Oh, Grow Up Keith Olbermann!
It’s easy to laugh at MSNBC News Commentator Keith Olbermann. For conservatives, he’s become a cartoon bogeyman– exaggerated, absurd and ultimately lacking any credibility. “I’m not a liberal!” he has publicly stated while promoting one of the most radically leftwing/socialist ideologies on television today. Five nights a week he doles out his half-baked confections of Pelosi talking points, anti-Christian rhetoric, bloggers’ conspiracy theories, special interest group demands and entirely unprofessional personal vendettas. In the final analysis, should we disregard Olbermann as a vanity-whoring buffoon or does he pose a real danger to the tenor and maturity of political discourse in these vital times?
ON THE ORIGINS OF THE SPECIOUS
Mr. Olbermann started his media career as a sports announcer, eventually winning a coveted spot on Fox News as a baseball reporter. For many men, this is a dream come true: getting paid to cover one of the most dramatic of American sports. Olbermann seemed to thrive in the spotlight. He used his fame to wrangle several appearances on the game show Hollywood Squares. His enormous television salary funded a deluxe lifestyle that included private chauffeured limousines, expensive vacation homes, a tawdry affair with conservative star Laura Ingraham and an obsession with his personal appearance. For this new, vainglorious Keith Olbermann, only the most expensive Italian suits would do. He saw no irony that he was modeling himself on the very Wall Street CEOs that he would later attack for their wealth. He also developed an effeminate obsession with skincare, exhibited by his suspiciously line-free face (ahem, Botox?), and an unseemly orange glow from too much self-tanner.
The career of this preening media pretty boy would have been unspectacular if Olbermann was not caught leaking highly sensitive financial insider information about his boss Rupert Murdoch’s personal investments. In an interview, Mr. Murdoch called Olbermann dangerously “crazy” and Keith took great offense at the public airing of his mental health issues. Prior to this, Olbermann had upset his superiors by making unscheduled appearances on rival television shows (including Comedy Central’s liberal lovefest, The Daily Show). He had been fired and permanently banned from the grounds of the ESPN Television Network in Bristol, Connecticut for egregious and self-serving behavior. (No one before or since has been exiled with police enforcement from the genial sports station.) But these were minor potholes on the autobahn of Keith’s career. Getting fired from Fox set him off in a new, fanatical direction.
OBSESSED WITH REVENGE
Immediately after his dismissal from Fox, Keith embarked on his “Countdown With Keith Olbermann” show. He employed one of the oldest tricks in showbiz– gaining fame by piggybacking on someone else’s successful career. He made Fox star/popular news analyst Bill O’Reilly a personal target, disrespecting this highly respected newsman at every opportunity. Lacking any original reporting, he simply replayed segments from the O’Reilly Factor and commented with strange, nonsensical diatribes. For this work, he was feted on YouTube, The Colbert Report and in the New York Times as a fearless demigod who was willing to wholeheartedly embrace the Democrat Party agenda. But his shenanigans also raised eyebrows amongst long-time journalists and his superiors who found his fervent political bias disingenuous and inappropriate. Privately, many associates worried that vanity was getting the better of Keith, that he was exaggerating his liberalism to gain fame in a crowd so desperate for attention.
Egged on by flaccid ratings and radical democrats, Olbermann’s attacks on O’Reilly grew more and more vicious over time. The televised histrionics became so bad that executives from both MSNBC and Fox held a summit to deal with the situation in the summer of 2009. Advised by lawyers and top psychologists, the executives concluded that Olbermann’s antics bordered on the dangerously obsessive and possibly libelous. His corporate superiors decided an intervention was the best solution. With Fox’s blessing, they demanded that Olbermann back down from stalking O’Reilly and Olbermann submitted. (Keith has even admitted this publicly on his show– details here.) For now, an uneasy stalemate exists between the Countdown chatterer and MSNBC executives who are still unsure whether he is a potential liability to the network.
