. Talking about Laura Ingrahm, a staple of right-wing radio, he described her as “this right-wing slut, what’s her name? Laura Ingraham? Yeah, she’s a talk slut.” He apologized to Ingraham on television, calling his language “vile and inappropriate,” and saying “It was wrong, uncalled for, and I recognize the severity of what I said. I apologize to you, Laura, and ask for your forgiveness.”

-In February, Clear Channel suspended California radio hosts John Kobylt and Ken Chiampou for two days after a segment about Whitney Houston’s death in which Kobylt imagined what it must have been like to be Houston’s friends, saying: “It’s like, ‘ah Jesus, here comes the crack ho again. What’s she gonna do? Oh, look at that, she’s doing handstands next to the pool. Very good, crack ho. nice.’ After a while, everybody’s exhausted. And then you find out she’s dead.” The hosts agreed to attend sensitivity training and bring on guests to discuss why their remarks were so ugly.

Fluke was asked today whether she thought Limbaugh should be fired. She said that was a choice for Clear Channel and Limbaugh’s advertisers. But we’ll ask for her: what makes Limbaugh immune—thus far—from punishment by his employer for an ugly, extended personal attack on a woman performing her civic responsibilities? Maybe it’s that, given the profits Limbaugh rakes in, Clear Channel’s established the price of a woman’s reputation.

However repellent some of his views, he is intellectually honest. Yes, publicly bigoted, sometimes outrageous, a flame-thrower, a reactionary who flirted at times with what only can be called neo-fascism. But here’s another thing he has always been: true to his own ideas and a gifted writer. He truly believes what he says and has read and researched a huge amount and has thought carefully about his extreme out-of-the-mainstream views. He is a serious figure in that respect. Compared with Al Sharpton or Ed Schultz, he is a paragon of intellectual integrity. He is not a propagandist. He is a passionate writer who loves nothing more than a good argument with a worthy opponent – and he has a serious sense of humor to boot. That his ideas are often repelling should precisely be why he should stay on MSNBC and defend his views against the smartest critiques that can be found. We should stop silencing people and keep debating them.

And from Buchanan’s now-former colleagues at MSNBC, Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski:

Everyone at Morning Joe considers Pat Buchanan to be a friend and a member of the family. Even though we strongly disagree with the contents of Pat’s latest book, Mika and I believe those differences should have been debated in public. An open dialogue with Morning Joe regulars like Al Sharpton and Harold Ford, Jr. could have developed into an important debate on the future of race relations in America. Because we believe that sunlight is the best disinfectant, Mika and I strongly disagree with this outcome. We understand that the parting was amicable. Still, we will miss Pat.

Sunlight is the best disinfectant only if the ideas at hand have actual traction and need to be dislodged. Nobody takes seriously the ideas that Jerry Sandusky’s alleged abuse and rape of children has any connection to marriage equality for gay couples, or that Anders Brevik, the Norway terrorist, has the right worldview. Their credibility has nowhere to go but up, and lending someone a seat at the table confers some of that credibility, even if it’s only to acknowledge that the idea has power that’s dangerous. That risk should be weighed against the possible benefit of debunking the most marginalized, weak ideas by debating them in public.

Suicide of a Superpower may have been more shocking because it pulled so many of Buchanan’s ideas into one place, but the concepts that Buchanan espoused on MSNBC and in his other writings for years were hardly a constructive part of the national conversation: my colleague Adam Peck’s detailed some of most shocking statements here. In 2006, he said that accusing then-Rep. Harold Ford of sexual laciviousness wasn’t racially coded because he “is a guy that likes Playboy bunnies. Almost all of them are white.” He suggested that then-Sen. Hillary Clinton and Rep. Nancy Pelosi were soft on inappropriate sexual advances towards Congressional pages because they’d marched in gay pride parades with the North American Man-Boy Love Association. On Chris Matthews’ show, Buchanan described immigration as a purposeful invasion of American soil. Off-network, he suggested that Anders Breivik, who committed last summer’s terrible terrorist attack in Norway may have been correct about the threat of a multi-cultural and multi-faith Europe.

In addition to being reprehensible, these ideas don’t display any sort of creative thinking or coherent worldview on policy or politics. They just represent an overarching fear of difference, and an attempt to legitimate ugly knee-jerk reactions. Even if you leave out the ugly conclusions Buchanan reached, it’s not clear why this quality of political thought and constant default to stereotype without analysis are valuable, worthy of not just the salary but the status that comes with a contributor position at MSNBC. Surely that money could have been spent elevating talented and creative thinkers for whom a slot on MSNBC would be a blessing, rather than Buchanan, who had his post by virtue of his run for president rather than any ongoing contributions. But then, when it comes to conservatives, perhaps Buchanan’s the best MSNBC could sign up given the competition from Fox News, which has a tendency to lock up conservative superstars quickly, leaving MSNBC to pick from the Michael Steeles of the wannabe conservative commentariat.

