Glenn Greenwald, in yet another excellent column, lays into Olbermann pretty hard about FISA, more specifically Obama's position on it.
The Special Comment happened at the end of January, and is righteous in both delivery and indignation:
It's almost 10 minutes long, so below the fold are the relevant aspects.
This is no longer just a farce in which protecting telecoms is dressed up as protecting us from terrorists conference cells. Now it begins to look like the bureaucrats of the Third Reich, trying to protect the Krupp family, the industrial giants, re-writing the laws of Germany for their benefit.
The usual words make their appearance. Facism. Corporate criminals. Illegal and unjustified spying.
All accurate descriptions, and all worthy choices for ranting about this horrible bill. Olbermann was adamant that these FISA changes were irrelevant to national security:
Sorry, Mr. Bush, the eavesdropping provisions of FISA have obviously had no impact on counter-terrorism, and there is no current or perceived terrorist threat the thwarting of which could hinge on an email or phone call that is going through Room 641 of AT&T in San Francisco.
Something we've been writing and saying for a long time, no?
All that righteous anger, that indignation, that anger towards the Bush administration's latest power grab, seemed unimportant once Obama made clear his feelings about FISA.
Now, I'm not going to turn this into an Obama hate-fest, like we've seen happen on this site the last few days. I was never all that enamored of him to begin with, taking a more pragmatic look at him. So, I never really felt the apparent betrayal many here seem to feel.
But what I've found most interesting is how eagerly and quickly some abandoned the importance of FISA once it became clear that Obama didn't really feel it a fight worth having.
Like Olbermann:
Amongst that carefully-scripted fawning episode, where none of Olbermann's wonderful rage is evident (indeed, had you not seen the first video, not heard his first Special Comment about FISA, you wouldn't even think he thought it was bad at all), we have Jonathan Alter somehow coming to the conclusion that this bill "restores the Constitution."
That is, quite simply, Karl Rovian revisionism. Blatantly and confidently stating that the opposite of reality is actually the true reality. It's amazing and quite frankly, pathetic.
Or, as Greenwald wrote:
How can a bill which increases the President's authority to eavesdrop with no warrants over the current FISA law possibly be described as a restoration of the Fourth Amendment? That would be like describing a new law banning anti-war speech as a restoration of the First Amendment.
How many times have we seen Olbermann's disgust towards cowering, capitulating Democrats? Now that Obama hops on the capitulation bandwagon, suddenly it's a sign of strength.
I'm not doing this to try and turn people on Obama OR Olbermann. I like them both just fine, but I'm also well aware that they are human and have flaws. Obama is a politician, he will pander, he will flip-flop, he is not a perfect candidate.
Olbermann is not perfect, he is not above hero worship, he is not above flip-flopping, and he is not immune from the same afflictions of other journalists.
We shouldn't cut them off, we shouldn't throw them aside, but we should look at them through the lenses of reality.
Like Cole does:
No, I don’t have buyers remorse, yes, he still is better than Hillary or McCain, no, I am not disillusioned (I never thought he was a flaming liberal in the first place). I am, however, disgusted, and I will caution the Obama campaign that "better than McCain" is not much of a rallying cry. We all remember how "anything is better than Bush" turned out in 2004.
A good reminder for Obama. We will hold him accountable. It is no longer enough to be "better than the Republican."
We should remember that politicians do not deserve blind devotion. That sort of blind support is why Bush got elected twice. We need to have our eyes open so we can react and push where and when it's needed.
And we should probably give a more critical eye to Olbermann, who is unfortunately displaying some characteristics of blind devotion towards Obama. His commentary about Obama and his positions is questionable to me now, after his tremendous change on the FISA issue.
I hope it's questionable to more than just me, though.
UPDATE: To add another point from Greenwald:
That's called being a rational adult who refuses to relinquish one's intellectual honesty, integrity, and political principles in order to march lockstep behind a political leader. Those who think that Barack Obama should not be criticized no matter how wrong he is -- or those who justify anything that he does no matter how craven and unjustifiable, including things that they viciously criticized when done by Dick Cheney or Harry Reid -- are no different, and no better, than those who treated George Bush with similar uncritical reverence in 2003 and 2004.
You can still support Obama because of the many good positions he has DESPITE criticizing a bad position he has.
Why is that so freakin' hard for people to see?