AN INCONVENIENT THUG
Mediocre ratings and predictable tantrums aside, there’s not much to the Keith Olbermann show. His hollow presentation of the day’s top news stories contains very little actual news. Instead, he uses every story as an opportunity to show off his smug, smooth face. His leering arguments are increasingly vapid. He exhibits as poor a grip on American values as he has on baseball (where his devotion to the New York Yankees and his hatred of the Pittsburgh Pirates and the Boston Red Sox is unprofessionally obvious). Olbermann casts himself as the YouTube generation’s Howard Beale, throwing out random bits of unsourced bigotry with a rehearsed stream of conscious-style faux spontaneity. He appeals perfectly to gullible East and West Coasters. These are people ready to lap up any bowl of “If It Feels Good, Do It” ideology. They have no foundation in ethics, morality, common sense, American traditions or Christian wisdom. Among these liberal arts educated and underemployed urban white twentysomethings, Keith is a hero. He provides them cover for their lives of sexual experimentation and underachievement. When his own weird sexual proclivities were exposed in a recent scandal involving a woman Olbermann lured to a New York City motel room via the internet, his devotees were gratified to see he was truly one of them (see a NSFW description of the debauchery here).
One of the most disturbing aspects of Olbermann’s television charade is that he finds himself so outrageously funny, laughing uncontrollably at his own painfully childish jokes in each and every broadcast. He spits and sputters through his cue cards with narcissistic indulgence, pathetically begging you to find him humorous. He is like that awkward, lonely uncle who tries to impress you with one-liners he picked up in the 1950s– until all the attention he’s paying to little Johnny or cute Debbie makes parents so nervous they have to grab their kids away from strange Uncle Keith’s wandering hands.
Despite all this, I want to shout, “Keep up the good work, Olbermann!” He may have polarized the country with his hate, but he’s also motivated true Americans to protect and celebrate our essential moral values in these perilous times. Thanks to Keith Olbermann, conservatives like O’Reilly and Glenn Beck have thrown off the gloves. No longer are they mired down to the mundane confines of gentlemanly reporting. They have been freed to do what they do best: inspiring and energizing groups around the country. Teabagging groups and Townhall groups and Christian groups and middle class Americans everywhere who are losing God and losing patriotism and losing hope. Conservatives like Beck, Hannity and myself have been freed to push with all our might and insight for the vision tens of millions of Americans tirelessly worked for during the George Bush years– the vision they voted for in November– but which is now in danger of being drowned in the fetid swamps of Manhattan, Washington and Hollywood. So, from this Christian journalist to the outrageous and offensive liberal poster boy, I would just like to say, Thank you Keith!
http://www.olbermannwatch.com/
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Author: Stephenson Billings
Stephenson Billings is an Investigative Journalist, Motivational Children's Party Entertainer and Antique Soda Bottle Collector all in one special, blessed package! Facebook me here or Fanmail me: StephensonBillings@yahoo.com !
6:51 pm
“His hollow presentation of the day’s top news stories contains very little actual news.” This sounds familiar… perhaps a bit like one of my favorite websites?
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1:51 am
Thank you for your deeply considered comment. Now go away.
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7:38 pm
I think Keith is very handsome. I’m glad he’s not married, because I’m going to steal him from his girlfriend.
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8:07 pm
Lol Danielle you just pwned him so badly
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12:15 am
Your right he is not a true American. I don’t think a name like Olberman is a real American name, It sounds Russian to me.
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1:46 am
Actually, he’s German. That’s why I used the word “autobahn” in describing the path of his career.
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1:45 pm
Wether hes Russian or German he’s not a True American. His father or him should change there foreign sounding German name to something more American like Olson or something like that. I am Very Suspicous of people with foreign sounding names like Olberman and Obama.
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2:37 pm
Exactly. They can’t be trusted.
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1:39 am
How can Olbermann have mediocre or flacid ratings and polarize America? Wouldn’t he need great ratings to polarize a nation?
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1:50 am
His on air ratings are low, beaten repeatedly by Beck, O’Reilly and MSNBC’s own Rachel Maddow. But as I mentioned in my piece– which clearly you did not read closely– he is popular among a small liberal crowd that promotes his agenda in YouTube videos and in the liberal medias. This has helped him get the word out to those too cheap for cable or too addicted to internet soundbites, but oddly enough it has not helped his Nielsen numbers.
