Tuesday, January 25, 2011

Olbie Out, CNN Apologizes for "Crosshairs"

Now I really don't know exactly why Keith Olbermann was fired.  And the incident with John King of CNN apologizing for a guest's use of the word "crosshairs".

We were just having a discussion about the Chicago mayoral race just a moment ago. My friend, Andy Shaw, who now works for a good government group out there, used the term "in the crosshairs" in talking about the candidates out there. We're trying, we're trying to get away from that language. Andy is a good friend. He's covered politics for a long time, but we're trying to get away from using that kind of language.
For four days after the Tucson shooting, we had an army of people on the Left just aghast at the "vitriol" coming from the right, and the best they could come up with was a targeted district map from Sarah Palin's facebook page that showed, *gasp* crosshairs ... and her "don't retreat, reload" metaphor.  And Michelle Bachmann's "armed and dangerous" quote, deftly edited -- obviously consciously -- to remove it from the context in which it was made.

At any rate, what I'm getting at here is ... when John King stumbled over the desk and into your living room through your TV to apologize for "a good friend" who has "covered politics for a long time" casually using the same metaphor Palin had been trashed for without blinking -- what does it say?   It says, 1) Here at CNN, we agree with the lefties that this is dangerous, violent language, and 2) it's hard for us to stop because it just comes naturally to us, even us good people over here at the "centrist" CNN.

In other words, they lost.  My question is, do you think they see that, or not?  Is there any sort of real soul-searching there?  Or, as I suspect, is it just a ruse, a temporary seizure brought on by GoodPerson Fever.

Keith was a walking bottle of Vitriol™.   I'd challenge someone on the Left to go through the last 8 years of Rush Limbaugh and someone on the right to go through the last 8 years of "Countdown" and grab the most Vitriolic™ bits and string them all together and play them side by side.  And let the people be the judge.

Do that with Glenn Beck and Keith Olbermann and it would come out still worse for Keith.  Much worse.

In the immortal words of Robert Conrad, Go ahead.  I dare ya!

Sounds to me like about everyone Mr. Olbermann has ever worked with can't stand him.  He got them decent ratings (for MSNBC) during the Bush-Bashing years, but that schtick isn't cutting it anymore.  There's no Bush in the Whitehouse to rail against, and they've all switched over to Colbert.  Only Colbert's body rejected Olbie's "powers". Was he cut for the vitriol?  I don't know.  Is he really that much worse than Maddow & Schultz?  I think I remember reading this "Young Turks" blogger who is replacing him.  He's another Air America refugee like Rachel Maddow and Ed Schultz.  So I doubt that's it.

I think the putz's putziness finally caught up with him

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