Lots of good comments on my Keith Olbermann post (plus one that accuses me of hating him for being a strong liberal voice, which strikes me as a very unusual interpretation of what I wrote). One thing I wanted to add, though, is that I don’t think Olbermann’s problem is a failure to be balanced. Pundit shows are primarily about entertainment — they have enormous drawbacks as news programs, but the format does work as entertainment — and part of the entertainment value comes from the fact that the host is picking a side and sticking with it. Of course a successful liberal pundit will never be as hard on a liberal politician; that’s just part of the whole idea of playing for a team. Whenever a Republican is in office, Rush Limbaugh and the Fox News pundits and Glenn Beck have to find something else to be outraged about other than the President. And they usually find it pretty easily.
What I find problematic about Olbermann is that because he never really set himself up as a liberal pundit in the way that Donahue did (with more success than he’s given credit for), or the way that some of the Air America hosts did (with very little success) he has no obvious “team” except the anti-Bush team, which will no longer exist after January 2009. What was interesting about his Obama comments was not so much that he’s defending Obama as that he was defending Obama from the right, praising him for standing up to the left. This is actually a very common trope among token Fox News “liberals” like Alan Colmes, but the willingness of TV liberals to attack their own team is one of the things that keeps them from being as popular as their conservative counterparts. Rush Limbaugh may criticize Bush occasionally but he will never, ever criticize Bush from the left or praise him for moving left on an issue. Ever.
Now, in terms of politics or ideology it may sometimes be right to praise a liberal politician for moving right on an issue, or vice versa. But pundit shows are not really about the issues, they’re about entertainment, and Olbermann is showing signs of losing his entertainment value as he becomes just another middle-of-the-road type. Without clear liberal beliefs or conservative enemies (apart from Bush), he comes off as kind of bland.
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one that accuses me of hating him for being a strong liberal voice, which strikes me as a very unusual interpretation of what I wrote
This strikes me as the most diplomatic response to a crazy comment I’ve ever seen.
I’m too cheap to pay for MSNBC or FOX (or even CNN).
I just wish they would get Olbermann’s cinder block head and Edward G. Robinson suits off Sunday Night Football — him and the Costas he rode in on.
Keith Olbermann: the overdue New York State Tax Warrant, Chinese American Trading Company the buyers of his real estate, the corporation
Keith Olbermann: the address from 2001 of his, the parents of Katy Tur and the civil actions
http://www.webofdeception.com
Olbermann was about to be fired from MSNBC when he suddenly decided to take a sharp left turn and become the “liberal” voice of MSNBC. His purpose was twofold. If they fired im, he could claim he was yet another victim of the vast right-wing conspiracy. The gamble paid off, his ratings began to increase, he began to receive lots of love from the usual liberal outlets, his profile was enhanced by a seemingly never-ending series of pro-Olbermann puff pieces in the media. And if anyone criticized him for anything, by wrapping himself up in the liberal mantle he (and his ardent fans) could claim you weren’t a good liberal or were surely a GOP troll for daring to suggest he was anything les than 100% perfect and/or always right. For someone as averse to negative feedback (the man reads everything about himself, obsessively), becoming a very outspoken liberal turned into a goldmine. Ahhh but he didn’t foresee the dangers of openly dissing Hillary. Nor could he have ever imagined his fans would turn on him when he gave one blistering Special Comment in January on the wiretap bill and now openly embraces it this past week. You could almost hear the sound of his fans heads exploding as they tried to reconcile how it could ever be that Olbermann had betrayed them so. It’s easy folks, just realize what some of us figured out about him a long, long, long time ago: once you can fake sincerity, everything else is a piece of cake. Olbermann eats a lot of cake these days.
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Now, in terms of politics or ideology it may sometimes be right to praise a liberal politician for moving right on an issue, or vice versa. But pundit shows are not really about the issues, they’re about entertainment, and Olbermann is showing signs of losing his entertainment value as he becomes just another middle-of-the-road type. Without clear liberal beliefs or conservative enemies (apart from Bush), he comes off as kind of bland.