Friday, November 12, 2010

Quote of the Day (Keith Olbermann, With a Different “View” Than Today)


“I don’t vote. It’s the only thing I can do that suggests that I don’t even have a horse in the race.”—Keith Olbermann on “The View,” November 2008


Look what comes from playing the political ponies—a near-death experience. Or, at least, the modern media equivalent—having a camera and microphone withdrawn for several days, and probably advised by lawyers to shut up until the storm blows over.

The image accompanying this post appears to have been taken in 2008, some months before the Countdown host’s appearance on The View. But judging from the look, it suggests a sense of quiet relief, meaning it could just as easily have been snapped earlier this week, when Olbermann received the news that his “indefinite” suspension for violating an NBC ban on journalists making campaign contributions without prior permission had been lifted.

The other night, aimlessly channel-surfing, I came across Olbermann, back on MSNBC, providing a teaser to an upcoming segment of his show: “Should journalists make political contributions?” Given what he’d admitted to in the last few days, his answer to this question was as obvious as whether he regarded George W. Bush as a war criminal.

The right-wing blogosphere, with some exceptions, chortled while Olbermann roasted on a spit last weekend. That glee was not only short-lived but, in view of the even more egregious support provided conservative candidates by Fox News, horribly myopic.

Oh, to be sure, there has been tut-tutting from traditional journalists about the ethics of contributing to candidates being covered.


Miami Herald columnist Leonard Pitts, for instance, was particularly outraged at what happened: “A journalist who has a financial stake like Olbermann, or stakes an entire career on achieving a certain political outcome by any means necessary like [conservative blogger and provocateur Andrew] Breitbart, forfeits any expectation of being taken seriously by serious people—and yes, that applies even to a pundit.”

Olbermann tilts toward the leftist wing of the Democratic Party as surely as Bill O’Reilly veers toward the hard-right wing of the GOP. Why shouldn’t he back up what he says on the air by putting his money where his mouth is?

Well, it’s because Olbermann himself makes a pretense of being “impartial,” just as much as O’Reilly, the circus master of the right-wing media, constantly talks, ludicrously, about being “fair and balanced.” Olbermann was being more than a little hypocritical by claiming he didn’t vote because of that need to show he didn’t “have a horse in the race.” Quite obviously, he did--or, in the case of the contributions that got him temporarily in trouble, three political horses.

Olbermann’s initial troubles appear to have been practically foretold by his employment history. I imagine that he, like O’Reilly, was vain enough to have enjoyed making the top 10 in Newsweek’s recent list of the “Power 50”—the highest-earning politicians, ex-politicos, media personalities, and media consultants.

But one section seems eerily prophetic about Olbermann’s run-in with his NBC bosses: “Most of his previous career stints have ended bitterly. He was the only host of SportsCenter not invited back for the network's 25th anniversary.”

And in the desperate hours of this past weekend, the following point in the Newsweek article must have seemed very, very frightening indeed: “Nearly all his income [an estimated $7.5 million] is believed to come from his contract with NBC.”

In other words, a nice little independent blog of his own, free of corporate oversight, simply would not have compensated him for the loss of his big payday.

Make no mistake: Olbermann dodged a bullet when his “indefinite suspension” was lifted. Think he learned anything from this, like the virtues of humility and honesty?

Doubtful. What he discovered was that, if he took positions without compromise or nuance, his base would support him even through the consequences of his own mistakes.

Come to think of it, that’s the same thing learned by the most successful politicians Olbermann covers—even the ones he makes no bones about despising.

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