Buchanan’s tenure at MSNBC seems like a warning about trying to balance out a group of reasonable liberals with a single contributor or a small group of wildly conservative commentators. Maybe the virulence of his views was inoculate the network from demands that they bring on more conservative contributors. But that risk doesn’t seem worth it if it means keeping alive views after the American consensus rejected them. It would be unfortunate if MSNBC slowed that process by keeping Buchanan on the air for a decade even after the political mainstream recognized his ideas for what they were.

In recent years, politics has largely been the way that news channels have defined themselves. Fox News’ brand is built on being a conservative attack machine; MSNBC’s become the home of wonky, enthusiastic liberalism; while Current TV is trying to market itself to a new generation of viewers as an aggressively progressive alternative to MSNBC and CNN worth seeking out affirmatively. If Huffington Post went progressive, it might be smart: it could snag those viewers that Current TV thinks is theirs, but in a model that acknowledges that those same young viewers are also the cord-cutters whose reluctance to pay for cable has an entire industry jittery. Politics could also be a wedge, a way to attract a certain core of viewers who are looking for something specific in their news coverage while HuffPo Streaming Network builds out its strength in other market areas.

But Huffington Post may not actually have to do that, at this point. Now that it’s done consolidating its channels with AOL, Huffington Post has a ton of disparate reader streams in place, reading about everything from the 2012 election cycle, to divorce, to celebrity crotch shots. HPSN can embed relevant programming on the relevant Huffington Post channels, pulling those readers seamlessly over to the programs that their reading habits suggest they’ll like, and hoping those reader/viewers will stick around for the next hour of programming as well. If they didn’t have to explicitly establish a political point of view, that could be a strength in terms of audience development. But it would be too bad from a progressive thinking point of view. If Current TV is going to be tied to the airwaves, it would be great to have progressives working on a new kind of cable news for an audience more dedicated the cords into their routers than the ones into their televisions.

SCARBOROUGH: That is the most shameful demagoguery that I have heard on the campaign trail yet this year. To tell senior citizens that the program that is going to bankrupt America unless we figure out a way to bend the cost curve, is going to be protected forever and can you believe that Barack Obama cut $500 billion from it? It’s just unspeakable…it is unspeakable, because this country is going bankrupt and Mitt Romney is trying to scare senior citizens — you know what? It’s what we called Mediscare in ’95 and ’96. It was pathetic when Bill Clinton did it it’s pathetic when Mitt Romney does it, it’s pathetic when he does it because of Medicare Advantage. Pathetic.

Watch it:

“And Mitt Romney’s on record as supporting Paul Ryan’s plan, which as far as I remember it, actually takes huge, makes huge savings/cuts to Medicare,” New York Magazine’s John Heilemann added. Indeed, the Ryan plan fundamentally transforms Medicare’s structure into a guaranteed contribution program, significantly reduces its growth rate, and actually maintains many of the savings included in the Affordable Care Act. Romney himself has introduced very similar reductions as part of his own Medicare proposal.

The question is how Current can distinguish itself from its competitors in substance as well as tone—and get viewers to connect the dot from the news they’re watching now on MSNBC or CNN to the different product that is Current. It’s one thing to say, as Uygur did, “If you turn to CNN to find out what’s going on in politics, you’re wasting your time,” or another to point out, as Gore did, that “MSNBC has some liberal-oriented shows in the evening, but they have put on the RNC chairman…They start the day with a conservative show,” and another to get them to switch to another product.

Good journalism and good signings help, of course. Gore touted the fact that the network’s won “won every award in journalism.” And certainly one way Current might distinguish itself from its competitors would be to invest heavily in investigative reporting and documentaries. MSNBC’s been expanding its anchored shows, particularly on weekends with the addition of Chris Hayes and now Melissa Harris-perry, and it’s probably true that Current has to fill out its prime-time lineup to keep up. But breaking stories, providing new reported context on major events, and elevating stories that are flying under the radar would be an even more dramatic break with the existing cable model than simply offering a competing brand of analysis. On MSNBC, Hayes has gotten credit from the tech community for doing a segment on the Stop Online Piracy Act: clearly, there are major communities that feel underserved, and could be up for grabs by a network willing to break out of the standard menu of cable news topics.

It would be particularly interesting to know what’s bringing viewers to Current, particularly since David Bohrman, the network’s president, told us that while the average age of viewers for news coverage on the other cable networks was in the 60s, the average age for Current is 47, and for election coverage, it dipped to 36. “If we can mine this, we’re going to have viewers and customers for many years to come,” Bohrman said. Which is true, but the network needs more of them.

