I rarely pay much attention to Keith Olbermann anymore because he’s turned into such a parody of himself, but when he’s good, he’s still really good. This is his Special Comment from last night about the shameful nonsense regarding Shirley Sherrod and the smearjob by Andrew Breitbart and FOX News. It’s rather long, but he’s dead on:
UPDATED
If Keith’s ranting isn’t your thing, Rachel Maddow does an even BETTER job of taking down FOX News without so much self-righteousness:
Keith Olbermann got pretty steamed last week when the RNC chose to show video footage from the events of 9/11; he apologized on air and the next morning made it clear that he would have one of his “Special Comment” rants about it on his show this week. Last night (or early this morning, if you want to be picky about it) he delivered:
I think he got a little carried away with the part about McCain personally abetting Osama Bin Laden by not revealing his “secret plan”, but his primary point — that the Republicans have shamelessly and cynically used the events of 9/11 not just at the convention but for the last seven years as a weapon of fear and distraction to further their misdeeds and malfeasance — is unassailably spot-on. It goes beyond the shame that the Republican Party should bear for fetishizing those images last week, it is absolutely nothing short of sedition. Keith Olbermann may play the outrage card a little more often than is really necessary, but his outrage now is wholly justified.
Since 2002, the New York skyline has been highlighted several times with the “Tribute In Light” display of two shafts of light shooting straight up into the sky from so-called “Ground Zero”. This year, as for the last two, the display will be visible only for the anniversary, and there are presently no plans to bring it back, since the construction work on the new buildings in that spot continues apace. As a memorial, it has been simple and dignified, but the continued exploitation of “Ground Zero” as a tourist destination cheapens any serious remebrance, and Olbermann’s commentary demonstrates that this coarsening of what was for many a personal tragedy seems to know no limit.
Writing at The Seminal, contributor “Red Wing” adds his thoughts and observations to the pornification of September 11, echoing some of the same sentiment expressed by Olbermann. How long indeed before this anniversary is turned into a three-day weekend, complete with shopping mall sales, car dealer “discount events”, and college football extravaganzas?
Finally, while John McCain and Barack Obama waste our time and insult our intelligence arguing about the phrase “putting lipstick on a pig”, Democratic Congressman Dennis Kucinich continues to fight to keep alive the calls for accountability for the tragedy of September 11, 2001. Writing in “The Nation” this week, Representative Kucinich says he will ask Congress to create a “Truth and Reconciliation” commission to once and for all bring to light a complete and accurate picture of the deceptions of the Bush Administration after 9/11, as well as their deliberate ignorance of events before 9/11, and to begin a national dialogue to find a path to reconciliation between the sharply-divided factions of the American public. I offer you the following excerpts, but recommend reading the entire piece:
We suffer in our remembrance of 9/11, because of the terrible loss of innocent lives on that grim day. We also suffer because 9/11 was seized as an opportunity to run a political agenda, which has set America on a course of the destruction of another nation and the destruction of our own Constitution. And we have become less secure as a result of the warped practice of pursing peace through the exercise of pre-emptive military strength.
It is not simply 9/11 that needs to be remembered. We also need to remember the politicization of 9/11 and the polarizing narrative which followed, locking us into endless conflict, a war on terror which has wrought further terror worldwide and which has severely damaged our standing worldwide as an honorable, compassionate nation. As we were all victims of 9/11, so we have become victims of the interpretation of 9/11.
…The dominant color of our new national security since 911 is neither red, white nor blue. Every day is orange. Every day, reminders of fear of 9/11 become banal. Yet we no longer hear the airport announcements nor see the orange-colored warnings because they have commonplace standards in our new national security state, as is the Patriot Act, wiretapping, and a host of invasions of privacy and diminution of civil liberties. The Constitution has been roundly attacked by the very people who took an oath to defend it.
…our path may necessarily be different: High US government officials stand accused in impeachment petitions of violating national and international law. Our continued existence as a democracy may depend upon how thoroughly we seek the truth. I will call upon the America people to join me in supporting this effort.
The truth can move us forward, as a unified whole, so that we can one day become a re-United States. 9/11 is the day the world changed. It is the day America embraced a metaphor of war. If we are open to truth and reconciliation, we may one day be able, once again, to embrace peace.
