If you, like me, have been wondering where the media's balls are, I've just located them. Keith Olbermann's been hoarding them under the Countdown desk.
Go watch this epic and brilliant editorial on the politics of fear inspired by the despicable remarks by Donald Rumsfeld.
Seriously, watch it now.
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Is there an Emmy category for "Fucking Badass"? There should be, and Olbermann has it locked up.
Keith Olbermann deserves to be doing the news in an era where he would be one of three guys on television, not marooned on a second-rate cable network.
Olbermann humbly quotes Edward R. Murrow at the end of that piece, and claims not to be worthy of the words. He's wrong. He is worthy. And he's the closest thing to a modern-day Murrow we've got.
Bloggerman has the transcript.
[h/t Otto Man, cross-posted at Kakistocrats.com]
9 comments:
Truly, if the "libruls" owned the media as is so loudly perported by the...media, Olbermann would have Katie Couric's job. Brian Williams may barely deserve his spot, but Olbermann does what journalism is supposed to do. Instead? A lady with 35,000 really huge white teeth and a photoshopped portrait.
smitty, I'm with you in hailing Olbermann's benchmark commentary. I can't recall a better one by a TV news man or woman, ever.
What Olbermann did so excellently Wednesday was commentary, however, not journalism. Journalists sometimes do commentary, but their work, their profession, is reporting.
I don't doubt Olbermann can do that well also, but as an anchor he doesn't get much of a chance.
From Olbermann's wikipedia bio:
The September 11, 2001 attacks provided the impetus for Olbermann to return to full-fledged news reporting. He won an Edward R. Murrow Award for reporting from the site of the attacks for 40 days on ABC Radio and Los Angeles radio station KFWB.
So, apparently, he can report as well.
Much as I loved that Olberman rant, I agree with SWA. Olberman's a great show host, be it ESPN or MSNBC, and you make a good point about his award for his assignment after 9/11. However, Murrow's rep was built on a career of journalistic acheivements.
Maybe he'll get to Murrow levels of journalistic badassedness some day, but not based on his career to this point.
I guess for now I'd say he's got more potential to be a Walter Cronkite than a Murrow.
Well, he's certainly not Murrow. That's true. I never meant to equate them, and Olbermann went out of his way to draw a distinction. I merely point out that he is the guy telling truth to power more than anyone else on the air, and as such, he is worthy of Murrow's words, and is the closest thing to Murrow we have on the air today.
They'll never let another Murrow on the air.
Depends on what stage of Murrow's career we're addressing. He made his bones in the '30s and '40s as an ace reporter, going so far as to do live reports from bombers over Germany.
But the truth-to-power Murrow that we all revere from the '50s was more about commentary than reporting. "See It Now" included some journalistic bits akin to "60 Minutes" today, but those were generally done by the other staff members. Murrow ruled the roost and summed things up with some trenchant, hard-hitting words (including those famous ones repeated by Olbermann here).
"Countdown" may still be a far cry from "See It Now," but the format is fairly close. The tone is generally a lot lighter, but I don't think you can go 100% gravitas in today's cable world. (That's what PBS is supposedly for.)
I'll give you a what-what on the Olberman praise. The dude is indeed a fucking badass.
Hey, orf, welcome back! I hope your move went smoothly and you're settling into your new digs...
Apparently, we had Olbermann Channeling Murrow, Part II last night.
Channeled Joe Welch as well.
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