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Keith Olbermann really went off the deep end this week. He actually engaged in some grandiose and nonsensical kissing of Rush Limbaugh's enormous butt. (I guess it was a pretty easy target.) He actually accused Wanda Sykes of "crossing the line" during her fabulous performance at the White House correspondents dinner. (Go to my previous posting to watch her entire performance.)
Here is the portion of the routine that reduced Keith to a state of simpering twitdom.
WANDA SYKES: Rush Limbaugh, one of your big critics. Uh, boy, Rush Limbaugh said he hopes this administration fails.
You know, so you're saying, 'I hope America fails.' You're like, 'I don't care about people losing their homes, their jobs, our soldiers in Iraq.' He just wants the country to fail.
To me, that's treason. He's not saying anything differently than what Osama bin Laden is saying.
You know, you might want to look into this, sir, because I think maybe Rush Limbaugh was the 20th hijacker, but he was so strung out on Oxycontin he missed his flight.
Too much? But you're laughing inside. I know you're laughing.
Watch Olbermann and his craven guest grovel to the titanic Limbaugh (Hat Tip AKA William):
The notion that 911 is this sacred and holy event is ridiculous on so many levels. As someone who lives in NYC and who lived in DC during the attacks, I find it ridiculous that influenza kills far more Americans than terrorism, yet it's OK to joke about the flu but not about terrorism. (Monty Python's Life of Brian does a wonderful job of mocking terrorists, by the way.) It would have been one thing if Sykes' mocked the victims, but she didn't. She mocked the terrorists and Rush Limbaugh who hates America and American values at least as much as the 911 hijackers did.
But, there is a more sinister side to the fetishization of 911. It is an act of war mongers employing fear mongering to manipulate us into going along with the most monstrous of crimes.
It is a fact that the war on Iraq is a far more massive act of terrorism than the 911 attacks. (If you dispute the last sentence or find it offensive, you are suffering from both a terrible lack of intellectual and moral integrity.) The war on Iraq has resulted in the slaughter of over 1.3 million Iraqis. Fetishizing 911 has been an effective tool to get frightened Americans to look the other way from this act of genocide.
Killing is wrong. Cynically exploiting deaths in order to perpetrate more killing motivated by greed, racism, and religious prejudice is reprehensible. Keith Olbermann's craven pandering to Limbaugh only furthers the goal of the war mongers who have used these reprehensible tactics for far too long.
And right wing extremists love saying that Keith Olbermann is "liberal," when he is mushy moderate who is afraid of "crossing the line," even when the line has been drawn by war criminals who hate what this country stands for as much as Osama bin Laden.
Does Olbermann even remember that Americans fought a revolution to be free of a foreign empire?
Fuck you Keith! (And, you're not hot enough for me to mean it literally.)
On inaugural day, I was reminded that the King and Queen of MSNBC, Keith Olbermann and Rachel Maddow, are well-paid employees of a multi-national corporation, and they know which side their bread is buttered.
Remember when the Motherfucker from Midland walked out onto the balcony of the U.S. Capitol Building and he was booed by the throngs gathered to see Obama sworn in? Both Keith and Rachel could be heard commenting into their mics, "That's terrible," "This goes too far," "The crowd is being disrespectful to President Bush."
Jim and I looked at each other and we were both like, "What the fuck are they saying?" Jim said, "Keith built a career dissing Bush and now he's defending him from a few thousand 'boos?'"
What we on the left tend to forget (even those of us Independents) is, the media talkingheads who we embrace and hold as our own -- like Keith Olbermann and his protege, Rachel Maddow, don't really belong to us. In Keith and Rachel's case, they belong to MSNBC who is owned by General Electric and General Electric is deeply involved in the military, industrial complex.
Maybe this is one of a myriad reasons why I haven't watched the Rachel Maddow show since the inaugural and I've watched the Keith Olbermann show fewer than a dozen times since then. I prefer getting my news and information the old fashioned way -- I read newspapers and blogs and I process what I see sans the entertainment value.
Very much agreed. Rush would never take back a damn thing he said, but someone who is paid to get a laugh out of people should? Comedy and freedom of speech go hand in hand, and 9/11 shouldn't have been off limits even on 9/12. The flu vs. terror attacks is an excellent point.
Also have to agree on your other point - we continue to refuse to see things from the other side. We continue to count how many dead soldiers we have, yet forget the much higher numbers of Iraqi dead. We've punished their people much more than we have their terrorists, and it's time to pull out.
That last line has me chuckling! Olbermann is one of those who *might* do in a pinch...
But anyway--where was I? Oh yes, Limbaugh. Ugh. Just the mention of his name makes me heave. Hadn't heard about Keith's knee-bending, so this is quite disturbing. I guess it's no surprise, really. So many people are wrapped up in the 9/11 cult, and they don't even realize it.
Kudos to Wanda--she has bigger balls than either Limbaugh or Olbermann!