Tuesday, June 17, 2008

Unleashed Keith . . .

There are not enough hours in the day for me to do a lot of things I'd like to do. For example: keep up with reading everything interesting Harper's, Newsweek, The New Yorker, The Atlantic, National Catholic Reporter, and read a book a day and read all the fascinating stuff on the Web that interests me or watching all of The Colbert Report episodes (I do manage to keep up with The Daily Show with Jon Stewart) and Countdown with Keith Olbermann. Simply not enough hours. Olbermann lasts an hour. My TV news allotment is an hour. So I use that hour watching The Lehrer Newshour on PBS, which is the best news program out there. So I have to leave Keith off my record list.

Olbermann is the antidote for the right wing idiots like Bill O'Reilly, Limbaugh, and others of that ilk. He can be funny, and he is passionate in his disgust for the Bush administration. His blast at Bush, which aired on May 14, is classic Keith, but this piece has been described as his angriest ever. He is outraged at the Iraq war and near apolplexy with Bush's assertion that he has shown his solidarity with the parents of soldiers killed in Iraq by giving up golf. He ends by telling the vile little pretender in the White House to "shut the hell up!" Apparently MSNBC executive was a little nervous about the lack of respect shown the president in this last line and asked Olbermann about it. (Well, you know how I feel about respect--it's not a given, it's an earned. Unless we're talking about old people . . . I think respect for them is automatic. Certainly the little pygmy in the White House has done nothing meriting respect.) Olbermann had a great comeback. He told the president to "shut the hell up" only because he could not tell him to "shut the fuck up" on television. Too bad. It's what needs to be said.

"The line stayed in," Olbermann observed.

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