I sat at my desk and turned on MSNBC, Fox, CNN, and E! all at once as I started reading blogs. Bookers were going crazy trying to contact people who could come on the air and speak to Keith about Michael Jackson. The people at Ed, Maddow, and Hardball got to leave. It was all Olbermann, all the time, and it was going to be a long night. My job was simple: sit, watch, and wait. At one point I got a call that the director was falling asleep so I ran him coffee. Outlook wasn’t working so I was running updated guest lists back and forth from the control room. I went across the street to Duane Reade and got a dozen bottles of water to distribute in the control room, and a Diet Coke to take to a guest in the studio, (she replied, “Thank you thank you thank youuuu!!!!”). Keith was on the air from about 6:30 until 11. And just as I thought that MSNBC was more spin than news, everything changed. Our coverage was unbelievable. I might go more into details later, but wow.
HAT’S IT. I’M PISSED. INSTEAD OF MY LOVE KEITH OLBERMANN, WHAT DO I GET? A FUCKING DATELINE SPECIAL ABOUT, YOU GUESSED IT, MICHAEL FUCKING JACKSON. Okay.
Still, I can’t help feel unsettled when Keith Olbermann is on air for hours, garbed Murrow-like in a vest and shirtsleeves as if telegraphing that Something Momentous Is Being Reported Here, talking gravely about what essentially is an Entertainment Tonight story. It’s a shame when anyone dies prematurely. But it’s even more of a shame when the death is treated by the media as a major event, worthy of the kind of coverage given a state funeral or outbreak of war. When did we lose our perspective
hereby state that Rush Limbaugh gives fat people a bad name and give a free pass to anyone to criticize him. I just wish there was a way to download Keith Olbermann’s little “Mr Bouncy Bouncy” crawl as a screensaver. 2 Comme
th Olbermann of MSNBC TV News took Fox News’ Bill O’Reilly down in one of the more eloquent and truth-telling commentaries this week, expressing appropriate outrage for O’Reilly’s pattern of incendiary rhetoric aimed at Dr. George Tiller, the abortion doctor who was gunned down in a Kansas church last week. Olbermann called O’Reilly’s relentless use of terms like “Dr. Tiller the Baby Killer” to describe the doctor as tantamount for inciting murder and domestic terror, and called on the American public to “quarantine” Fox News, insisting it not be aired in lobbies, restaurants, bars or wherever it is apt to be shown on a screen in a public place
It’s not an appropriate forum,” said Rossbach, who said he hasn’t had a confab with Jackson about the Olbermann situ. “We have not reponded to Keith Olbermann, but this is clearly not a serious journalistic offer. This is clearly one more piece of grandstanding by somebody who is interested in his 8 p.m. cable ratings more than any truth or real public good.” I think perhaps Rossbach is overestimating the rest of the country’s interest in Detroit’s economic development, but hey. Who knows? Waiting for Round 3 to start…
k, so what do I make of all this now? Well, was it a “real” waterboarding? Probably not. But here’s the point Gawker is (probably deliberately for it’s own reasons because it just wants to make Mancow look bad) missing: Mancow went into this thinking waterboarding was not torture and the fact that he had such a horrid reaction to the “simulated” waterboarding was enough to change his mind. It doesn’t matter whether it was textbook waterboarding (which is probably much much harder on the interrogatee) or not. This entry was posted on May 29, 2
In response to O’Reilly’s repeated attacks on Dr. George Tiller over the years (for which O’Reilly was unrepentant), Keith Olbermann announced at his show’s closing tonight that he’s no longer going to air the caricature, impersonation - the Ted Baxterlike voice - and any more publicity of the Factor host. Video on the way. UPDATE:
