Saturday, January 22, 2011

Don't Let The Door Hit You on The Way Out . . .


The most annoying think about Keith Olbermann was that at heart I often agreed with him. Bush 43 was an awful president; Bill O'Reilly is a bullying jerk and his employers, Fox News, are a cynical propaganda operation. Rupert Murdoch is a dreadful man (although I suspect that Olbermann would be less outraged if Murdoch hadn't had him fired--for what ever reason).

In short, I got sick and tired of having my opinions expressed in such a smug, juvenile, and overheated manner. To his credit, Olbermann seems to have been more honest than such talk-radio goons as Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck, but he was otherwise very much a creature of their universe--incapable of tolerating disagreement, characterizing ideas he disagreed with as not just wrong but evil, and a streak of mean, adolescent humor that grows tiresome very quickly to anyone who is not an acolyte.

This firing/resignation/whatever doesn't seem to be particularly political, because MSNBC is simply shifting their schedule about a bit to cover Olbermann's departure. Rachel Maddow and Lawrence O'Donnell are little different politically, and they seem capable of agreeing to disagree without steam coming out of their ears (and unlike Olbermann, they actually invite people on their show who disagree with them--and unlike O'Reilly and Hannity, they don't cut their microphones off or offer them up as some sort of virgin sacrifice to the Gods of The American Enterprise Institute).

I wouldn't worry too much about Olbermann; he has lots of money and a solid fan base. He'll probably land somewhere. For a while at any rate.

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