Review of Olbermann's Pitchforks and Torches

I was a little disappointed that this was a collection of Worst Persons and special comments from Keith's show, but once I started reading it was interesting to see his perspective as things were happening.

It's easy to write Olbermann off (especially if you simply think of him as a liberal commentator) as someone who pilloried people on the right. And he did. But it's easy to forget, until reading though these pages, that he was also happy to flay Obama, Reid, and the blue dog Democrats when it was deserved.

A large chunk of the book was culled from the seemingly eternal debate over the health care bill. Olbermann viewed it not just from a liberal perspective but also through the eyes of someone whose mother had died two years earlier, had undergone an emergency surgery, and had a father who suffered a long decline before dying. It made the health care debate more than politics, it was an intimate issue for him. I'm sure this helped fire his outrage over such fake arguments as death panels, planted protesters at town hall meetings, and weak-kneed pawns of the health care industry posing as Democrats.

Read after the shooting of Rep. Giffords, there's also a chilling prescience in his predictions that the growing rhetoric of violence during that period would end in someone would be injured or killed as a result. Based on that alone, it must have taken great self-control not to spend his last few weeks on the air simply saying "I told you so" over and over again.

I loved watching Countdown, and the book reminded me of the best and the worst of the program and Olbermann's on-air style. He was funny, frank, and happy to tell off morons on either side. He had a love for language, facts, and human compassion and little patience with public figures who failed at any of those.

At the worst is the strained formality of Olbermann's prose style, with his "sirs" and "madams" -- often proffered to those whom he never held with much esteem. I can also hear his voice as I read, with his highly emotional delivery. Olbermann thought and wrote as well as any broadcast journalist ever, including Edward R. Murrow. What Olbermann never managed was the icy calm of Murrow. I think that always stacked the deck against him, allowing the other side to ignore or dismiss him as much as he irritated them.

When Keith left MSNBC I ordered a show coffee mug as a way of remembering the hours I watched his program so grateful that I wasn't the only one who thought the country was going crazy. I bought the book while he was still on the air and read it with real fondness and appreciation for what he brought to his programs.

Subverting the Autobots

Today I followed an ad link telling me that big government was going to take over my eating habits. This was interesting to me, as I like to eat and don't like anyone interfering with the practice. The link led me to the following:

Keep Food Affordable

If you'd like to save the time of having to jump to the link, the basic gist is this:


The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) wants to dictate how farmers conduct their business. They are on the verge of implementing a rule that will increase the costs for farmers and meat production. The extra costs will be passed down to consumers at the grocery store. This is despite the fact that these regulations were already voted down by Congress. Don't let this happen!

Next to this is an open comment form that will deliver your outrage to the USDA. 

I personally think the USDA is underfunded, if the e. coli infections of my eggs is any example, and that they act far below their potential given their mandate to protect what we eat.

So rather than choose one of their selected boilerplate comments, I wrote the following -- something like a note in a bottle to some anonymous USDA employee tasked with reviewing the comments:

The web site that provides this petition advertises widely. When following the link it offers almost no information on the content of the proposed rules, but simply uses scare tactics to get people to sign. I am all for any rules that increase food safety, even if I have to pay more for food in the process. My pocketbook will not mean a damn thing to me if I'm killed through the actions of a careless food producer. Ignore the "volume" of signatures on this petition drive. Look to content, whether it seems informed or repetitive, and then take the actions which best protect the American people. You're doing a great job.

Submitted to Docket ID: GIPSA-2010-PSP-0001-RULEMAKING

This was mailed back to me, using my name as the sender making it all the more spamilicious. 

You can play, too! I encourage you to add a bit of reason to the argument, and use the dime of this nearly anonymous web site to do it.

Dear George Bush, I'm Sorry Kanye West Hurt Your Feelings

I've been trying to decide on an adequate verb for what happens when Kanye West wanders off script to make the news. Was Taylor Swift "George-Bushwhacked" or was George Bush "Taylor-Swiftboated"? It's hard to say. Hanging out with Kanye West must be comparable to going to vespers with your brother who has Tourette's Syndrome. You never know what will pop out or how embarrassing it might be until it happens.

None-the-less, Mr. West has given us two classics in video history. The one in question here popped up during a Red Cross telethon for Katrina victims:



I do have to say I feel very bad for Mike Myers as well, who looked something like a frog flash-frozen in a winter pond while West improvised his feelings on air.

I can honestly see Mr. West's point. While George Bush and Jeb Bush were governors of Texas and Florida, states with strong death penalty provisions, they probably oversaw the death of more blacks than the Klan did from the 50s forward.

This is not to say that the Bush kids are racist. Just saying they're blind to the needs of nearly anyone earning less than $1-million, as most conservative whites are blind to the needs of those unlike themselves. It was their mother, after all, who said of the evacuees who bused out of New Orleans with the clothes on their backs and no home to return to: "And so many of the people in the arena here, you know, were underprivileged anyway, so this--this [she chuckles slightly]is working very well for them." Yep, free food and shelter, sharing toilets with a few hundred others. Life for them people was goooood.

So, Mr. Bush, I'm sorry that your feelings were hurt, but it was that kind of presidency, wasn't it? I feel considerably less sorry for you than I feel for the widows and orphans left by your unneeded wars, for the mass of unemployed you left below as you helicoptered out of Washington, DC, or from those others abused by your presidency.

But then your presidency started out that way and maintained its mojo through your full eight years in office. You had only been in office a few days when you said that the toughest part of the new job, the tragedy in fact, was that you couldn't maintain your running schedule. "Tragedies" were inconveniences to the Bush family, nothing having to do with all those other people living in the country or the world at large. You guffawed about the missing WMDs, tortured innocents to prove unprovable points, "outed" members of your own security forces. The list of really horrible things is almost endless. There's probably an item for every person on the planet.

So I'm sorry your feelings were hurt, because the world as a whole doesn't need more pain than that which you caused yourself. Just by leaving office, and through the sense of justice of your replacement kept without asking us, you're not a criminal. You weren't imprisoned. Worse than that, you've become irrelevant and have managed to maintain the mask of irrelevancy through your whining about small personal hurts.

Getting Started

I'm still trying to find my way around Blogger and hoping it has the flexibility I need for the type of things I want to post here. Thanks for dropping in if you just found this by accident. Drop me a line if you like. Suggestions on making this better are always welcome.