When I asked about how Current intends to boost those numbers, Bohrman said that he didn’t want to reveal too much about the network’s marketing strategy. But he indicated that the rollout of Granholm’s show would be promoted by an advertising blitz similar to the one that launched Keith Olbermann’s show on Current. And he emphasized the importance of having a full primetime lineup of news programming to match the amount of information on other networks. Uygur also suggested that the way Olbermann’s ratings took off when his show took on a more progressive bent was proof of the power of persistence, and that the space he’d opened up already counted as a success: “it allowed all of us to be on television.”

But I’ll be very curious to see what else the network plans to do to fight for market share. Unlike a network like Starz, which is only in 19.5 million households, Current has 63 million subscriber households. It’s less an access problem than getting people to hit the right channel buttons. Mending fences with lynchpin talent like Keith Olbermann, who will be hosting upcoming election coverage for the network, will help. But so could questioning the model of the business Current is in.

When you left MSNBC, you talked about the limitations of the role the network seemed to want you to play. And your online show’s always seemed very liberating. How much freedom do you feel you have at Current to define your role and the tone of the show?

It appears that I have 100 percent freedom. There has been absolutely no restraint here whatsoever, God bless their hearts. No restraint stylistically. No restraint substantively. It’s been a blessing. It’s not a dig on MSNBC, they do what they do. You’ve got a system over there…the good hosts begin to stray from that and put their own stamp on that. Here we get to start fresh and create a whole different kind of show. I think people will look at and it say this isn’t a normal cable news show

What do you think Current’s learned from Keith Olbermann’s tenure? Has his experience made for a smoother transition for you? Taken together, how do you think you and Olbermann define Current’s brand?

They’ve created an outlet here on television that lets strong folks do strong programming. Nobody’s going to check Keith Olbermann. That reassured me that this was a place where I was going to get to create an independent program.

Did the fact that Current signed Olbermann make the network a more attractive destination for you?

Sure, yeah. That meant that they were making a significant investment in progressive programming and strong independent programming, and they were headed in the right direction.

You’ve talked about the importance of developing younger audiences. How do you plan to do that? Especially on a channel that may not be a regular part of younger viewers’ rotation?

I think we have a younger audience because we do things differently. It’s a much more conversational, relaxed, irreeverant show. It’s not stiff. The whole thing reeks of faith…I just read an article the other day where it says it turns out the younger generation is a little more skeptical. They’re looking for something genuine. So many of the other shows use the same, old, tired analysts. We’ve got different strong progressive analysts.

What do you think of moves like NBC’s hiring of Chelsea Clinton to do segments? Do younger viewers want to see themselves on screen? A certain kind of tone? A style of presenting content?

I’m always amused by how they try to fix real issues that they have by putting a facade on it. We hired a young person! We hired Chelsea Clinton! She’s a young person and she has a famous name! The problem is you don’t understand that you’re doing programming from 1955. So much of television is so fake. If you take a young person and insert it into a fake facade, it reinforces the idea that it’s a facade. You haven’t solved the problem at all…Meghan McCain, like her or dislike her, she has strong views, there’s value in her message. But you want to see someone who’s keeping it real. Wes Clark Jr. , we don’t have him as a co-host because he’s the son of the general. He ran in, what, 2004? It’s been a long time. We use him because that guy is passionate and the audience reacts to him. He reaches his audience at their gut level.

Do you think part of what younger audiences are looking for is programming that’s about dismantling the myth of journalistics objectivity?

I think that overall the media is sick and it doesn’t even know it. And the disease is neutrality. And it drives me crazy when they don’t know the difference between neutrality and objectivity. I think objectivity is a good thing to try for even if you don’t reach it. I think that’s a minor problem. A much bigger problem is neutrality: Steelers and Cowboys play, Steelers win 42-0, I’m not going to say the Cowobys won. I’m not going to say that. It’s not what happened. If you tell me they played equally well, you’ve done a horrible job of bringing people the news. And I think that’s the current state of the mainstream media. They keep calling it even when it ain’t even.

What are your plans to make the show new-media friendly? Will there be a blog? Episodes available as podcasts?

First of all, the Current show’s going to be very interactive. The last block of the show is dedicated to interaction with the audience. Sometimes it’ll be videos that will be sent in. We’ll constantly be doing polls and asking for feedback, [using] Facebook, Twitter. We’re going to try to gather the sense of the audience every night and have a real interaction with them in the last block of the show. Sometimes the anchors just read the tweets. If [random Tweeter] Bob is saying something, I’m actually going ot have a reaction to it. Sometimes it’s going to be, that’s a good idea. And sometime I’m going to say that’s crazy. We hope that it’s genuine as opposed to forced, which is what I often sense from the anchors who gets asked by their producers to read some Tweets. Last night I did a Reddit chat, and someone asked, ‘if you had to pick a Republican primary candidate, who would you pick?’ And I said ‘That’s a great question, I’ve never gotten that.’ We’re doing practice shows this week and we’ll be answering that question.

