The Discerning Texan

Keith Olberman is obvious to most astute observers of American media, but qualifies as cult-like "Indoctrination programming" to some--and that is a problem:

I watched MSNBC's Countdown With Keith Olbermann one night last week. Mimicking university hiring committees, MSNBC added a voice from the far left to its existing television lineup, already heavily burdened by the left. My evening of viewing Olbermann no doubt caused a significant spike in the percentage of his audience, perhaps even to those lofty levels of Air America.

George Orwell in 1984 captures perfectly a characteristic of radical thinking, if thinking is not too generous a term. The regime of Orwell's fictional "Oceania" regularly televises "Two Minutes Hate" that is required viewing for the population. These broadcasts are a shortened version of the regularly scheduled renditions of "Hate Week." During these exercises, everyone must follow the ritual of hate against those deemed enemies of the regime - "Goldstein" (Trotsky) being that regime's favored enemy.

The purveyor of Hate Minutes and Hate Weeks betrays a simple and stifled mind that seeks the same in its viewers. It is a mind that cannot conclude that someone with conflicting views is merely misguided or wrong. Rather, anyone who has views that don't comport with those "smelly orthodoxies" (as Orwell put it) is utterly contemptible. He deserves all the venom and hate that can be mustered.

This sort of hate, so lovingly cultivated by the likes of Keith Olbermann, is indicative of a peculiar attitude and little more. This attitude is actually the pose of one who supposedly sees through all the charades, who cannot be fooled, and who then smugly reports his findings to the less sophisticated. It simulates depth. This attitude has become especially prevalent on the left since King Karl Marx was dethroned and relegated to the dustbin of history.

So, during primetime on weeknights, MSNBC treats America to Olbermann's hatefest, where, like being on The Edmund Fitzgerald, the minutes go by like hours. Rather than "Goldstein," Olbermann subjects to his venom George Bush and anyone who may implement or support his policies.

Read the rest; one of the better exposes of Olberman I've read.