By now, no doubt many Kossacks have either watched Keith Olbermann's hour-long Special Comment on health care reform live on MSNBC or seen it on DailyKosTV. But what many of you may not realize is that the Republican Party, having received advance word of Keith's plan to devote his entire hour of Countdown to the Comment, decided that just as when the Democratic President Obama took to the airwaves to make his case for health care, they could not let Olbermann's editorial go without rebuttal.
Perhaps you missed it, but I am fortunate enough to have a special beta version of "C-SPAN 4" available on my local cable system, and thus was able to catch, merely through the lucky chances afforded to me by channel-flipping, RNC chairman Michael Steele (apparently they've run out of willing congresscritters) delivering the party's official rebuttal. It's a lucky thing that I'm a quick note taker, because I was able to write down the text of the entire thing. To wit:
Good evening. My fellow Americans, you may have just heard MSNBC's liberal mouthpiece Keith Olbermann delivering a shrill screed in favor of socialist—er, socialized—health care. Having listened to his diatribe, you may now feel yourself moved by the struggles of his seriously ill father, and find yourself agreeing with him that this great country, the United States of America, whose health care is second to none in the world, is actually more of a Third World country that is desperately in need of a government takeover of its health care system.
We urge you to reconsider this stance. Yes, Olbermann's editorial was deeply personal, and it may even have caused some of you to become teary-eyed. But tears are precisely what is NOT needed in this matter so crucial to the future of our country. As proven by countless loyal Republican citizens at town halls throughout this country this past summer, matters of health care require serious, rational talk, not angry appeals based on irrational emotion and vehemence.
The story of Olbermann's father's personal struggles with health care is indeed moving. But Olbermann himself points out that his wealth has enabled him to supply his father's health care needs without any concern for how he will pay the bills. And in saying exactly that, he proves the point we Republicans have been trying to make all along.
The simple fact of the matter is that America does not need health care reform. What America needs is more people with the initiative and drive to accumulate the same personal wealth Keith Olbermann has—and, if possible, even more wealth than that.
Mr. Olbermann says that everyone should have the opportunity to enjoy the same level of health care as his father is currently receiving. And we agree.
If you envy Mr. Olbermann his position, if you wish your father or mother or wife husband or child to receive the same quality of health care, the solution to your dilemma is easy. The solution is: Become a left-wing blowhard newscaster on a cable network, and get the network to make you a multimillionaire. If you succeed in this, you too can enjoy top-notch service from our nonpareil American health care system. Even better, surpass Olbermann's accomplishments by becoming a nonpartisan, truth-telling broadcaster like the excellent Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh or Bill O'Reilly. It pays much more than being a left-wing hack like Olbermann!
Okay. We admit. Not everyone in America has the same, ahem, talents that will allow them to surpass or even match Mr. Olbermann's, er, "accomplishments." Well then. The solution is to find out what your personal talent is, work hard at it, and use it to make yourself rich. Voilà! You, too, can now benefit from "Olbercare"!
The highest possible quality of health care is readily available to anyone with the money to pay for it. If you personally lack the money, the solution is not to cry and whine and beg for a government solution to the problem. The solution is to work hard, get rich, and BUY the quality of health care you want. And it is a solution that we, the Republicans, believe is available to anyone!
It's that simple: If YOU want to live—if YOU don't want to die, or you want to have the best possible chance of not dying—you know what to do: Get yourself up off your lazy ass and get a frickin' JOB. Forget the unemployment rate, forget how many jobs in this country have been offshored, forget how many jobs fail to pay even a living wage. Go out there and do whatever it takes to GET RICH!
Don't expect other Americans to finance YOUR gold-plated care. Why should we care whether you or your loved ones live or die? It's survival of the fittest, baby. That's how we roll. See, we disagree with Mr. Darwin when it comes to creation, but not with what happens to everything AFTER God creates it.
In this great country, those who deserve the best medical care get it, and those who don't, don't. Sometimes they die. Them's the breaks.
Keith Olbermann's father may seem lucky to you. Don't kid yourself. He is merely reaping what he sowed 50 years ago. Fifty years ago, he fathered a smartalecky kid to whom he helped provide a decent education that turned him into a smartalecky, wiseass adult who now thinks himself fit to lecture the rest of us on how the country should be run. And he's managed to hoodwink a bunch of TV network suits into paying him a ridiculous amount of money to do so. Personally we wouldn't mind if his show were canceled tomorrow, but such is life in America. Mr. Olbermann raised a son capable of earning enough money to provide top-quality health care for him. Therefore, he DESERVES it! It is only what he has earned in his old age!
