Maddow's Defense of Olbermann

This week, Rachel Maddow defended Keith Olbermann on her show. She also took the opportunity to take another slap at Fox News. What was outrageous in her statement was to say that MSNBC is a news organization-not a political organization like Fox News.

Whether or not Fox News has a prohibition against its commentators contributing to politicians is besides the point. It was Olbermann who made a big issue of people like Sean Hannity contributing to Republican politicians-an expose, if you will-before he went out and did the same thing.

But for Maddow to imply that MSNBC is anything less than a de facto arm of the Democratic Party is disingenuous at best. This network consists of five far-left anchors (excluding Joe Scarborough in the morning). Every night, for five solid hours, these five partisans bash Republicans, conservatives, tea-partiers and anyone who disagrees with their liberal vision for America. Their guests are almost always fellow-liberals. While I concede Fox News tilts conservative-especially with Hannity, Fox can stack up their balance against MSNBC every night. MSNBC even goes so far as to use these five liberal anchors as election eve commentators. Last week's coverage of the election was a total embarrassment.  They might as well have donned Dallas Cowboy cheerleader garb.

In a sense, Maddow is right. MSNBC should put Olbermann back on the air. For them to suspend him for violating some sense of "professional impartiality" is a joke considering the content of their nightly political coverage. Olbermann, however, has a habit of burning bridges wherever he goes, sort of the Randy Moss of journalism. It appears that the network was just using the contributions as an excuse to get rid of what has been a long-standing embarrassment for them.