Peace be with all of the victims of the horrific events of September 11, 2001, dead and alive, near and far.
This year marks the 50th anniversary of a speech given by Edward R. Murrow to the Radio and Television News Directors’ Association (RTNDA). Murrow’s speech is sometimes called the “Wires and Lights” speech but is generally simply known as “the RTNDA speech”. Already in a precarious position with CBS for having caused so much controversy with his broadcasts about Joseph McCarthy the year before, Murrow did not hesitate in the slightest to generate entirely new waves of controversy with his remarks. Murrow openly chastised his fellow television reporters and editors for neglecting their role as watchdog of the halls of power at a very troubled time, and upbraided the entire television industry for its unwillingness to deliver the hard messages of truth in favor of insipid entertainment. His words have echoed for half a century but are as true or truer now than that day:
Our history will be what we make it. And if there are any historians about fifty or a hundred years from now, and there should be preserved the kinescopes for one week of all three networks, they will there find recorded in black and white, or color, evidence of decadence, escapism and insulation from the realities of the world in which we live. I invite your attention to the television schedules of all networks between the hours of 8 and 11 p.m., Eastern Time. Here you will find only fleeting and spasmodic reference to the fact that this nation is in mortal danger. There are, it is true, occasional informative programs presented in that intellectual ghetto on Sunday afternoons. But during the daily peak viewing periods, television in the main insulates us from the realities of the world in which we live. If this state of affairs continues, we may alter an advertising slogan to read: LOOK NOW, PAY LATER.
It may be that the present system, with no modifications and no experiments, can survive. Perhaps the money-making machine has some kind of built-in perpetual motion, but I do not think so. To a very considerable extent the media of mass communications in a given country reflect the political, economic and social climate in which they flourish. That is the reason ours differ from the British and French, or the Russian and Chinese. We are currently wealthy, fat, comfortable and complacent. We have currently a built-in allergy to unpleasant or disturbing information. Our mass media reflect this. But unless we get up off our fat surpluses and recognize that television in the main is being used to distract, delude, amuse and insulate us, then television and those who finance it, those who look at it and those who work at it, may see a totally different picture too late.
Murrow, like so many other critics of television then and now, had a somewhat idealistic view of what television should be — a source of genuine information and serious debate. In his mind there was indeed room for entertainment, but not at the expense of mature, informed, realistic discourse. He felt obligated, he said, to make his concerns about the seductive and sensational side of television known because he felt there would come a time when the public’s ability to engage in an open an intelligent forum about the issues that would face them might be totally corroded by the meaninglessness of constant entertainment. Television, he concluded, would be little more than “wires and lights in a box”.
Keith Olbermann’s regular homages to Murrow notwithstanding, Murrow’s Cassandra-like words came true a hundred times over. I’m sure his body is spinning in the grave so fast that it makes an audible hum that can be heard clear into outer space. This week just happens to be the annual RTNDA meeting, held in conjunction with the convention for the National Association of Broadcasters and the Broadcast Education Association (the academic organization affiliated with the NAB). TVNewser reports that after the big Correspondents’ Dinner last night, which featured Dick Cheney as the keynote speaker, there was a panel discussion to commemorate Murrow’s speech and to consider whether or not broadcast journalism still has a vital role. According to TVNewser, the panel went to great pains not to focus on the current state of broadcast journalism — a wise decision to be sure, since if they had I have little doubt the Ghost Of Murrow himself would have haunted the hall and melted the plastic-perfect faces off of every anchormonster and blowdried reporterchick in the room.
While Murrow would have given an arm and a leg for the sheer volume of news coverage that presently fills the endless hours of cable channels, local news blocks, and broadcast network news programming, he could be nothing short of appalled at the self-referential echo chamber that it has devolved into. Countless hours wasted arguing about flag lapel pins, the “War On Christmas”, “elitism”, haircuts, cleavage, recipes, and dozens of other utter inanities. Last night a “debate” that seemed to consist only of Charlie Gibson insulting the intelligence of Barack Obama AND Hillary Clinton with questions about being a “regular person”. An entire cable news network that exists only as a mouthpiece for one political party and makes no bones about their distortions, lies or slants. Local news that consists of rehashed corporate PR videos, fear-mongering features, and overblown animated graphics. And, most of all, a slavish devotion on the part of each and every person to maintaining the fabricated idea that Everything Is Perfect As Long As We Keep Shopping.
