Setsuled's Journal

I'm so glad to be past yesterday. It was one of those days where I was so tired, and had so much to do while I was tired, that I got into a sort of berserker mode where, at the end of the day, I was having a hard time not finding more things to do.

I'm wondering if that's what's happening to the people on MSNBC. Huffington Post has a roundup, though it should be noted that many Huffington Post staff writers have a strong bias against MSNBC, particularly against Keith Olbermann, evinced most notably by the somewhat cross-eyed writings of Rachel Sklar, whom I strongly suspect has been spurned by Olbermann in some way at some point. She used to be a regular liberal perspective commentator on MSNBC, but was always conspicuously absent from Olbermann's show.

But there have indeed been a number of embarrassing blow-ups on MSNBC cameras, all under the umbrella of the dubious non-stop converge of the Democratic National Convention. Ted Koppel tells it like it is, which is probably a big reason why Koppel's been sidelined all the way to BBC America.

I feel really bad about Keith Olbermann, though. The guy seems to be a completely raw nerve now. Passionate, but frustrated by the paradox that being passionate and opinionated makes it so he's taken less seriously. The main stream media narrative still drifts into "every story has two equal sides" lines of thinking. There's a centre that can't hold there when one side fucks up as vigorously and callously as the right has.

This bit where Olbermann supposedly got a conservative commentator kicked off the network is offered by Huffington Post as evidence of Olbermann's madness, yet it's clearly a case of this Mike Murphy fellow saying baseless, incendiary things that really ought to get someone kicked off a news network. But I am tired of Olbermann's glowing about the DNC. Again, I think Koppel hit the nail on the head; it's a complete waste of time. But Olbermann talks like every speech is the Gettysburg Address. I think the blame probably lies in the same passion that makes his good special comments so good--the guy wants this country to get better so bad that he's willing to do anything to get it. He's constantly stumbling over his words now, too. I think he's too damn sensitive to right wing rhetoric, which may be reflected in his constant Bill O'Reilly bashing. True, the memes put out there by the right ought to be combated, and seeing Olbermann take an axe to them is nice. But I guess I long for Koppel-esque objectivity. Seeing Olbermann's now almost constant frustration on the surface makes me marvel at how Koppel managed to remain such a cool customer when the facts he reported on were so frequently dismissed or ignored by the country.