Dissention in the Ranks?
Over at Daily Kos, someone dared to complain about the direction of Countdown…
I hoped that, once the election ended and Obama took office, Countdown would return to form. My hopes, it seems, were in vain. The show has degenerated completely, now resembling nothing more than the left-wing equivalent of Fox News politico-pop. Keith loves to mock Bill O’Reilly’s ridiculous shtick and arrogance, but it is increasingly difficult to see the stylistic difference between KO and Bill-O. Both yell a lot, lecture a lot, smirk condescendingly at all who disagree with them, and ultimately neither one of them adds anything of value to the public record. When I sit down at 5:00 PM west coast time to watch Countdown (which I do less and less these days), I can predict almost exactly what I will hear Keith yelling and grumbling about until 6:00 PM, when the MSNBC stage is mercifully ceded to the incomparable Rachel Maddow, KO’s successor as the king (or queen) or substantive liberal TV punditry. Item #5 will always be on the biggest news item of the day: makes sense, no arguments there. But it goes downhill from there. Item #4 will be about the latest baseless talking-point turd laid by Dick Cheney, Dick Cheney’s irrelevant daughter, or some other cranky obsolete conservative on Fox or one of the Sunday morning talk shows. An “expert” will come on and fervently agree with Keith that this cranky obsolete conservative is an asshole and should go to hell. Then comes Oddball, which is sometimes funny and other times just, well, odd (there’s truth in advertising there, at least). Items #3 and #2 will be pretty much repeats of Item #4, with the names of the cranky conservative and the baseless talking point changed (a different “expert” will also be used, to make it clear that, yes, lots of people think these cranky conservatives are assholes and should go to hell). Finally, there’s item #1, which in recent weeks has often been the “WTF Moment”, which usually highlights — you guessed it! — the latest baseless political turd laid by a cranky obsolete conservative.
This brought a response from Olbermann himself…
No one gets a lifelong pass for me. It’s about the here and now not what you did yesterday.
And It’s That Kind Of Answer…
…that astounds me.
For month upon month in 2006, 2007, 2008, it was remarked upon here that getting a news broadcast with my POV through a corporate version of what Woody Allen called his “de-flavorizing machine” must have been like passing the proverbial camel through the eye of the needle. I appreciated the sense that people had a realization of the brutality of the road, and appreciated the promises made here that you’d always have my back.
The road has gotten no easier. The president has changed, not the road. I would be delighted to invite you to conceive, create, and perform a version of what you want, on broadcast or cable television, and make it also fit the business’s requirements (profit-making), while dodging rocks, every day, from all sides. If anything the task is more difficult now because so many believe that those who would use the media to buttress the regressive cause simply vanished with last year’s vote. They didn’t. Death threats are up, not down. Corporate pressure is up, not down.
If you actually want this show to be better, kindly stop throwing rocks. They are picked up by people who’d be delighted to give the hour to Rick Santelli. And I wish you the very best of luck if that happens.
“If you’re going through hell – keep going!” — Winston Churchill
June 19, 2009 at 6:43 am
“If you actually want this show to be better, kindly stop throwing rocks.”
Yes… if you want the show to be better, the first thing you need to do, is stop complaining or talking about the show not being perfect. Wait… huh?
Can anyone say, “thin skin?” At least now we know why he doesn’t debate.
June 19, 2009 at 7:17 am
Olbermann -
‘If anything the task is more difficult now because so many believe that those who would use the media to buttress the regressive cause simply vanished with last year’s vote. They didn’t. Death threats are up, not down. Corporate pressure is up, not down.’
What a bunch of leftwing gibberish.
Right, that corporate media has just brutalized the progressive cause in favor of those reactionary forces. Obama just can’t get a fair shake from this media.
Barney Frank, yes him, noted the other days that Congress is increasingly caught between those ideologues on rhe right who get their information from talk radio and those ideologues on the left who live on the internet.
I.e. fanatics like Olbermann versus fanatics like Limbaugh.
Terrific, just terrific.
This man is nuts.
June 19, 2009 at 8:51 am
The KOSer has a point. I still watch the show every night, but more and more it’s only because there’s not much else on. It’s too easy to write the next hour in my mind just by watching the first minute’s preview. His most annoying tick is his tendency to ask a question that has his answer in it, then the guest repeats the answer. I’ll still take it over The Factor and CNN reading tweets, but it used to be a better show.
June 19, 2009 at 9:59 am
You know what might help?
Having an opposing viewpoint on the aoir to debate.
June 19, 2009 at 10:03 am
I think the KOSer’s comments make more sense if you substitute “Hannity” for “O’Reilly” in his post.
One more thought about the 2009 version of Countdown. He seems more dependent these days on playing “gotcha” with his targets. If Cheney, Palin, Ginigrich or Limbaugh misspeaks in even the slightest way– such as using an imperfect historical reference or bad grammar– the clip will receive prominent play on Countdown. It doesn’t matter whether the comment has any relevance or not.
June 19, 2009 at 10:14 am
^and it appears as though all he does is cut and paste Media Matters
June 19, 2009 at 10:15 am
‘Having an opposing viewpoint on the aoir to debate.’
Well, he does. He believes that Republicans are terrorists and fascists while his guests disagree and believe they’re just fascists.
That’s a full range of view Olbermann-style.
June 19, 2009 at 11:33 am
LOL at Keith’s response.
He makes it sound as if he’s the only one in the world who has to work within constraints while performing his job. And he’s truly resentful of the “rock throwers” – people who are critical of how he does that job.
