On Wednesday evening’s The Factor, Bill O’Reilly asked guest Bernie Goldberg if he’d seen “the brothers with me last night,” referring to his rather explosive interview with Tavis Smiley and Cornel West over corruption on Wall Street.

Goldberg and O’Reilly disagreed with the basic premise of West and Smiley’s argument, opining that “dysfunction” (in the form of, say, substance abuse or being born into single-parent households) does more create poverty than do decisions made on Wall Street.

A few days ago, Herman Cain made headlines when he said that he didn’t “believe there is racism in this country today that holds anybody back in a big way.” Shockingly, some people disagreed. Two of those people are Cornel West and Tavis Smiley who have spoken out against Cain a number of times including during their appearance last night on The O’Reilly Factor when they said he was “trivializing” a serious issue.

Tavis Smiley and Cornel West appeared on The O’Reilly Factor last night and engaged in a spirited debate with host Bill O’Reilly over poverty, corruption in the financial sector and a jobless rate that is growing to nearly 20% in African-American demographic. The two sides of the debate represented distinct ideological points-of-view, which made for a remarkably compelling discussion of various of hot topics in the news, namely Occupy Wall Street and a struggling economy.

The intersection of religion and politics is always a tricky business. Critiquing the way that some in politics use religion as a political football is a brave feat that rarely pays off. But Morning Joe host Joe Scarborough is in a unique spot in the opinion media spectrum to do just that, as he did this morning when he called out “many on the right” for missing the core of Jesus’ message of caring for the poor, despite waving ‘their bibles around the most.’

On Monday’s CNN Newsroom with Suzanne Malveaux, Cornel West slammed Herman Cain‘s comments that racism didn’t matter that much, saying the Godfather’s Pizza CEO should “Get off the symbolic crack pipe and acknowledge the evidence is overwhelming.”

Fox News weekend host Geraldo Rivera went to Zucotti Park this weekend to report on the Occupy Wall Street protest movement that has been going on for a number weeks and host his eponymous show remotely. During a segment dedicated to the populist protest movement and in the following segment, and while interviewing Cornell West and Tavis Smiley, the surrounding protestors began chanting “Fox News Lies.”

NBC News anchor Brian Williams appeared on Morning Joe today to discuss the conversation du jour: the the events of 9/11, 2001, and specifically how we reflected on that tragedy that occurred a decade ago. Williams’ appearance came after a rather heated discussion over the foreign policy decisions made by the Bush administration in the aftermath of 9/11, and so the NBC News anchor was focused primarily on the bipartisan approach by Presidents Bush and Obama yesterday.

On Monday’s Morning Joe, panelist Tavis Smiley caused a minor uproar when he pointed out that a key difference between Presidents Barack Obama and George W. Bush is that “one of those guys lied to the American people.” Host Joe Scarborough, guest Jon Meacham, and even Mika Brzezinski pushed back on the idea that Bush “lied,” laying the blame for bad WMD intel at the feet of CIA Director George Tenet, and Smiley eventually got lost in the semantic weeds.

Tavis Smiley and Cornel West are not holding anything back in their media blitz, first suggesting President Obama declared war on the poor, then revealing how they aren’t on the White House guest list, and now predicting the London riots could definitely happen in America because of this country’s great wealth disparity. Smiley sums up his frustration with Obama by offering a bit of advice: “enough with the speeches about now it’s time to focus on jobs.”

Tavis Smiley and Cornel West continued their media tour on C-Span this morning, and expressed frustration with President Obama over a much more personal issue than merely not talking about poverty. Smiley noticed that Obama invited Bill O’Reilly to the White House, but he himself has yet to receive an invitation from the President, who regularly appeared on his show before being elected President.

Tavis Smiley and Cornel West stopped by CNN’s American Morning to discuss their “poverty tour” and to express their disappointment with President Obama for failing to stand up for the poor and for not ever publicly mentioning the word “poverty.” Carol Costello wasn’t entirely convinced and asked why Obama should “concentrate on one segment of the population” when he is the President of all Americans? Yet Smiley and West passionately tried to convince her why.

PBS Host Tavis Smiley appeared with Lawrence O’Donnell last night and the two took turns expressing outrage over Donald Trump‘s continued willingness to say anything to attack President Obama. O’Donnell repeatedly referred to Trump as a liar, while Smiley warned that Trump’s “race to the bottom” in rhetoric was a sad sign of what he expects to come in the election season.

With the midterms almost (finally) upon us the possibility of a GOP dominated Congress highly influenced by a possible influx of Tea Party candidates is becoming a reality. Should the country be worried? Should the GOP? Moreover, does the Tea Party even matter when there is so much anonymous big money sloshing around this election cycle. On the This Week roundtable today George Will argued that the Tea Party is, in fact both important and authentic.

Earlier this week Ayaan Hirsi Ali was on Tavis Smiley‘s PBS show to discuss her new book, Nomad: From Islam To America, A Personal Journey Through The Clash Of Civilizations. In a back and forth about Islamic extremists, Hirsi Ali mentioned how some Muslims believe that “killing other people is a great thing to do,” to which Smiley shot back that Christians are more violent, saying “Oh, Christians, every day, people walk into post offices, they walk into schools, that’s what Columbine is.”

Tavis Smiley filled in for Larry King last night (more on that below), and one segment featured a somewhat heated interview with Ann Coulter and Aisha Tyler about the language of tea parties.

But it shifted later into a discussion of the health care bill protests and whether Rep. John Lewis‘ claim of being called the n-word was accurate.

A few weeks ago, Mediaite reported that Meet the Press has pledged to diversify its panels of guests and commentators. So how are they doing? Well, the show has gone four weeks in a row where African American men were featured on the show. This week’s show will actually go one better: an African American guest and an African American journalist on the roundtable.

Van Jones — for months now only visible as a head on Glenn Beck’s chalkboard representing all the is evil, Maoist, and worst of all, progressive in Barack Obama’s administration — raised his actual head last night and explained how he got on a 9/11 Truther list. Good thing no one tried to sell him a bridge.

It’s very easy to dismiss today’s journalists as high maintenance and pampered celebrity pundits, unworthy descendants of their beloved and revered Walter Cronkite. And you’d be right in most enough cases. You can blame it on their network bosses and corporate owners, who have reduced much of the “news” to easily digestible distraction nuggets for [...]