Of course, there are people with no children to care for them at all in their old age, and people too sick or disabled to work, and people who, try as they might, can't even find a job, much less one that will make them wealthy. We say, let them go into business for themselves, and become rich that way. It's the American dream! What, they lack capital? Nonsense. With a good enough business idea and plan, anyone in America can attract seed money. Doesn't EVERYONE in America have the potential to become a successful entrepreneur? Even the already sick and disabled?
If the Waddington brothers want the same health care as the Olbermann family, let them earn the money to pay for it! If there are people dying for lack of health insurance, let their loved ones go out and get jobs that pay them enough to cover it!
Keith Olbermann compared this fine country's current level of health care to that of Dickensian England. Well, if that comparison is apt, we ask, much as Ebenezer Scrooge did: If people are dying for lack of health care, had they better not go about it, and decrease the surplus population? (And by so doing, as Dead Peasant Insurance provides for, enrich the coffers of their former employers—assuming they even HAVE any?) In this, the greatest country in the world, the only reason anyone should die for lack of health care is that he or she, or his or her family, is too lazy and undeserving to EARN it.
We are terribly sorry Keith Olbermann feels so guilty about his ability to provide for his father what some Americans cannot. It is misplaced guilt. On the contrary, he should feel pride that he can afford the best for his father, while others cannot! That's what American capitalism is all about! Without it, we are no better than the Communists!
His sympathy for his friend whose daughter has Lyme disease is equally misplaced. Why, if his friend has a daughter with serious health issues, is that friend selling his farm before selling his precious baseball card collection? He should have looked up Olbermann right away and offered right off the top to sell his collection to him. Olbermann's such a goofball about baseball cards that he'd probably spend half his annual income to buy them off the guy, and so rich that he'd probably have plenty left over to pay for his own father's medical treatment. That way his friend probably wouldn't even have to sell his farm.
But even if his friend does have to sell his farm, why shouldn't he? I mean, isn't it his own fault that in better times, he frittered his money away on baseball cards, rather than spending every spare penny he had on health insurance in case something terrible happened to anyone in his family? It's called "taking care of your own"—and if there's anything we Republicans know about, it's the importance of taking care of your own and saying to hell with everyone else.
This friend of Olbermann's is no different than all those other spendthrift, thoughtless Americans who have used their earnings to buy nice houses and boats and designer clothes and expensive vacations, rather than the health care their families need. Don't they realize that nice houses and boats and designer clothes and expensive vacations and baseball card collections are for the hard-working health care executives and hedge fund managers and bank executives and TV pundits who have earned them by the sweat of their brows—not ordinary people like him? You want to have enough money to collect all the baseball cards of your dreams? Become a health insurance executive!
And back to Keith Olbermann. What if he couldn't afford to pay for his father's care after all? Well then, let HIM sell HIS card collection! From the way he probably blows his money on baseball memorabilia, he may be sitting on several million right there. That should provide far more than enough to pay the bills! Hobbies are for those who can afford them. Period!
Here's Keith's supposedly brilliant solution to getting Congress to understand what he considers to be the urgency of the country's health care needs. He thinks people who support socialized health care should help finance mass health care free clinics in the principal cities of the six senators key to defeating a filibuster against health care reform in the Senate. Well, if his plan comes off, and the free clinics are indeed established and draw throngs of patients, that will only be proof of our point as Republicans. There are far too many lazy people out there looking for a free health care handout. And the only way we should even attempt to solve that problem is through PRIVATE charity by American citizens. Preferably bleeding-heart Democrats who are stupid and foolish enough to actually feel as if they have some sort of responsibility for their lazy fellow man who doesn't want to work for his health care.
You won't find us Republicans doing such a thing. We know better. We know that not only Cadillac-quality health care, but ALL health care, should be reserved for those who have the money to pay for it. No matter what kind of emotional, teary rhetoric Keith Olbermann tries to use to persuade people otherwise.
Everyone else? Let 'em die. That'll teach 'em.
Thank you, and God Bless America.