Noah Oppenheim, Part Of America’s First Family (What Do Capus & Brokaw Think?)

This morning I asked: “How are Today Show staffers responding to Noah Oppenheim’s new producer position?” Some people are clearly unhappy.

“How is the hell did Noah Oppenheim manage to fall into a producer position at the Today Show?,” an e-mailer asks. “[At MSNBC] he was a joke…Even his own staff hated him. He didn’t know the first thing about television.” So how did he fall into the job? Perhaps here’s an answer: “He used to work for [Executive in Charge of Today] Phil Griffin at MSNBC, so it makes sense, but it’s an odd first move for Phil,” an insider writes in. “Those liberals over at the Today Show will try and kill him.”

I wonder how Steve Capus feels? After all, Oppenheim left MSNBC in the wake of his infamous Weekly Standard piece, “when Nightly News executive producer Steve Capus and anchor Tom Brokaw complained openly that the article was unseemly coming from a NBC-affiliated news producer,” the NY Observer reported in February. I hear that Capus has already been dissing Oppenheim. Another insider said he wonders what Brokaw would think…

> Here is Oppenheim’s Weekly Standard piece. Read it and come to your own conclusion.

> Oppenheim is a “a self-identified neoconservative and onetime producer for Scarborough Country,” the Observer adds.

> Check out Oppenheim’s final Harvard Crimson column.

> Update: 11:24pm: A ‘Today’ staffer says the assertion that his program is full of liberals is nonsense. He believes the editorial staff is 50/50, left and right. The show is fair and middle-of-the-road, and that’s why Oppenheim’s appointment is nerve-wracking: He seems unable to shed his political leanings and remain unbiased…