Maybe Keith Can Get a Job on the Fox Business Channel

MSNBC’s president vowed to fire Keith Olbermann after he threatened to take his case to other networks.

Fox rewards individuality and allows free speech.

Only Fox News Is Biased

This video has gone viral today, and for good reason. Take a look. Regardless of whether you think it's acceptable for candidates to shill on TV, it's something they do, and the talking heads allow their favorite candidates on to do it. The problem here, of course, is the rampant hypocrisy of Rachel Maddow declaring that Fox News does it but MSNBC doesn't. That's just a bald-faced lie and she knows it. Thank goodness there are people to call her on it.

Keith Olbermann Suspended Indefinitely?

It seems to me that there's got to be more to this story than meets the eye.

MSNBC star Keith Olbermann donated money to several candidates, a news bomb dropped by Politico. In response, the president of MSNBC, Phil Griffin is shocked! Shocked! That there's gamblingpolitical donations going on in this establishment.

Come on, Phil. Really?

I'm not arguing that employees don't sign away all sorts of rights when they join any company. Nor am I saying that Olbermann wasn't aware of the policy (he obviously had to be). But I have to agree with Bill Kristol that suspending Olbermann for donating to candidates is squirrelly.

First, he donated money to candidates he liked. He didn’t take money, or favors, in a way that influenced his reporting.

Second, he’s not a reporter. It’s an opinion show. If Olbermann wants to put his money where his mouth is, more power to him.

Third, GE, the corporate parent of MSNBC, gives money to political organizations. GE executives and, I’m sure, NBC executives give money. Why can’t Olbermann?

Liberals scream about Fox Corporation's $1 million donation to the GOP and now Republicans are comparing Olbermann's misstep with it. But the truth is that there's nothing wrong with either donation; individuals and corporations should be free to donate to the candidate of their choice. Unless Politico can show a clear connection between Olbermann's donations and coverage of these candidates, the suspension is bogus.

Olbermann Throws Temper Tantrum, Quits KOS

Vintage Olbermann.

Keith Olbermann announced Wednesday night that he will cease blogging for the liberal Daily Kos over a comment directed at the MSNBC host’s coverage.

Olbermann and some of his MSNBC colleagues surprised their left-leaning fans on Tuesday with eviscerating critiques of President Barack Obama’s Oval Office address on the oil spill spewing off the Gulf Coast.

“It was a great speech if you were on another planet for the last 57 days,” Olbermann said of the president’s remarks, echoing similarly negative comments from fellow MSNBC hosts Chris Matthews and Rachel Maddow.

One commenter on the Daily Kos, where Olbermann has frequently blogged over the years, speculated that the pattern of hosts generally sympathetic to the president bashing the administration was too consistent to be a coincidence.

“Can’t verify, of course,” the commenter began, “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.”

Obviously, Olbermann is yet another TV personality not used to being criticized from both sides. But to be KO'd by a conspiracy theorist? Where has Olbermann been for the last decade? These nuts accused George W. Bush of orchestrating the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. Why should Olbermann be shocked that someone sees a conspiracy for ratings? Sounds to me like he was just looking for a reason to quit blogging.

Marc Ambinder Is Today's Concern Troll Example

He's sooooo worried that conservatives have gone....mad!

Can anyone deny that the most trenchant and effective criticism of President Obama today comes not from the right but from the left? Rachel Maddow's grilling of administration economic officials. Keith Olbermann's hectoring of Democratic leaders on the public option. Glenn Greenwald's criticisms of Elena Kagan. Ezra Klein and Jonathan Cohn's keepin'-them-honest perspectives on health care. The civil libertarian left on detainees and Gitmo. The Huffington Post on derivatives.

Who is this "anyone" who thinks Keith Olbermann and Rachel Maddow are serious thinkers? Only a lunatic would that pair are anything but shrieking nincompoops on a third-rate television show with 3 viewers between them.

It is absolutely a condition of the age of the triumph of conservative personality politics, where entertainers shouting slogans are taken seriously as political actors, and where the incentive structures exist to stomp on dissent and nuance, causing experimental voices to retrench and allowing a lot of people to pretend that the world around them is not changing. The obsession with ACORN, Climategate, death panels, the militarization of rhetoric, Saul Alinsky, Chicago-style politics, that TAXPAYERS will fund the bailout of banks -- these aren't meaningful or interesting or even relevant things to focus on. (The banks will fund their own bailouts.)