Murrow brilliantly reused the words of William Shakespeare to hit home the idea that it was our own complacency that created a monster like Joseph McCarthy: “The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in ourselves.” To this I would add a few lines from Macbeth:
Life’s but a walking shadow; a poor player,
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,
And then is heard no more: it is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.
Murrow’s own true legacy is half a century of prophecy I am sure he would have wished would never come to pass.
A couple of weeks ago I posted about NBC making the decision to feature Keith Olbermann’s show on Sunday evenings, right before the Sunday Night Football broadcast. Though his ratings don’t exactly make the folks at 60 Minutes worry about their jobs, the show is doing well enough that Media Bistro reported last week that at least one observer has suggested that CBS consider stealing Olbermann away from NBC and using him to replace Katie Couric on the CBS Evening News.
Writing in “The Nation”, Marvin Kitman says that Olbermann’s Murrow-esque editorializing and his offbeat and irreverant style might be the right way to reinvent the evening news format in an age where young people get their news from comedy shows like “The Daily Show” and “The Colbert Report”.
Meanwhile, the New York Daily News reports that Miss USA Rachel Smith (no, not Miss South Carolina, the girl that actually won) says that she’d like to go into television news, but says “I just don’t want to end up like Katie Couric. I want people to take me seriously.”
I tell ya, that Katie, she don’t get no respect!
The media blog Media Bistro reports that NBC will be putting Keith Olbermann on in prime time this weekend. His usual overnight show will air just before the premiere broadcast of this season’s Sunday Night Football.
On one hand, it’s great that the suits at NBC are responding to Olbermann’s widespread popularity online as a champion of truth. On the other hand, maybe putting this show on before a football game doesn’t really hit the right audience. Olbermann’s probably not all that popular with the pickup-truck-beer-and-power-tool crowd, I’m guessing.
His show will be on at 7:00 p.m. Eastern, which does put him head-to-head against “60 Minutes”, which the press release Media Bistro quotes does not seem to mention. Now there’s the meat of it — placing a man who regularly channels the spirit of Edward R. Murrow directly up against the most venerated news program of all time. “60 Minutes” is decidedly in its waning years, but so are its viewers (not to mention Mike Wallace), and Olbermann’s show is as much a product of these times as “60 Minutes” was of the late 1960s and early 1970s. “60 Minutes” proved that people would watch intelligent journalism on TV, let’s hope Olbermann proves that there is still a taste for it, even when it’s paired up with the ultimate American jingofest of professional football.
Apparently Uncle Dick has decided that the Office of the Vice President is a whole separate branch of government.
Except, of course, when he needs to invoke executive privilege to hide something he doesn’t want the public to know about.
Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi’s blog has some of the particulars in this recent kerfuffle, including Congressman Henry Waxman’s demands (in his role as chairman of the Oversight Committee) that Cheney cough up a variety of pieces of information regarding the Scooter Libby case.
And, as always, Our Hero Keith Olbermann has the requisite blast of righteous indignation.
I know this is being covered wall-to-wall on every newsy blog and mainstream news outlet, but I have come to the conclusion that every time shit like this is made public that it is the duty of every single American to shout from the rooftops about the unabashed abuse of power that has been the hallmark of these evil people. My friend Tony has recently discovered the following quote:
“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena.” – Theodore Roosevelt
And while I appreciate that he is using this to chide me for getting my rant on (and I do take his point), it really is nothing short of an obligation to muster some degree of outrage about all this. There is little practical redress to the situation — it is a foregone conclusion that there will be no impeachment proceedings despite more than ample grounds for prosecuting Cheney, and we are compelled to wait out the remaining days until January 20, 2009. One can only hope that the hue and cry is loud and prolonged enough to reach the ears of the several dozen individuals presently hoping to succeed him and convince them that this is the wrong path.
