The End of "Olbermania"
November 9, 2010 by Ben Crystal
With the exception of the occasional troll who bumbles onto our message boards, liberals are few and far between here in the enlightened empire of the Personal Liberty Digest. Therefore, something tells me the number of Bob Livingstonians who bemoaned the indefinite suspension (which NBC has since announced would end today) of MSNBC’s reigning rant-meister Keith Olbermann is lower than the number of transgender census takers working the northwestern Montana survivalist compounds.
As a result, something tells me an NFL-sized crowd is going to object when I say:
MSNBC was wrong to give Keith Olbermann the hook.
To be sure: Olbermann is a supercilious, simpering sleazebag. From his first steps on the national stage as Dan Patrick’s gal Friday on ESPN, to his now-toes-up tenure as the Democrat Party’s high priest of hate on GE’s liberal propaganda outlet, Olbermann has never risen above the minimal standards expected of the shrieking lunatics infesting the mainstream media.
But when did that become a source of concern for MSNBC?
Just days after National Public Radio — the Democrat party’s radio division — gave Juan Williams his walking papers for expressing his opinion, MSNBC announced they were suspending Olbermann indefinitely for donating money to political campaigns in violation of NBC policy. In fact, Olbermann gave the $2,400 maximum to Rep. Raul Grijalva (D-Ariz.) the same day Grijalva appeared as a guest on his Countdown program.
Olbermann evidently failed to report his donations to management, a clear violation of that policy. But Olbermann has been spewing Democrat talking points for seven years; it seems odd that NBC would suddenly decide ethics are important at a network which employs not only a tinfoil hat brigadier like Olbermann, but Chris Matthews, Rachel Maddow and Ed Schultz, none of whom possessed journalistic integrity from the start. As for the donations, Olbermann has been the most partisan commentator on cable news for more than half of the last decade. What has the aggregate monetary value of his shameless shilling for liberals been during that period?
To be fair, Olbermann’s financial largesse merely reminded us that he’s a hypocrite. Of course, he’s a liberal commentator, so calling him a hypocrite is like saying the earth is round, or that Joy Behar is an idiot.
According to the free-market economic principles most sincerely NOT espoused by the journalism school factory seconds on MSNBC, the network has the right to send Olbermann packing for violations of his contract, common sense or even common decency.
But why start now? If NBC’s reasoning is that Olbermann’s high-volume vituperation is detrimental to MSNBC’s flat-lining ratings, then I would counter that Olbermann has been chained to the network’s stern since 2003. On many nights, the entirety of the MSNBC primetime sideshow can’t equal the ratings for a single episode of Olbermann’s nemesis, Bill O’Reilly on Fox News.
If their concern is a lack of credibility, then they should lock all four of their primetime anchors in the clown car and push it down to the Daily Kos parking lot. Matthews’s election night “interview” with Michelle Bachmann was so overtly partisan and hostile that it embarrassed even Maddow.
Maddow recently slandered former Rep. Steve Stockman, falsely claiming he had advance knowledge of the Oklahoma City bombing. When she was caught in the lie, she offered the weakly transparent excuse of “an editing error.” She lied — and her excuse was thinner than the poor guy behind Schultz in the line at the MSNBC commissary. As for Schultz himself; in the run-up to Scott Brown’s victory in January’s Massachusetts Senatorial special election, Schultz offered his take:
“…if I lived in Massachusetts I’d try to vote 10 times…Yeah, that’s right. I’d cheat to keep these bastards out. I would…”
And the powers that be at America’s least-watched cable news network are concerned about their ethics? If the indefinite suspension of Olbermann is an effort by MSNBC to reclaim journalistic integrity, I’d say that they’re national debt-late and Janet Napolitano-short. And now that Olbermann’s science project, the ridiculous Maddow, is the de facto face of the network, the effort to boost MSNBC out of “fat kid at the Olympic trials” position in the news ratings is deader than Olbermann’s career.
MSNBC decided to snuggle up with liberalism’s lunatic fringe long ago. It was their right to terminate their own credibility, just like it’s my right to watch something more compelling — like “Not Without My Daughter IV — Sharia’s Revenge” on Lifetime.
While I — and everyone with an IQ higher than Play-Doh — recognize that Olbermann and his MSNBC mouth-breathers for the intellectual dandruff they are, allow me to make a suggestion: Keep Olbermann on MSNBC. Then change the channel.
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