No, idiot, consumers will fund the bailouts because banks will pass on any costs to them. Even if you flunked economics, there have been enough of those talking heads you despise informing you that this is the way life works. Or, as William Jacobson so eloquently puts it:

Ambinder lives is a fantasy world where left-wing commentators (including Keith Olbermann and Rachel Maddow) are serious policy wonks, while all conservative commentators are "entertainers shouting slogans;" where hyperbole is the exclusive refuge of the right-wing; where the vile language and defamation hurled at George Bush for eight years never existed; where the equally vile attempts by Democratic leaders to equate health care protesters to terrorists never happened.

Every day Democratic politicians and left-wing bloggers hurl epithets like "teabagger" and "racist" and "extremist" at political opponents, yet none of that exists in Ambinder's precious little world.

Ambinder cannot seem to understand that being mad is not the same thing as madness. The true madness is the direction in which the Obama administration is taking this country.

Maybe if Ambinder actually watched and listened to voices on the right, he might discover that there are plenty of "reasonable" people there with "reasonable" concerns about what the hell this government is doing. But I guess if you are dumb enough to think Keith Olbermann is some sort of senior statesman, then concern about the direction Democrats are forcing us seems "unreasonable."

Olbermann Says Citizens United Is Worse than Dred Scott

Maybe Democrats have good reason to assume that democracy will disappear, since they can't succeed within the rules.

What's Sedition?

A friend of mine is really incensed about Rush Limbaugh saying he hoped those at West Point would 'detain' President Obama.

Of course, Media Matters only gives us 28 seconds of what Limbaugh said, so we don't know what the context was of this clip.

"How is this not sedition? Fortunately for the rest of us, our brothers and sisters in the armed forces love America more than Rush," said my friend.

I tried to explain what constitutes sedition, but I doubt I convinced him. But the incident made me wonder if my friend was equally incensed when Keith Olbermann accused President Bush of engaging in terrorism. Probably not.

That free speech is a tricky thing.

Olbermann as "Pet Media"

This sums it up very well.

H/T: Olbermann Watch.

Is MSNBC a real news organization? More from Gibson.

Olbermann Idiocy

Great post here.

It Matters Where You Went to School

Everybody knows that it really does matter where you went to college. If you have an Ivy League education, you will probably have more doors opened to you than if you went to an ag college.

This isn't to say you can't get a fine education at an ag college. But it's not an Ivy League school. Well, unless you're Keith Olbermann slamming Monica Goodling as a graduate of "Religious Lunatic University." Then, you get the Ann Coulter treatment.

And Ann squashes Keith flat. How do we know that? Because Olbermann drags out the whole we have the same degree crap when he's caught being an elitist, pompous jerk.

Well, truth be told, I, too, went to a satellite school of the University of Texas because it was cheaper and I paid for it myself. And here's Dirty Secret Number Two: I even went to a junior college for two years before transferring in to a U.T. school. And guess what, Keith? If I pull out my undergraduate degree (you know, the only one you've got), it says "University of Texas" on it, just like every U.T. alumnus. I don't have a qualifier on mine showing I didn't get it in Austin or anything like that.

But unlike you, Keith, I understand that, yes, there really is a difference in getting your degree from the University of Texas and getting it from UTEP, and so I never misrepresent my degree as being from U.T. Which, I suppose, is a step up from you, who, seemingly, can't differentiate between a degree that cost tens of thousands of dollars and one that cost a few thousand.

And even beyond this, as Ace points out, just because the other people don't laugh at you to your face doesn't mean they don't snicker about you behind your back.

Olbermann claims he's never heard other Cornell alums differentiate between the different colleges, and that they all believed themselves "equal."

No offense, Keith. You thought that because you were at the weaker, less-selective school. And you didn't hear it because people were just being nice.

Trust me, I heard a lot of this, and I didn't even go to a great school. But yeah, the people at the more-selective college did get annoyed when those from the less-selective colleges would claim to have come from our college. Like deliberately misstating which college they actually attended in the yearbook.

Petty, yes, but people are petty.

Again, I'm sure you, at the state ag school, thought you were all equals. The kids at the pricey, tony, more-selective Ivy private college didn't.

People who went to junior college, then transferred to Cornell would get the same degree, too, Keith, assuming that option is available. But I'm sure you wouldn't want those people telling everyone that their degrees were as good as yours, right? Because it really does matter--to you, at least--where people go to school.