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Wednesday, April 15, 2009

Keith Olbermann: "Slack-jawed Tea Baggers"


This is a doberman. It rhymes with Olbermann


It's hard to put into words just how arrogant a man Keith Olbermann is after watching his performance on "Countdown" tonight, which was devoted to insulting the thousands of Americans who turned out to demonstrate against high taxes and profligate government spending today. And why did he insult them? Was it because they threw rocks at police, rioted or had to be taken off to jail? Hardly because that did not happen. No, Olbermann attacked them for having the temerity to protest high taxes and out-of-control spending.

Throughout his narrative, Olbermann continued the double-entendres begun by Rachel Maddow that link tea bags with oral sex. (One of the by-lines at the bottom of the screen read, "Tea-baggers go nuts".)

But leaving that aside, what was really outrageous was Olbermann's visceral insults directed toward the protesters. He referred to them as "slack-jawed tea baggers", "sheep" and "simpletons in Sacramento" as he personally attacked Fox commentator Neil Cavuto for his estimates of the crowd he was covering in the California state capitol. Olbermann went on to list many of the small (insignificant) towns that held rallies-an obvious slap at small town America.

As his guests, Olbermann started off with Howard Fineman, who covered the event in Louisville. Fineman also had less than kind words for the protesters. They were "localists, not globalists", in the judgement of Fineman, people who had no idea of the larger world out there. He quoted the old song, "Make the world go away", which "tells you something about the mentality of these people".

Then it was some guy from Texas named James Moore, who co-authored a hit piece on George W Bush called, "Bush's Brain", and who proceeded to tear down Texas Governor Rick Perry and "all those voices in Texas calling for secession". Yes, Olbermann and this character actually engaged in a serious dialogue about the "Texas secession movement".

After that, the show degenerated into a serious discussion of the DHS report about "right-wing extremists", giving it proper credence and respect, more shots at Fox News, George W. Bush, Rush Limbaugh, Bill O'Reilly until I couldn't take any more and turned it off.

What is truly sad is that Olbermann is obviously a man driven by anger and contempt for anything and anyone conservative. His treatment of former President Bush, which still continues, as well as his obsession with Bill O'Reilly strikes me as pathological. I have often written of him in humourous terms, but what I witnessed tonight was downright sickening. From his perch in Midtown Manhattan, Keith Olbermann holds Middle America in utter contempt. He is a poster child for all that is wrong in our mainstream media.

2 comments:

Dalton said...

Ahem..and where was your outrage when the right wing media presented people who didn't support the Iraq war as unamerican or unpatriotic? Where were you when the surplus given by Clinton fell into an ever-increasing deficit? How nicely it worked out that now the "tea-baggers" with all their "concern" for the American economy finally come out, when the economy is in ruins, but now, however briefly, under a democratic banner. Olbermann made fun of these people because they had to be people who knew nothing about was going on over the last 8 years and were whipped into protest only by right wing propaganda and overblown news coverage, OR they are biased hypocrites who TRULY dislike the way the country is being handled, but only if its under a democratic banner.

Gary Fouse said...

Daltron,

Ahem.... I think you have missed the point about what I wrote and what the protests were all about. This is not a Republican production (And I am not a Republican). The protesters are also angry at the Republicans for their role, yes under Bush, in not reigning in Govt spending. Here in Calif, at least one Rep state lawmaker is in the process of being recalled for his vote to raise taxes after he vowed never to do so, (Anthony Adams).

Yes, the current admin is getting the criticism because of an insane spending plan that can never add up. However, don't think these people are not fully aware that the Bush Admin and the Repub Congress failed in their job of limiting the size of govt and govt spending.

As for the overblown news coverage, with the exception of Fox News and a few newspapers, the news coverage was negative-or not at all. The New York Times basically ignored it.

And for Keith Olbermann to refer to these people as slack-jawed tea-bagger (with that sexual innuendo)simpletons and sheep is the height of arrogance. How many protesters out of the hundreds of thousands who took part were arrested for disorderly behavior? How many fights broke out? How many rocks were thrown at police?

Zero.

These are the type of demonstrations that the news media should take note of-and with a measure of respect.

Even if you are a liberal, you should think twice about the coverage given to this day by the MSM. Is this the kind of journalism you want to see in America?