Special Comment: The Nation's Purpose

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Monday July 11, 2011 · 3:05 PM PDT

2011/07/11 · 15:05

Long time no diary.

And sorry about that: it may have seemed like time off, but it was all rather like launching a Moon Mission on four months' notice, including building the space center and putting your own heinie in the capsule. My apologies.

I rejoin you here today to propose that the Debt Ceiling "talks" have been viewed almost entirely through the wrong end of the telescope. We - this President included - have nuanced ourselves to death about Chained Colas and 14th Amendment remedies, while burying the macro viewpoint: What is the purpose of this or any other nation if not to defend its people?

Keith Olbermann

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Monday November 15, 2010 · 7:37 PM PST

2010/11/15 · 19:37

During my suspension weekend before last I got an email from the delightfully and improbably named Autumn Brewington, inviting me to contribute an Op-Ed piece to The Washington Post on the topic of journalistic objectivity (and, I’m assuming, how political contributions or mere identification fit into that sphere). Discretion being the better part of valor, I had to turn down all requests for comment at that point. Vanity being the better part of me, I have to assume she then turned to the former ABC anchor Ted Koppel.

Keith Olbermann

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Saturday October 30, 2010 · 3:03 PM PDT

2010/10/30 · 15:03

The full list through which I waded -- all the while remembering Michael Palin’s warning to his fellow insurrectionaries from the movie Life Of Brian that they’d be traveling through Pilate’s sewer (“so don’t wear your good sandals”) – was twice, perhaps three times as long as the 32 finalists I selected for the latest Special Comment.

They left me with a headache and a dim view of the future, and a reminder that some of them will become elected officials of our government on Tuesday, not because Democrats and Liberals acted too boldly nor too emphatically nor too loudly, but because they compromised with those who see compromise only as weakness and opportunity. Last year many of us hoped we had an entered a time when the rhetoric could be tamped down and the edges softened. And the Right’s response was to move further to the Right than the rest of us moved towards the middle. You do not have to extrapolate very far from what John Boehner and other GOP leaders have said about compromise, to the Swiftian conclusion (I am being consciously hyperbolic here) that the goal of the Right and the Corporations is not to compromise any more than is necessary to offer us a choice of sauces to be served in after they figuratively kill us and eat us.

Keith Olbermann

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Thursday October 21, 2010 · 9:16 PM PDT

2010/10/21 · 21:16

Not long after the National Review fluffed him, the Republican Tea Party candidate for the House in the Texas 30th went where one of these playground bullies inevitably had to go. Per the Dallas Morning News, Stephen Broden told WFAA-TV in Dallas that if his side doesn't get what it wants, it's time for violence:

“We have a constitutional remedy. And the framers say if that don’t work, revolution.”

Did Broden - laughably described as a 'pastor' - really mean to imply that the violent overthrow of the United States government was something to be considered?

“The option is on the table. I don’t think that we should remove anything from the table as it relates to our liberties and our freedoms. However, it is not the first option.”

Keith Olbermann

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Thursday September 23, 2010 · 12:16 AM PDT

2010/09/23 · 00:16

Of all the Orwellian inside-out euphemisms of the Conservatives, Tea Partiers, and Republicans, perhaps none of them can match -- for sheer audacity or sheer perversion of meaning -- the GOP’s flag-waving crusade to protect those little people, those hard-fighting diminutive economic engines, those “Small Businesses.” They portray this battle as David versus Goliath, the weak versus the powerful, small business versus big government.

“Small Business” is, in short, a brand name.

What American voters hear when the phrase is used, could not be further from reality. I don’t know if any of you saw the twenty or so minutes we gave to this topic last night on Countdown, but before I adapt liberally from the script, let me sum it up thusly:

The Tribune Company is a “Small Business.” So is the company that makes Tabasco Sauce. So are most of the companies controlled by the guy who owns the L.A. Lakers.

Keith Olbermann

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Wednesday July 21, 2010 · 4:29 PM PDT

2010/07/21 · 16:29

...and I don't pretend to be Emile Zola.

But sitting on vacation, paying half-attention to the unfolding story of Shirley Sherrod, it slowly dawned on me that this saga of deep and soul-less deceit on the part of the Right Wing Media bore more than passing resemblance to the persecution of the innocent French Army Captain in 1894. The false conviction of Alfred Dreyfus so rent asunder that nation that some French historians believe it set in motions the events that led to France's political futility in the face of the German onslaught in the late 1930's and especially 1940.

So guess who started paying full attention, and is not on vacation tonight, for about twelve minutes, around 8:48 Eastern Daylight Time? Ordinarily I like to excerpt some parts of these Special Comments here but a) I'm pressed for commuting time, and b) the final script has yet to be vetted and I don't want to print anything that might not get read verbatim on the air. You know, living up to the ideal journalistic standards of Andrew Breitbart.

Keith Olbermann

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Wednesday July 14, 2010 · 2:15 PM PDT

2010/07/14 · 14:15

The universal condemnation of the windbag's grievously timed exploitation of the death of the New York Yankees baseball team owner George Steinbrenner, has evidently found its way through and struck a nerve.

