Silence.
Keith Olbermann leaves at the top of his game; the face of MSNBC and its most profitable newscaster. He leaves as a part of the hastily arranged corporate take-over by COMCAST of MSNBC and its subsidiaries--an outcome that might even have been a prerequisite of the merger. The most galling part of this--they took off their top earner and best product simply to silence him. As part of the arrangement, he cannot even defend himself in the mass-media or work at a competitor's microphone for years to come. So, damn the costs. COMCAST has other reasons for taking over the news business, and it has nothing to do with profits.
We are all told from an early age that the markets are sublime and supreme; the markets are cruel masters ferreting-out weakness in products. And yet, MSNBC terminated its best selling voice and product. Again. Take a look at Phil Donahue's career and subsequent banishment and I think we see that the market and the media are two different things. Satisfying the 30-percent gullible tea party faction is always good enough. The media is no longer in business. It exists to promote the agenda of some fairly reckless and amoral despots.
Again in 2011, the market has spoken: more important than profits was shutting Keith Olbermann up forever--or until his age will do it without contract lawyers. And so, another progressive voice is silenced forever. And we pretend to worship the free market.
Those 30-percenters of wingnuts feel like 99-percenters for a reason. They own the widely accessible media wholly.
The markets. Efficiency. Christian nation. Bullshit. With health care, the markets (and Christian ethics!) have dictated a universal system for efficiency, efficacy and humanity forever. And yet, we are saddled with a cruel patch-work monster designed to kill the poor and the weak. So we have a two-fer--we have an "Oiligarchy" in control of health care and have a system that is an un-Christian as is possible foisted upon our ostensibly Judeo-Christian culture. The markets really mean nothing in post-capitalist America as long as there are cash reserves to consolidate power.
Mindful of its irrelevance--a fist shaken against the sky--I am boycotting COMCAST and its subsidiaries and advertisers. The remnants of MSNBC will continue on for a time, but they have no rudder and no relentless leader now. No lightning rod for outrage.
We'll have to fallback here and crash some more gates. God help us.
Postscript: Don Immelt leaving GE for the administration; the FCC and FTC sitting on their hands whilst an obvious breech of anti-trust laws take place in a key a industry dominated by right wing voices, and the obvious muzzle that has been placed on Olbermann's firing--and he was fired folks--leads me to think that this is a lot more than even my preliminary thesis. We must be vigilant, outraged, and relentlessly curious. Get to the bottom of this!