The Discerning Texan

I rise from my sickbed this morning to weigh in on Keith Olbermann’s latest “Special Comment” during which he referred to Fox News Reporter Chris Wallace – a journalist who has won every major broadcast news award around – as a “monkey posing as a newscaster” and accused Republicans of trying to foist blame for 9/11 onto the Clinton Administration.

The fact that I am dizzy, drugged up, and incoherent this morning makes me the perfect candidate to respond to Olbermann’s ignorant rant. Judging by some of the jaw droppers unleashed by the Unhinged One during his confused and typically shallow critique of Fox News, conservatives, Republicans, the Bush Administration, and the press, MSNBC should probably initiate drug screenings for its on air talent at the earliest possible moment. Either that or someone should make sure that Keith is still taking his Lithium religiously for it is apparent the reality Keith is experiencing is on some other plane of existence than the rest of us.

For the longest time, I tried my best to peg Olbermann, to define his appeal in normative terms; A left wing clown? A liberal provocateur? A humorist a la Will Rogers? A self-anointed Diogenes, carrying the lantern throughout America looking for the one honest man?

Olbermann tried all of these approaches and failed miserably. It wasn’t until he realized that his bread was buttered by liberal bloggers did he begin to demonstrate some traction with his show. In fact, it is eerie how like a liberal blog his show has become; wildly accusatory with no evidence to back up outrageous charges; sophomoric flights of logic and reason; an unhinged whining that causes the viewer to actually recoil in disgust at some of the self-pitying “woe is us” rhetoric; and a breathtaking shallowness that outlaws context and substitutes emotion for rational thought.

In this respect, Olbermann’s shtick is reminiscent of the high school know-it-all who used to drive everyone nuts by trying to prove he was smart by using a large vocabulary – invariably misusing terms willy nilly – while taking on a professorial air of superiority that attracted every bully in the school like flies to rotting meat. Loud, insufferable, and laughably incoherent at times, the know-it-all was able to gather around him the witless, the woebegone, and the wasted where he would hold forth every day in the lunchroom, his sycophants hanging on every word.

Reading this transcript of his remarks last night, it is clear that Olbermann has slipped the surly bonds of earth to touch the face of idiocy. To call a fellow journalist a “monkey” is so far beyond what passes for rational discourse that even a lefty blog should find such rhetoric disturbing.

Of course, they don’t. In fact, they are cheering Mr. Olberman on to ever higher flights of rhetorical excess and juvenile name calling. Reporter Wallace is a “monkey.” Bush is a “coward.” This is what passes for reasonable dialogue on lefty blogs and Olbermann doesn’t let his audience down.

But the real dishonesty by Olbermann comes when he ascribes actions to the Bush Administration that he not only offers no proof for but that are also belied by the facts. For instance:

Moreover, for the last five years one month and two weeks, the current administration, and in particular the President, has been given the greatest “pass” for incompetence and malfeasance in American history!

This, of course, is one of the Über talking points on liberal blogs; that the press are a bunch of lapdogs. One wonders how Olbermann and his shipmates on the S.S. Perpetually Outraged got their high school diplomas without benefit of acquiring the ability to read. How, in fact, did we find out about this “incompetence and malfeasance?” A little birdie? Perhaps Olbermann has powers of divination that allows him special access to the supernatural for his Special Comments?

Should we tell Keith and his crew that their ammunition to prove incompetence and malfeasance comes from the press and therefore negates the “Bush is getting a pass” meme? Not if you don’t want to be showered with brain matter following the collective explosion of liberal heads. Logical thought to a lefty is like anti-matter. When it comes in contact with the muddled gray stuff in their confused, limited, and emotionally charged cranium, the two forces annihilate each other thus causing a rupture in the space-time continuum. Thankfully, there isn’t much chance of swaying a liberal with logic so we’re safe for the time being.

There is much more where that came from. And if this is Moran when he is feeling ill, I would hate to piss him off when he was feeling at the TOP of his game...