The classless hatemonger has respondedto the inquiries of an actual journalist, Michael Calderone of Yahoo! News, as to why he would say such a thing just hours after Steinbrenner's death from an unanticipated heart attack.

To refresh you, here's what Limbaugh said yesterday:

George Steinbrenner has passed away at age 80. That cracker made a lot of African-American millionaires. He -- George Steinbrenner, the classic capitalist, everybody around him became wealthy. Like most successful capitalists, he made the people around him wealthy, and a lot of African-American millionaires along the way, and at the same time he fired a bunch of white guys as managers, left and right.

Keith Olbermann

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Tuesday July 06, 2010 · 7:28 PM PDT

2010/07/06 · 19:28

I'm going to do something I've never done before. I'm going to cross-post this piece (with revisions where useful) from my baseball blogbecause to me, this is the absolutely appropriate kind of intersection between politics, sports, and patriotism.

Monday night, having conceded defeat to the 217 degree temperatures here in Big Town, I stayed home and watched the Mets-Reds game on television instead of in person. At mid-game, I saw my friend Kevin Burkhardt of SNY do a seemingly typical Independence Day interview. Another friend suddenly popped up on my screen.

Kevin was interviewing MSNBC analyst Jack Jacobs, who is usually a part of the Mets' commendable but never over-the-top salutes to our military heroes. He's part of them not just because he's a Brooklyn kid, and media-savvy, and a baseball fan, but because he is truly one of those heroes.

Keith Olbermann

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Tuesday June 22, 2010 · 9:31 AM PDT

2010/06/22 · 09:31

OK, I'm back.

I've always liked to invent backstories behind cliches and one of my oldest ones is the idea that the first guy who said "You can't see the forest for the trees" was actually running through a forest when he ran head first into a tree and didn't enjoy the experience. You do tend to swear at the trees, and, if you hit your head hard enough, you might even swear off that particular forest for awhile.

Needless to say, the overwhelming number of comments to my last diary divided into agreement with support, disagreement with support, or anger/frustration/namecalling - still with support. I did not write what I wrote to provoke a reaction but if I had, that would have been the spectrum I would have hoped for.

It occurs to me, in the full flower of the pomposity that always strikes me at midday, that this might be somewhat metaphorical for progressives and other centrists, particularly relative to criticism of the Administration. I was reminded of this last night when somebody asked me why I wasn't pounding the President more on Afghanistan, and I linked him the Comment I did last year saying Obama should declare victory and go home.

Keith Olbermann

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Wednesday June 16, 2010 · 10:15 PM PDT

2010/06/16 · 22:15

I was checking in tonight to see what was new, came across a diary trashing first me and my colleague Rachel, and scrolled through it shaking my head, sadly, until I got to one comment that leaped off the page.

can't verify, of course... (2+ / 0-)
but a friend in the news biz tells me he got a damaging e-mail from one of his pals at NBC. something to the effect that their anger was pre-planned because "beating up on the President has been good for ratings."

I haven't checked but I'm hearing that Olbermann slammed the speech on Twitter before it even started.

"Can't verify"... "haven't checked"...It can't be verified because it's nonsense, and it wasn't checked because nobody bothered. Unfortunately there's been a lot of this here lately.

Keith Olbermann

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Monday March 22, 2010 · 4:26 PM PDT

2010/03/22 · 16:26

Warning: despite the title, this has nothing to do with Cornell's miracle run in the NCAA playoffs.

We may smile at the Republicans switching to a strategy of "Repeal" that only requires a net gain of 26 Senate seats and 113 more in the House seven months from now. But remember, unlike the rest of us, GOP leaders have not understood the applicability of the old tenet that the first sign of psychological distress is to repeat the same action over and over, in pursuit of an unachievable result.

This is why we saw the Tea Party verbal assaults on Congressmen Lewis, Carson, Frank, and Rodriguez, and the birther Neugebauer's on Congressman Stupak.

Keith Olbermann

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Tuesday March 09, 2010 · 8:19 PM PST

2010/03/09 · 20:19

With apologies to Cenk Uyger and Jesse Ventura (and to the band "America"), all of whom I like and respect, but lemme see if I've got this straight:

When I returned to MSNBC in 2003 I was a "conservative," and Jesse was taken off the air because - after handing him a lot of guaranteed money - they suddenly dropped him because they suddenly discovered he didn't support the Iraq war, even though the Governor contends Phil Donahue had just been fired by MSNBC for not supporting the Iraq War.

I'm writing from my father's bedside so this diary will be a little choppy and have a few typos - but, in brief - what a crock!

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House GOP Candidate Says Revolution "On The Table"

"Small Business" - Use Quotes, Please

Special Comment: Ms. Sherrod is NOT Dreyfus

Deconstructing Rush Limbaugh

Meet My Friend Jack Jacobs

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Special Comment: March Madness

Ventura Low Way