| 25 September 2008
Special Comment: Olbermann's Man-CrushBy: Matt Fay
"All men having power ought to be mistrusted"
- James Madison, "Father of the Constitution"
I have discovered a fun game to play around 7pm CST every week night. Instead of watching sitcoms or sports at this time, I now flip back and forth from MSNBC's "Countdown" with Keith Olbermann to FOX's "O'Reilly Factor" with Bill O'Reilly. Watching their shows has seemingly become a running - and fairly immature - argument between the two pundits. The political slants of Bill O’Reilly as a commentator (and FOX News as a network) are fairly obvious to anyone with even a modest interest in politics. MSNBC is now rapidly becoming the liberal version of FOX News with Keith Olbermann as its standard-bearer and a serious case of what "The Daily Show" with John Stewart has dubbed “Obamania.”
Olbermann, the uber-liberal former SportsCenter anchor, is MSNBC's star pundit. His show, Countdown, is MSNBC's highest rated program and goes head to head with FOX's O'Reilly. What is most striking about Olbermann, for all his criticism of O'Reilly - routinely ranking him as his "Worst Person in the World" during a nightly segment of the same name - he often engages in commentary with such a lack of objectivity that his criticism rings with such hypocrisy it boggles the mind. O'Reilly, for all his lack of objectivity, will often interview liberals - though the liberal interviewees who are not members of Congress usually consist of a teenage girl with liberal views who his producers dress-up as a "Democratic Strategist" pitting them against a veteran conservative. Olbermann, though, has yet to even interview someone who disagrees with him, let alone a member of the opposition. He has co-opted the FOX News model with a liberal twist, yet displays even less objectivity than the network that is routinely credited with its destruction of journalistic integrity.
Olbermann often decries FOX News for its callousness toward liberals while displaying an even more overt hostility to conservatives. At the Democratic National Convention in Denver, while anchoring MSNBC's coverage, he laughed off MSNBC morning show host, and former Republican congressman, Joe Scarborough's contention that Senator John McCain was still alive in the presidential race by saying "Jesus, Joe, just get a shovel." At the Republican National Convention Olbermann referred to Vice Presidential nominee Sarah Palin as "Tracy Flick" - the brown-nosing, overly ambitious, gratuitously annoying student council president candidate from the excellent dark comedy Election.
The style of Olbermann's show is one where he offers nothing but demagougery and invective against the people he disagrees with and fawning praise for those he does. His famous "Special Comment" segment has him switching between pensive looks and angry yelling. To his credit, Olbermann makes good use of accurate, often overlooked historical examples and excellent vocabulary, but these positives often boil down to nothing more than a cover for his one-sided, demagogic rants.
When not making his program solely about the fued between himself and FOX News, perhaps the most disturbing fact about Olbermann's show is that it is quite possible that he may be in love with Barack Obama. Olbermann's support for Barack Obama verges on the bizarre. He has taken to dissecting each and every phrase John McCain utters so as to refute him or make him look foolish - something McCain is adept at himself without any help. Olbermann even criticized McCain about a satirical campaign ad produced by Paris Hilton because McCain found it funny despite the fact that much of its humor was at his expense.
Obama, on the other hand, is treated with nothing short of reverence by Olbermann - and Rachel Maddow, Olbermann's sometimes stand-in who, though a lesbian, I believe is in love with Obama much the same as Olbermann. In late June Olbermann engaged in a series of contentious blogs with Glenn Greenwald, a progressive constitutionalist who blogs for the liberal Salon.com. The crux of this feud centered on Olbermann's "flip-flop" on the issue of telecom immunity for companies that aided the Bush Administration in its domestic spying program - where President Bush announced that without this immunity America would be more vulnerable to attack. When this amendment to the reauthorization of the Protect America Act was revealed Olbermann accused President Bush of "immunizing corporate criminals" and cited this among "textbook examples of fascism." Greenwald, an Obama supporter himself, would counter, "Now that Barack Obama supports a law that does the same thing - and now that Obama justifies that support by claiming that this bill is necessary to keep us Safe from the Terrorists - everything has changed." He would continue:
“What's much more notable is Olbermann's full-scale reversal on how he talks about these measures now that Obama - rather than George Bush - supports them. On an almost nightly basis, Olbermann mocks Congressional Democrats as being weak and complicit for failing to stand up to Bush lawbreaking; now that Obama does it, it's proof that Obama won't 'cower.' Grave warning on Olbermann's show that telecom amnesty and FISA revisions were hallmarks of Bush Fascism instantaneously transformed into celebration that Obama, by supporting the same things, was leading a courageous, centrist crusade in defense of our Constitution.
“Is that really what anyone wants - transferring blind devotion from George Bush to Barack Obama? Are we hoping for a FOX News for Obama, that glorifies everything he says and whitewashes everything he does?”
That is the key question: is a liberal FOX News the answer? Should we trust Obama just because he is not Bush? Is that truly enough reason?
James Madison, the Father of this country's Constitution and its 4th president, said, "All men having power ought to be mistrusted." As much as FOX News needs to remember this statement in regards to George W. Bush, Keith Olbermann would do well to remember than Barack Obama is not exempt either.
In conclusion, I thought I would wrap up this post with a Special Comment of my own, delivered in a style Mr. Olbermann may appreciate if, indeed, imitation is the sincerest form of flattery:
You sir, rail against Fox News, yet instead of rising above their pettiness you wade knee deep in it. If you wish to prove the superiority of not only your product but your ideas, you must at least offer your ideological opponents - as well as others who may not share your views - some modicum of respect, maintaining at least some semblance of objectivity. If you cannot meet at least these minimum requirements of journalistic integrity that you so often denounce Fox News for failing to adhere to, then I would offer you the same advice you once gave President Bush, when he had mentioned quitting playing golf because of the war in Iraq, and ask you to please "Shut the hell up!"
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