Suspended in Mid-Air

Recently reinstated

I'm of two minds about this Keith Olbermann thing.  Olbermann, the popular news commentator on the MSNBC network, was suspended late Friday after it turned out that he had given campaign contributions to Democratic candidates in several elections. 

But now, he will be back on the channel tonight.  The man who threw the penalty flag on him was holding Keith to standards of the news division, failing to recognize that MSNBC is more of a partisan undertaking, seeking to bring information from the liberal viewpoint to a medium in which such is sadly lacking. In other words, no, you don't want Brian Williams writing checks to support his candidates.  I don't even know how Brian Williams's politics shake out; he could be very liberal or very conservative.  Although he does seem very smart. He should report the news and not be partisan either way.

Back to Olbermann, it would be nice to think that he should be non-partisan, but that's not the kind of show he does.  It's called "Countdown with Keith Olberman," and the first thing he says every night is, "Which of these stories will you be talking about tomorrow?"  He doesn't say, "Now, here's the news" or something fatuous such as "We report, you decide."  There's no attempt at billing his show as being a review of the top news stories of the day.  It only takes a few minutes with him to realize that he is not thoroughly objective.  But I think that a lot of FOX viewers can watch his show and learn a lot.

Recently re-elected

I can find fault with Keith in that he roundly criticized Sean Hannity, who finds time to fill both radio and television with his opinions about everything,  for giving moolah to such worthies as Michelle Bachmann, the congressperson from Minnesota who referred to the Smoot-Hawley Tariffs as the Hoot-Smalley Tariffs.  And just to prove that she hadn't fallen victim to a Spoonerism (the speech slipup in which syllables of words in a phrase are swapped, named after a preacher who once told a church lady, "Madam, you are occupewing the wrong pie") she went on to say that these tariffs were the brainchild of Franklin D. Roosevelt, while they were actually written by GOPers.  And before you start pounding on your keyboard to tell me that Barack Hussein Obama once slipped up and said there were 57 states, please stop and consider that the man has advanced degrees and probably knows there are 50.  And I betcha he knows who was president in 1976.  Don't copy off Bachmann's paper; she put "Carter" for the answer to that question, and wondered if maybe the swine flu that was going around that year was something the Democrats did. 

So Hannity gave his money to a woman who is, at least, challenged by history, and I don't even know who these people are who received money from Keith. I wish he hadn't done it while knocking Hannity for doing it, but I guess that proves he's only human.  There's only been one person to walk this earth and not be wrong about anything, and if you can forgive Keith for this flaw, I guess I can forgive Michelle Bachmann for not knowing what the devil she's "talkin' aboot."



By the way, I'm not very objective, either.  But thanks for reading!  I read all manner of material too and form my own opinions, just as everyone should.