I imagine that Keith Olbermann believes that he’s a pretty smart fellow and a rather clever linguist at that. It’s with apparent glee that he delivers his commentaries high on vocabulary and his personal leftist opinion but rather weak on any semblance of substance. And a deep hatred of our president does not equate substance. Sorry Keith.
In fact it seems that he believes that he is so clever, that he can attempt to twist the deplorable, careless, and broad comments that he made during his excruciatingly long 12 minute “Special Comment” diatribe to attack his critics saying that it is conservative talk show hosts like Laura Ingraham and Mark Levin who actually hate our troops to even criticize Olbermann’s lazy and sloppy language. I’ll have to give him credit, that’s pretty audacious even by his own standards.
During his “Special Comment” he played lose with language like “cold blooded killers” in a way that most sensible viewers would regard them directed at the young men and women in our military. The entire transcript of his “Special Comment” is available online. Here is a central passage that I found personally offensive:
Mr. Bush, at long last, has it not dawned on you that the America you have now created, includes “cold-blooded killers who will kill people to achieve their political objectives?” They are those in — or formerly in — your employ, who may yet be charged some day with war crimes.
Through your haze of self-congratulation and self-pity, do you still have no earthly clue that this nation has laid waste to Iraq to achieve your political objectives? “This ideological struggle,” Mr. Bush, is taking place within this country.
It is a struggle between Americans who cherish freedom, ours and everybody else’s, and Americans like you, sir, to whom freedom is just a brand name, just like “Patriot Act” is a brand name or “Protect America” is a brand name.
Undoubtedly, the network that he works for MSNBC and it’s sister/parent network NBC received a fair amount of criticism. And I would venture a guess that most of it took offense to the comments that Olbermann threw around carelessly in a caviler manner like “cold-blooded killers.” So last night, likely under pressure, Olbermann issued an on-air clarification. Here is his “clarification” or blame shifting reply to his long winded diatribe, I mean special comment, against the Bush administration and the troops:
Let’s de-construct his clarification a little bit. In Olbermann’s words, the explanation is rather simple: it was likely that “reasonable viewers” were simply “confused” and that maybe a script would have helped us clarify his broad sweeping and lazy comments. Does anyone else find this to be rather insulting? He blames the viewers and not the speaker.
I would offer the following suggestion to Mr. Olbermann: if you can’t figure out how to clearly state your position in 12 minutes of air time, you should look for a ghost writer or better yet consider a new career. Maybe you can have your old job back at ESPN. Then again ESPN has constantly shown a higher level journalistic integrity than MSNBC and you may now be under qualified to even read the scores.
Wouldn’t you have thought that Olbermann would have apologized about his inability to clearly articulate his position? Would that have been too much to expect from the former sports reporter? Of course it was — this is Olbermann that we are talking about here and apparently he is above integrity and restraint.
How stupid does MSNBC and Olbermann think that Americans are to pull this kind of stunt? Olbermann, for once exhibit some journalistic integrity and be honest by admitting that you are truly full of hot air.
Additional Coverage:
The Olbermann Watch - Was Olbermann Lying Then, Or Is He Lying Now?
Hot Air - Olby: Why do Laura Ingraham and Mark Levin hate the troops?
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