Or, perhaps the time really has come to take up arms and, as the Declaration of Independence says, “…institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.”
Now that the Bush Administration doesn’t have Tom Ridge to trot out, waving his arms and screaming “Orange Alert! Orange Alert!” like the robot from “Lost In Space”, they’ve upped their game a little bit by periodically trying to spook everyone with some half-assed terrorist plot they’ve “foiled in the nick of time”.
A few weeks ago it was the guys who were going to shoot their way into Fort Dix, and this week it was the crazed Jamaican Muslims who were going to blow up JFK Airport.
These stories play big for a day or two, and all the networks trot out their “anti-terrorism experts”, and the right-wing bloggers get to thump their chests and fling some more poo, and we’re all supposed to stay cowering in our bunkers. This time around, in fact, the chairman of the Arkansas Republican Party went on record saying he thought a few terror attacks would prove what a great job Bush is doing keeping America safe.
The spin cycle on this shit doesn’t last as long as it used to, but it’s still pretty depressing to see that anyone puts the slightest bit of credence into it. I almost punched out my TV when NBC’s “anti-terrorism consultant”, answering a softball lobbed at him by Ann Curry on the “Today” show, actually said he thought the reason these plots happen is because Muslims hate our American freedoms.
For starters, in each one of these plots that shows up, the ham-handed actions of the FBI turn up over and over and over and over. Some informant bankrolled by the FBI infiltrates the group and practically bludgeons them over the head “urging” them to buy guns and explosives, make plans, and so on. J. Edgar “Madge” Hoover would be so proud of the agents following in his footsteps.
Next, even while the Serious Law Enforcement Officials inevitably say that these foiled plots would cause “massive destruction on an unimaginable scale”, once somebody who actually knows what the fuck they’re talking about weighs in, the actual assault being planned turns out to be technically impossible, logistically unfeasible, or downright foolish.
Keith Olbermann had a good piece about this the other night (link goes to the always-informative Crooks & Liars, who usually have these video clips first). Even the current mayor of New York City publicly said people should “get over it” (Bloomberg is being touted as a possible 3rd party/independent candidate for President, BTW, and it would be very interesting to see him up against Rudy “I’m The Hero Of 9/11″ Giuliani).
On the positive side, though, they didn’t really achieve their objective of keeping Scooter Libby’s jail sentence out of the media. I also notice that with each new Republican debate, the already-announced candidates look more and more desperate trying to keep on message with this stuff. So maybe even the die-hards are beginning to see that their jig is almost up.
MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann has turned his Murrow-esque rants into a regular element of his program. Not surprisingly, this takes some of the effect out his words — powerful rhetoric is only diminished by making it commonplace — but he can still get a good stemwinder going when he wants to.
If you have not already seen the clip of his piece from earlier this week where he slices and dices Rudy Giuliani like just so much Kobe beef at a Japanese steak house, it is definitely worth watching. The political blog Crooks And Liars is good enough to post downloadable versions in both WMV and QuickTime formats.
I was almost out of my seat and cheering by the time he got to the end of this one. It would do my heart good if just one Democratic presidential candidate would get behind a talking point like this and shut up these bullshit artists once and for all.
As regular visitors here know, my anger toward and hatred of George W. Bush has become so visceral that I can’t even bear to watch him or listen to his voice except in the smallest of clips without elevating my blood pressure.
So I chose to watch Adam and Jamie blow up a scale model of the Hindenburg on MythBusters last night. I figure if I have to choose between two different flaming Nazi gasbags, I might as well choose the one with some entertainment value.
I also knew that there would be plenty of media coverage to make sure that I would know the content of the speech, even if I didn’t watch it personally. And I was right, of course. In fact, the White House was even good enough to give the media a few excerpts of the speech beforehand so they could get their spin machines up to full speed before 9:00 p.m.
As usual, rising to the top of the commentary, is MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann. Here’s the link to the video of Olbermann’s piece at Crooks & Liars (I might change this link to some other source later). And, as I have made it a practice to do in the last few months, here is the complete transcript of the editorial:
President Bush makes no secret of his distaste for looking backward, for assessing past results. But in our third story on the Countdown tonight: too bad.
