I have only recently begun watching your channel. Seldom do I watch TV, especially cable.
However, that fact that you feature someone as intelligent and eloquent as Keith Olbermann has changed that.
It is so refreshing to have someone on TV who doesn't talk down to me. Thank you so much for giving this journalist a forum of his own and for having him as the anchor on primary nights.
His "Special Comment" on May 14 about Bush & golf was important television, a near oxymoron in today's world. I watched with bated breath. I have re-watched this segment on your website in the hours since it first aired. I will be buying Oral-B dental care products today in support of their sponsorship of the "Special Comment" on the website.
Finally, it may sound trite, but the only TV show I historically watched "religiously" was "The Simpsons". Since I have begun tuning into "Countdown", which sadly airs at the same time locally here in Sacramento, I don't watch even 1 minute of my former favorite show. Keith Olbermann's show is the only program on TV I cannot bear to miss.
Reading these new remarks, jaw-dropping even for this knuckle-dragging president, I am reminded, strangely, of the scene in Monty Python's Life Of Brian, when the commandos of the Campaign For Free Galilee and the People's Front of Judea meet each other in the palace of Pontius Pilate, having each conceived and launched exactly the same kidnap plot at the same time.
BRIAN: Brothers! Brothers! We should be struggling together!
FRANCIS: We are!
BRIAN: We mustn't fight each other! Surely we should be united against the common enemy!
EVERYONE: The Judean People's Front?!
Times like these, when a president of the United States is not descended upon by a team of psychoanalysts after he actually talks about how he responded to the grief of parents who lost children in his meaningless war in Iraq, by making his own sacrifice - golf - remind me that surely even in this time of internecine Democratic struggling, we should be united against the Common Enemy.
So tonight, for the first time since Valentine's Day, I'm offering a Special Comment on Mr. Bush, previewed below.
Hillary makes an unprecedented appearance on Countdown with Keith Olbermann, at 5pm and 7pm PT on MSNBC.
Let's liveblog it here. Comments, questions, snark, and wisdom welcomed.
Will Keith decry Hillary's use of fear in today's TV ad?
Keith's only Special Comment against a Democratic presidential candidate came against Hillary last month, wherein he decried her Rovian campaign tactics of fear, smear, and division. Video below the fold.
I know Olbermann has put his guns on the President, Republicans, Democrats, and Clinton. However, should he now turn his guns on his colleagues at ABC for giving a debate of no substance? He could attack the media for spending more time on issues that don't matter (lapel pins) over issues that do (torture). Keep in mind, if he does, he'll open himself up to charges of hypocrisy. What are your thoughts?
Well this probably violates all house rules about purloining material but the thing is about me.
I have to say this reflects the off-the-record interplay, too, and I find it encouraging.
Some of what Ben Smith reported at Politico, after he asked, on the Clinton Campaign conference call:
.
..how the campaign responds to Keith Olbermann's contention that they are "awash in filth."
I imagine I'm alone or nearly so, in this. But when I got home tonight and finally got to watch the Special Comment, I could only think:
Why does Keith Olbermann assume that the horrible behavior of the Clinton campaign could have come about without the express approval of Senator Clinton?
This, Senator Clinton, is your campaign, and it is your name. Grab the reins back from whoever has led you to this precipice, before it is too late. Voluntarily or inadvertently, you are still awash in this filth. Your only reaction has been to disagree, reject, and to call it regrettable. Her only reaction has been to brand herself as the victim, resign from your committee, and insist she will continue to speak. Unless you say something definitive, Senator, the former Congresswoman is speaking with your approval.
and I think Dkos sux too because I can't responde via comment to Keith... well in that case I guess Keith doesn't suck,I just get to write a diary about it, I was sort of instructed too and I only write one a week which though they mostly are crap, they are more substantive than 50% of the diaries published daily, does this win some kind of award for run on sentance? I'm sorry for the completly misleading title, the fact is I love you (Keith) man.
How can I count the ways? Well for starters speaking these words on the 5th aniversery of 9/11.
I do not do this lightly, and I do not do this happily.
There is no exaggeration in this preamble, and when I say the words on "more in sorrow than in anger" on the air tonight, I will mean them and mean them profoundly.
As ever, forgive me for quoting myself.
By way of necessary preface, President and Senator Clinton -- and the Senator's mother, and the Senator's brother -- were of immeasurable support to me at the moments when these very commentaries were the focus of the most surprise, the most uncertainty, and the most anger. My gratitude to them is abiding.
You did it again, Keith. While Hunter's been working on a new comment rendering system, it's not fully ready. In the meantime, comments disabled. Someone should start up a new diary for the discussion. -ct
I'd like to borrow and add to this diary's overwhelming comments - in particular those of beltane,jalapeno, and Sam Loomis.
"Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter." ~ Martin Luther King, Jr.
It is TIME for all good Democrats to stand up and publicly reject and denounce Clinton's race baiting tactics.
John Edwards, Bill Richardson, Joe Biden, Chris Dodd, I hope you all realize how much this wounds us as Democrats, as Americans, and as decent human beings.
You're either on the side of decency or you're on the side of immorality.
It's time for another of your special comments -- one discussing Hillary Clinton.
A few years ago I watched you become more and more stressed as you witnessed the actions of President Bush and his administration. I saw all of that anger and frustration come out in one glorious fell swoop in your very first special comment.
Several years ago, a friend appeared in a production of Conor McPherson's one-man play, St. Nicholas. The main character is a theatre critic who falls in with a group of vampires. As you would expect, the play draws parallels between the parasitic nature of the critic and the vampire. For someone engaged in literary criticism, the comparisons can sting a bit, but I do like this passage from the opening lines:
I was a lucky bastard. I was blessed, or cursed, whichever, with the ability to string words together. I could string words together.
And that's all it was.
I mean, I was intelligent, but I had no real thoughts about things.
I'd never taken the care to form an opinion. I just had them.
(I always wanted to use BREAKING in the title!) Keith Olbermann plans on doing one of his 'Special Comments' tonight. Subject: Dubya's dance on the Iran NIE. Unfortunately, I am probably going to miss it. If somebody puts a thread latter 'live blogging' it, that would be great.
Keith is back with a special comment, and all I can say is THANK GOD...
On Daviel Levin, the former U.S. Acting Assistant Attorney General, who was himself waterboarded to determine whether or not the act constituted torture and was therefore counter to the claims of the Bush Admininstration that it was not.
Water-boarding, he said, is torture.
Legally, it is torture .
Practically, it is torture.
Ethically, it is torture .
And he wrote it down.
Wrote it down somewhere, where it could be contrasted with the words of this country's 43rd President: "The United States of America does not torture."
Made you into a liar, Mr. Bush.
Made you into, if anybody had the guts to pursue it, a criminal.
Yes, Keith Olbermann will be doing a Special Comment on what looks to be the Senate Judiciary Committee's confirmation of Michael Mukasey as Attorney General, now that Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) and my own Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) have decided to vote for his confirmation.
So tune into MSNBC at 8pm EST, 5pm PST (or is it EDT and PDT now that we set our clocks back?) to see his Special Comment, or watch the replay at midnight EST and 9pm PST.
I only learned this because they had a commercial on MSNBC just a few minutes ago informing us about this, in the hour where fellow UCLA grad Monica Novotny is the anchor.
Wrote it down somewhere, where it could be contrasted with the words of this country's 43rd President: "The United States of America does not torture."
Made you into a liar, Mr. Bush.
Made you into, if anybody had the guts to pursue it, a criminal.
...Mr. Bush, you have hidden behind the General's skirts, and today you have hidden behind the skirts of 'the last question' at a news conference, to indicate once again that your presidency has been about the tilted playing field, about no rules for your party in terms of character assassination and changing the fabric of our nation, and no right for your opponents or critics to as much as respond.
That, Sir, is not only unAmerican -- it is dictatorial.
And in pimping General David Petraeus, Sir, in violation of everything this country has been assiduously and vigilantly against for 220 years, you have tried to blur the gleaming radioactive line between the military and the political, and to portray your party as the one associated with the military, and your opponents as the ones somehow antithetical to it. You did it again today, Sir, and you need to know how history will judge the line you just crossed.
We checked, and we haven't seen this angle on the Craig story yet. Watch the video, and discuss after. Also, since this one isn't really funny, watch the videos after the break for our highly amusing coverage this weekend of the resignation and other stories, plus a really funny spoof of everyone's favorite Aqua Velva aficionado.
I know this isn't much, it's just...I gotta talk about it, and I don't see a diary for it yet.
Woah...
How dare you, Sir?
"How many casualties will we have?" - this is the language of Bin Laden. Yours, Mr. Giuliani, is the same chilling nonchalance of the madman, of the proselytizer who has moved even from some crude framework of politics and society, into a virtual Roman Colosseum of carnage, and a conceit over your own ability -- and worthiness -- to decide, who lives and who dies. Rather than a reasoned discussion -- rather than a political campaign advocating your own causes and extolling your own qualifications -- you have bypassed all the intermediate steps, and moved directly to trying to terrorize the electorate into viewing a vote for a Democrat, not as a reasonable alternative and an inalienable right... but as an act of suicide.