And what about getting the show up and online for viewers who don’t get Current as part of their cable package?

We’ve partly solved that through the synergy with the youngturks.com. We’re still doing an online show two hours a day. There’ll still be some crossover on the topics…we might get questions on the online show that we’ll answer on the Current show. [Current's representatives also say that clips of the show will go up within an hour of its air time for viewers who can't get the channel.]

How will your show use content generated by popular online news blogs? Will you be giving a voice to the blogosphere?

No one scours the internet for news and video more than the Young Turks. So we have all the progressive websites that we look at every single day, and we integrate that into the show more thoroughly than anyone else. It’s in our DNA. You get much direct and accurate information. I mean CNN, are you really getting news from them? They never give any context. Often times, it’s a waste of time. That’s why I think the blogs are so much better. ThinkProgress always has what a politician said, here are their previous quotes, here’s their record, and that’s great. That’s why we go to your guys.

And how about the roster of people you bring onto your show? Chris Hayes has done a really nice job putting together diverse panels for his MSNBC weekend show. Will you be doing the same? And what makes for a good guest?

I care so much more about diveristy of ideas and how smart and engaging a guest is. And I am positive, just becuase I’m a progressive in my core that you get the kind of diversity you’re looking for anyway [by doing that]. On the online show you’ve got a Turkish host, an Armenian co-host, our executive producer is African-American. Back in the day, we were kind of Muslim and kind of Jewish. All this happened becuase we were open-minded to who was the best candidates for those jobs.

More important than anything else is honesty. We don’t want talking points. I hate talking points. I want a genuine, interesting conversation. If I get a sense of someone saying something they’re supposed to say and they’re fake in any way, not interesting, there is some chance we’ll secretly ban them from the show.

Are you going to have a ban list?

[In a joking tone] We’re looking forward to creating one. It’ll be the oppositie of mainstream media bans. People don’t know this, but it happens. You get banned if you say something interesting. Here if you don’t say something interesting and dangerous, you get banned. I’d feel bad for the people we ditched.

You’ve pushed the Obama administration very hard from the left. Going into an election years, what are your political goals for the show? How much will you focus on activating your viewers, and in which directions?

I’m very clear on this. My one and only political goal now is campaign finance reform. I think money is the Rosetta Stone of politics. Find out what side the money is on and guaranteed that’s the side who will win. It’s not a Democrat or Republican thing. We had giant Democratic majorities in the House, we had a filibuster-proof Senate, we had a Democratic president, and they were scared of their own shadows. I think we are saying what a lot of people are thinking. It’s exprssed best by a woman I ran into at an airport. She’s not that deep into politics. She was really excited to vote for Obama, but she’s not going to vote in 2012, because after Obama, what’s left to hope? We gave them everything they ever needed, and they gave us 5 percent. If they were real progressives, they should have had a real conversation about single payer. I’m not sure where I would have come out on single payer. But we didn’t have a real conversation about the public option. And then they called it historic health care reform, and that’s one of the bills they did the best on.

As a culture writer, I have to ask: on your Young Turks bio page, you list your favorite movies as Braveheart and Dead Poet’s Society, and your favorite television shows as Star Trek: The Next Generation, Lost, Sopranos, Rescue Me, The Wire, and Deadwood. Do you see common threads running through these works?

I would like to retract Lost. The two themes are honesty. Look at The Wire. is there a more honest show on television? That’s life in Baltimore, and people love it becuase they’re like damn, that’s so true. Name a show that does that, I’m a big fan of. The second theme is live life to it’s fullest and be passionate. I’m very corny about that stuff. I don’t know if it’s my Mediterranean roots. But I’m a passionate guy. I want to do everything I do 100 percent.

What role do you think culture plays in shaping progressive narratives?

Absolutely. Ana Kasparian, she and I do a whole hour of pop culture, basically, and social news. So we’re going to bring that to some degree to Current. As we’ve been doing these practice shows, it’s no holds barred. There are interesting, wacky news stories—what I want to do is deliver some core message through those stories. In a story we did about Lindsay Lohan a year ago, she shows up late to an interview, everyoen’s super-upset with her, and she walks in, and everyone lights up and tells her how awesome she is. That’s an interesting core story about access, whether it’s celebrities or politicians. People need to kiss their ass to get that access, and it warps everything around them. It warps what you see on TV, and it warps the politicians and the celebrities.