Any meaningful assessment of the president’s next step in Iraq must consider his steps and missteps so far. So, let’s look at the record: Before Mr. Bush was elected, he said he was no nation-builder; nation-building was wrong for America. Now, he says it is vital for America.
He said he would never put U.S. troops under foreign control. Today, U.S. troops observe Iraqi restrictions. He told us about WMDs. Mobile labs. Secret sources. Aluminum tubing. Yellow-cake.
He has told us the war is necessary. Because Saddam was a threat; Because of 9/11; Osama bin Laden; al Qaeda; Because of terrorism in general; To liberate Iraq; To spread freedom; To spread democracy; To keep the oil out of the hands of terrorist-controlled states; Because this was a guy who tried to kill his dad.
In pushing for and prosecuting this war, he passed on chances to get Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, Muqtada al-Sadr, Osama bin Laden. He sent in fewer troops than recommended. He disbanded the Iraqi Army, and “de-Baathified” the government. He short-changed Iraqi training. He did not plan for widespread looting, nor the explosion of sectarian violence. He sent in troops without life-saving equipment. Gave jobs to foreign contractors, not the Iraqis. Staffed U-S positions there, based on partisanship, not professionalism.
We learned that “America had prevailed”, “Mission Accomplished”, the resistance was in its “last throes”.
He has said more troops were not necessary, and more troops are necessary, and that it’s up to the generals, and removed some of the generals who said more troops would be necessary.
He told us of turning points: The fall of Baghdad, the death of Uday and Qusay, the capture of Saddam, a provisional government, the trial of Saddam, a charter, a constitution, an Iraqi government, elections, purple fingers, a new government, the death of Saddam. We would be greeted as liberators, with flowers. As they stood up-we would stand down, we would stay the course, we were never ‘stay the course’.
The enemy was al Qaeda, was foreigners, terrorists, Baathists. The war would pay for itself, it would cost 1-point-7 billion dollars, 100 billion, 400 billion, half a trillion dollars.
And after all of that, today it is his credibility versus that of generals, diplomats, allies, Republicans, Democrats, the Iraq Study Group, past presidents, voters last November, and the majority of the American people.
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Too Much Of A Good Thing
For the last couple of years now, MSNBC anchor and commentator Keith Olbermann has opted to deliberately imitate the editorial style of Edward R. Murrow in delivering what has turned into a regular series of editorial jeremiads against the Bush Administration. Many of us, myself included, cheered loudly when he decided to say what no one else in American journalism would say — that the President and his cronies are liars and criminals on a par with the worst usurpers in human history.
But it was clear to me from the outset that he needed to use his rhetoric and his soapbox very sparingly. Such charged language, such inflammatory accusations, no matter how true they might be, lose their power and meaning when they are too often repeated. It is, in fact, the opposite side of the coin of Hitler’s “Big Lie”. No matter how big the lie, if you keep telling it and treating it as plain fact, it will become so, and the bigger the lie, the more readily it will be believed. In this case, the truth is being told, but in its ready repetition it ceases to be seen as the truth and become just another bit of empty rhetoric, easily dismissed. The Republicans have demonstrated their full and complete understanding of both sides of this coin, telling the most egregious lies and turning them into accepted facts, while discounting and undermining any and all counter-arguments as “liberal bias”.
Blogging for Time Magazine, political writer James Poniewozik called out Olbermann’s over-the-top response to the now-infamous Hillary Clinton “RFK remark”, and has come to the conclusion that Olbermann has begun to stretch into the real of self-parody. At TV Newser, associate editor Steve Krakauer pulled together a handful of links about MSNBC’s decision to let Olbermann rant on, including one blogger who openly wonders if Olbermann has “jumped the shark”.
I have to say I believe that he has, and that he should take advantage of the relative lull in political news now that Barack Obama has become the presumptive Democratic nominee and Bush is on his “Farewell Tour” to give it a rest until the last month or so of the presidential campaign. Regardless of which candidate wins in November, there will continue to be a genuine need for an honest voice speaking truth to power, and it needs to be one that cannot be ignored.
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