Yet that’s exactly what he does to others! His entire raison d’etre is to bash all things conservative! Guess what, Keith, the past administration had tons of pressure and parameters within which to work, and did the best job it could (in spite of what you may think). But we never saw GWB out there whining that anyone was mistreating him, being unfair or hindering him from doing his job!
June 19, 2009 at 1:32 pm
i love moonbat-on-moonbat action. more, more!!!
June 19, 2009 at 1:47 pm
For heavens sake, who under God’s blue sky cares what an obscure commentator on an unwatched cable channel thinks? The number 20 evil right wing radio talking head has better numbers and no one cares…OlberWho is not important. He preaches to a very, very, very small choir of true believers, not to an adult audience of discerning folk.
June 19, 2009 at 1:49 pm
You mean to tell me that some Libs are capable of Intellectual Honesty? Good on you!
June 19, 2009 at 1:57 pm
oh, and dear keith: “death threats are up”???
i’d ask you for some evidence, but that would be asking you to actually back up something you say with FACTS.
so, never mind…
June 19, 2009 at 2:57 pm
Amazing. Why is it that no one on the left can ever bring themselves to criticize the most obvious thing about that pathetic, thin-skinned turd: he never has anyone on his little-watched show that EVER disagrees with him. I can think of no one less tolerant of dissent than him. He is pathologically allergic to opposing view points.
His show consists of a)comparing Republicans to mass-murderers, b)comparing Republicans to fascists, c) having someone from Media Matters use the terms “Faux News” or “Fox Noise” (as if those terms that were run into the ground years ago are somehow still original and funny), d)insulting those with higher ratings than him ie everyone, Bill O’Reilly in particular, and e) naming the same one or two conservatives “The Worst Person in the World” . Funny how a Republican politician won that title the same day he talked about an anti-semitic racist murderer on his show. The fact that Rush Limbaugh and Newt Gingrich have been called that more often than every terrorist in the world, including Osama bin Laden says a whole lot. And the hypocritical moron has the nerve to claim Bill O’Reilly is inciting people. I guess calling Republicans, or regressives to use his term (amazing how the party that supports New Deal policies from 70 years ago is supposedly progressive) terrorists and fascists is benign.
But what is particularly hilarious is how he tries to claim he is objective. What is even funnier is those on the left who seem to believe anyone outside of his echo-chamber actually thinks he is. Those on the left always seem to mention Hannity and O’Reilly when presenting evidence of Fox News’ bias, but when you bring up Olbermann when discussing the left-wing tilt of MSNBC, they act incredulous. Seriously, Olbermann actually claimed he didn’t vote in the presidential election because doing so would call into question his objectivity. What an absolute joke. Hey Keith, we started questioning your objectivity when you started comparing Republicans to Hitler and Mussolini or maybe it was/is your refusal to criticize any Democrat, unless they sided with Republicans on some issue.
And I always get a chuckle when he thinks he is being subtle mentioning how few people watch his show. I guess he isn’t ashamed by the fact that every single person on Fox, including Greta and even reruns of Hannity draw way more viewers than him. His viewership is so small, he gets creamed by a guy, Glenn Beck, who is on when most people are in rush hour traffic. His ratings are reminiscent of those for The McEnroe Show.
June 19, 2009 at 4:13 pm
he never has anyone on his little-watched show that EVER disagrees with him.
The answer for that is in his response on the DKos site and in comments he’s made elsewhere.
To wit, “I’m not liberal, I’m just right”, he once said.
For him, there can be no other voices or opinions on his show because his views on a topic are the correct ones. Why have erroneous voices on? There’s the truth – I know it – and there are untruths.
Yes, for Olbermann it’s a black-and-white absolutist world between the forces of progress and the forces of regression.
It’s just that simple although it’s not so simple to believe.
June 19, 2009 at 4:50 pm
I have my problems with how repetitive and histrionic Countdown has become, but, as I’ve stated before, point/counterpoint left/right discussions are BORING. Host starts topic, guest who agrees with host spouts talking point, host agrees, host goes to opposing guest, opposing guest spouts opposing talking point, host disagrees, other guest loudly disagrees, host loudly disagrees, opposing guest yells they’re being ganged up on, segment over.
Pull the agreeing guest, not much changes. Boring.
June 19, 2009 at 5:30 pm
What a hilarious way to rationalize the fact that he never has anyone on his show that ever disagrees with him. It is so boring, so we will have a sycophantic echo-chamber where dissenting view points are ridiculed as if they were talking points from the Nazi Party.
June 19, 2009 at 6:29 pm
joeremi – well said in your first post.
I hardly watch Countdown these days because it has become so predictable. And while I find the “pit a person from the left against a person from the right and let the fur fly” model to be stale, Olbermann’s show has become way too predictable.
O’Reilly’s schtick is as bad if not worse, but he mixes up the content on the show and thus keeps it interesting. You can peruse the notable Liberal blogs an hour before Countdown comes on and know what he is going to cover. He isn’t a complete shill for Obama, but why he is still doing those “Bushed” segments is beyond me.
June 19, 2009 at 7:00 pm
Yeah, I’m not clear on the “such-and-such days since the declaration of Mission Accomplished in Iraq” thing, either. We get it. You thought the war was a bad idea, your viewers (including me) thought so, and now so does the president. What’s the point? It’s 2009…I’d settle for a nice “be there…aloha.”
June 20, 2009 at 4:36 pm
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