It's been heartening to read about Keith Olbermann in multiple diaries and discussions, both here and elsewhere. These days, finding people to speak out against this abject disaster of an administration and their politicization of everything from the 9/11 attacks to proposed new regulations is still not easy, and finding people with a media platform who do so is even more rare. His statements the last few weeks I've seen highlighted here are quite eloquent and just the sort of thing I'd like to see more of.
But that brings up a problem. It's not that I don't have cable; indeed, the local cable system seems to have everything from channels the spouse loves (like HGTV) to several particularly doofy religious stations to, I believe, the All-Yodeling Channel (it's somewhere in the 130s, I know it!). I know Keith has a show on MSNBC and it runs in early evening (8pm eastern, I think?) and maybe it runs later for when I get home from work after midnight, but darned if I know (still, everything reruns sometime, right?). No, it's more of a question of principle...
You see, I've been boycotting cable news--all national cable news--since they lied about the Wellstone memorial service in October 2002. (For more details, try this
lengthy comment from last year.) The stretch of five channels--CNN, CNNHN, MSNBC, CNBC, and (ick) Fox News has been completely unused for almost four years. (Well, not quite; I tuned in CNBC and MSNBC during Olympic coverage, but not for anything else and, in any case, mostly caught Olympic coverage on CBC out of Toronto anyway.) Not that I have any plans to catch Fox News, since I suspect one gets more truthful info from the aforementioned All-Yodeling Channel, which still puts Fox ahead of speeches by almost everyone in the current administration. A Cheney speech tends to have less intellectual merit than almost any movie found in the small room in the back of the video store behind the curtain.
The question that comes up, then, is this: Is it time to modify the boycott to allow for Keith's show Countdown, and only for his show? (I haven't seen a persuasive case that any other shows are worth it consistently, though I could be wrong; feel free to comment.) I've always liked Olbermann going back to his ESPN days; yeah, he has a gift for snarkiness, but there was something more I found in seeing him and reading his columns, a willingness to go against the established grain both in sports and elsewhere. (To this day, I still think he was an ABL sympathizer, working for a network that so emphatically ignored its existence despite having a team barely 20 miles away from its headquarters that I almost sent a couple of anchors bus fare from Bristol to Hartford after Keith left, with a letter saying it was clear they'd spent their money on the NFL deal, and hence didn't have the cash to get to see the Blizzard play.) From reading his comments, he hasn't changed; still snarky, still questioning, but with larger targets than ever possible at ESPN.
Or I could watch his speeches on websites like Crooks and Liars, but then I'd miss the other stuff during his hour show--whatever it is. (It could involve needlepoint, for all I know.) So I'm asking for advise from bright Kossians: is it time to modify the boycott and what would I get out of it, for my knowledge and feelings, if I do?