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2:46 pm
I think that the worst part of the Olbermann phenomenon is that he’s still employed, and that MSNBC feels no compunction about continuing his employment. They could fire him at any time, so mentioning that the honchos at MSNBC are still up in the air about this is in itself highly specious. Olbermann is a real blowhard, to be sure, but the fact remians that there are still people who tune in to his program regularly, and the damage done to American political and social discourse continues. Personally, I don’t watch MSNBC or any of the other NBC/Universal channels anymore, thanks to the ridiculous inclusion of scumbag Eliot Spitzer on one of Rachel Maddow’s panels a few months back (I have even cancelled my HBO package, as painful as that is).
I’m not a DemocRAT or a Republitard, but I am also not a Communist, a Socialist or Anarchist. I’m just an American citizen who has decided to not accept one party’s self-aggrandizing socio-political platform over that belonging to another party. Either way, a whole host of Americans are left OUT of the debates conpletely, and to me that is a total disservice to the American people. Olbermann is a clown, a buffoon, and INSERT YOUR OWN ADJECTIVE HERE, but if we keep mooning over him we lose sight of the people who are actually screwing this country further into the ground. This has nothing to do with the oxymoron of Christian wisdom, nor does it have anything to do with TV. The problem is that this country elected a man for the job of president, AND HE IS FAILING ON EVERY ACCOUNT. We need to make sure that in the next series of elections he gets as few of his party cronies elected to Congress as possible, and we need to hold him responsible for every idiot that he hires, because WE are paying the bills, not Barack Obama. If you want your country back, then TAKE IT BACK, otherwise, I hope you enjoy your pint of Ben&Jerry’s “Strawberry HOPE Swirl”, which has no strawberries, but penty of swirl.
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7:07 pm
Thank you for your wise comment. I am also gratified to hear that you are not mailing money to these liberal hothouses every month. It shows a true beauty of spirit to be so dedicated to your cause.
I do believe that MSNBC honchos may fire Olbermann. The rebuke they gave him over his O’Reilly conduct was a rare show of corporate control in today’s media world. The fact that they even did it and got results from Keith show he’s skating on thin ice in their world. Maybe with a little pressure, he will finally be let go. After that, I don’t know where he’d end up because I doubt any other news company would take him. He’ll probably end up shooting YouTube videos in his basement or something (where he belongs).
Your point about Olbermann being a distraction from the real problem– the Obama Administration– is a very good one. That’s why I state in the beginning of my article that no one takes him seriously anymore, that’s he just a buffoon. This is truly the consensus among intelligent Americans.
Lastly, I missed your ice cream reference, but it has made me hungry!
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2:50 am
It’s easy to laugh at Christwire.org’s Stephenson Billings. For Christians, he has become an embarrassment, Hes absurd and ultimately lacking any credibility. “I’m not a Retarded!” he has publicly stated while promoting one of the most radically Mentally challenged/socialist ideologies on the internet today. Five nights a week he doles out his half-baked confections of Pelosi talking points, anti-Christian rhetoric, bloggers’ conspiracy theories, special interest group demands and entirely unprofessional personal vendettas. In the final analysis, should we disregard billings as a vanity-whoring buffoon or does he pose a real danger to the tenor and maturity of political discourse in these vital times?
I went a head and fixed your intro
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2:32 pm
Like brunch with George Stephanopoulos, your plagiarism is poorly written, rife with factual errors and truly unappetizing. I am neither a socialist nor a Pelosi supporter as you stupidly claim. At this stage, with your youth hanging out there for everyone to see, I’d prefer it if you call me Mr. Billings. Part of me, however, is flattered that you’re so impressed with my work that you’ve taken to copying me. Welcome to the world of journalism, my friend!
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7:55 am
This website is hilarious. There’s no way this is serious. I’ve been laughing my balls off since I found it. What Billings is trying to do is make fun of the religous wingnuts of the Republican Party. These people are probably the most pathetic group in this country and a very small minority take them seriously.
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10:14 pm
Even Christwire thinks Billings is a faggot.
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