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"This is a doberman. It rhymes with Olbermann"
Last night, with the story breaking about John McCain's alleged affair with a female lobbyist, I happened to catch Keith Olbermann's show on MSNBC ("Countdown"). Of course, I wanted to see Olbermann's take on the New York Times article. In other words, I wanted to see how much credibility Keith was giving to the story. Apparently a lot. The first 30 minutes of the one-hour show were devoted to the story-which means that he was jumping all over it. Nowhere did he question the article or its substance. Just Keith and his usual lefty guests analyzing and digesting what the NYT had put out. As is Keith's practice, he only wants to target Republicans and conservatives.
Then, for what seems like the 999th night in a row, Olbermann dragged old Bill O'Reilly through the mud-again naming him the "Worst Person in the World". (O'Reilly will have to add a new wing to his house to hold all the WPW trophies he is accumulating.) What was O'Reilly's offense this time? Seems he used the term "lynching" in an innocuous way to describe Michelle Obama's statement that for the first time in her adult lifetime, she has felt proud of her country. (O'Reilly was actually giving her the benefit of the doubt, stating that he didn't want to go along with the lynching-there was no racial inference whatsoever.) Yet, Olbermann felt that this should have resulted in O'Reilly's firing-or worse.
It is not my intention here to defend Bill O'Reilly. He is a big boy and can take care of himself. O'Reilly has accumulated various enemies in his career, which he seems to relish. I have no idea what has led to the bad blood between O'Reilly and Olbermann, nor so I care. But it is obvious that Olbermann has a deep-seated dislike of O'Reilly. My point is-why should this have to spill over into Olbermann's reporting on "Countdown"? O'Reilly, for his part, never mentions Olbermann's name on his show. With Olbermann's ratings, why should he?
As I have said before, Olbermann is articulate and witty. Even for a conservative like me, his show is entertaining. His anger and his out and out bias are only a detraction from what could be a much better show.
3 comments:
I don't know if you saw my most recent blog about the media, but I plan on watching a pundit a week for the next few weeks and blogging about it. As for Olbermann, I'd say that it sounds pretty lame how he's making a big deal of the McCain thing. I'm with you on that one.
I'm also with you (about 99%) on the whole thing about making a big deal about O'Reilly's use of the word "lynching." Was it the best word to use? Probably not. But O'Reilly was using it more to describe her detractors than anything else. It's really not worth this much attention. The thing is with O'Reilly, there's no need to go after the small stuff. He'll put his foot in his mouth over something significant sooner or later (like when he said that a school changed the lyrics of "Silent Night" as part of the War on Christmas. That was a bunch of poorly-researched hooey.)
One thing though - aren't Olbermann's ratings not only rising, but catching up to, and even surpassing in certain demographics, O'Reilly's? Personally, I don't think that sort of thing should matter one way or the other though. Lots of crap is popular, after all.
I don't know the exact numbers, but O'Reilly's show is the top rated show of its kind. Olbermann and all of MSNBC is pretty much at the bottom of the ratings.
A Riddle of Ridicule for MSNBC's Resident Old Woman, Keith -
http://hickeysite.blogspot.com/2008/02/keith-olbermann-or-capri-sun.html
God Bless the work!
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