Keith Olbermann – Useless
By LisaB on June 13, 2008 at 10:20 AM in Current Affairs, Keith Olbermann, MSNBC, Media, Media Bias
Wednesday evening, Keith Olberman named Katie Couric “Worst Person in the World.” He apparently did this in response to a particularly egregious statement by Couric at the extensively covered Alice Award Luncheon and Gala, where Couric spoke as she accepted an award for being the first female news anchor and for her work to get more people screened for colorectal cancer.
During this luncheon gala, Couric stated about Senator Clinton:
However you feel about her politics, I feel that Sen. Clinton received some of the most unfair, hostile coverage I’ve ever seen.
Couric followed up this startling revelation by adding:
. . .that latent sexism contributed, in part, to Hillary’s defeat.
She referred to one “prominent member of the commentariat” who said he “found it hard to be objective when it came to Obama.”
“That’s your job,” she remembers thinking when hearing this, before suggesting that he “find another line of work.”
Naturally, Keith promptly named Katie Couric the “Worst Person in the World.”
Worst? Worst Person in the World? Dude, you have sooooo many choices and you pick Katie Couric? For THAT?
Read the rest ->
You do realize, don’t you Keith, that Couric’s assertion about the sexism thrown at Clinton has been widely reported on? That regardless of the punditocracy absolving itself in this matter, many people (and NOT just the old bitter ones) feel the media itself was the low point in the campaign?
This primary demonstrated that the footing will remain unequal for the next woman in line, said in Ari Melber in The Nation’s The Notion blog. Clinton fought an uphill battle against an American political media that is “slanted, sexist, and dominated by men.” She and Obama broke down barriers, but “the race was still refereed, scored, and narrated by white male commentators, an influential constituency in presidential politics. Pundits talked a lot about gender and racial progress during the campaign, of course, but the elite opinion media continues to employ, groom, and promote a commentators corps that is disproportionately white and male,” and until that changes the political playing field will remain uneven.
Don’t you remember, Keith, that you YOURSELF were implicated in Clinton bashing too? Don’t you remember, Keith, any of the many “objective” comments from YOUR colleagues?
Well, we do. It’s a short list, but it will have to do.
Where is your outrage when attacks against Senator Clinton were not hidden at all but were out in the open? It must not have bothered you when on his radio show Glenn Beck called Senator Clinton “. . . the stereotypical bitch” or when he said “After four years, don’t you think every man in America will go insane?” or “. . .there is a range in women’s voices that experts say is just the chalk, I mean, the fingernails on the blackboard.”
Where is your outrage when in reply Mr. Andros says, “Oh my gosh, she could be talking about how she’s giving every American a million dollars, and I’m hearing, “Could you take out the garbage now?”
Where is you outrage when Marc Rudov said, “You know what? The woman is not called a B-word because she’s assertive and aggressive; she’s called a B-word because she acts like one,” and “Men are depressed, and it’s their own fault, because men are allowing women to take over the world.” How about he says when asked about the downside of having a female president, “You mean besides the PMS and the mood swings, right?”
Where is your outrage when CNN’s Alex Castellanos asserted, “And some women, by the way, are named that [white bitch] and it’s accurate” or when he suggested that if Clinton were Sen. Barack Obama’s vice president, “I think Barack Obama would have to hire a food tester …” Where is your outrage when Fox’s Mort Kondracke said “Well, this person says Hillary’s a vampire. She’s sucking the blood out of Barack Obama.”
Where is your outrage when NPR’s Ken Rudin stated, “[L]et’s be honest here, Hillary Clinton is Glenn Close in Fatal Attraction. She’s going to keep coming back, and they’re not going to stop her.”
Where is your outrage when on MSNBC David Shuster presented Tucker Carlson with “a Hillary laughing pen” where the mouth moves and the pen makes a laughing noise. In response, Carlson stated: “I can’t tell you, David, how much I appreciate this. . . ”
Did you even flinch when on MSNBC Pat Buchanan asserted that when Clinton “raises her voice, and when a lot of women do, you know, it’s — as I say — it reaches a point … where every husband in America … has heard at one time or another.” or when he said,”It’s very difficult for women to reach those kinds of levels effectively, as it is to make them sort of a rally speech. They’re not good at that.”Where is your outrage when Tony Hendra, at the bastion of quality political thinking known as Huffington Post, imagines, “Wednesday morning, a crazed grin splitting her Chucky-like cheeks, Clinton told her staff: “All my life I’ve felt I was a man trapped in a woman’s body!” No-one disagreed.” or when John Eskow says, “Her cause is herself. Her feminism is a feminism of convenience. Her concern for kids — which surely once must’ve been real and profound — has turned into a breezy willingness to “obliterate” them,” or David Rees titles his carefully researched article “Journey To The Center Of Hillary Clinton’s Mind: ‘Why Would I Drop Out Before Barack Obama Is Assassinated?’”
Where is your outrage when the NYT’s Maureen Dowd compares Senator to Lord Voldemort and then imagines that “Democrats are trying to sneak up on Hillary, throw a burlap sack over her head, carry her off the field and stick her in a Saddam spider hole until after the Denver convention.”Where is your outrage when Mike Barnicle on MSNBC said Clinton “look[ed] like everyone’s first wife standing outside a probate court,” when Bill Kristol on Fox News said that among the only people supporting Hillary Clinton were white women, and “[w]hite women are a problem, that’s, you know — we all live with that.” when CNN’s Jack Cafferty likened Clinton to “a scolding mother, talking down to a child,” when MSNBC’s Tucker Carlson announced that “when [Clinton] comes on television, I involuntarily cross my legs.”
All that is missing from these worthy political commentaries is the odor of sweat, acne and towel snapping, followed by the disclaimer, “aww, we’re just kidding, can’t you take a joke?”
Where was your outrage, sir, when your colleague at MSNBC, Chris Matthews, repeatedly dismissed, insulted and belittled Senator Clinton? What did you think when he said “I hate her. I hate her. All that she stands for.”
Presumably, working for the same outfit, you were aware of Matthews’ considerable and extended bouts of verbal diarrhea related to Senator Clinton. Surely we have no need to go into all those comments all over again, since it must have been so clear that those remarks about a presidential candidate and sitting senator were and are without a doubt totally inappropriate and just plain wrong?
Or maybe not. After all, on MSNBC, referring to what Democrats needed to force Senator Clinton from the race, you said, “Somebody who can take her into a room and only he comes out.” Did you really say THAT? Did you really think a not-so-subtle allusion to beating up a woman was an acceptable thing to say?
Really? About a PRESIDENTIAL candidate? About a former FIRST LADY? About a woman who still gets millions of votes despite comments like these? Or possibly because of them? About a woman who still wins primaries by large margins even as other democrats call for her to give up, bail out, go home, slink away and shut the fuck up. Really? That’s worthy of a punch or two or twenty? Who else have you singled out for a back-room beating, Mr. Olbermann?
Oh, but your anger at Couric for her terrible statement is not directed at her concerns about sexism. You completely dismissed that with:
A little Kool-Aidish but her opinion and she’s entitled to it.
No, Keith, what got your tushie in a bunch was the SECOND part of her statement. You know, the part where she vaguely referred to a comment by another journalist that she found professional troubling.
What followed, she was not entitled to. Couric referred to one, quote, “one prominent member of the commentariat” who had said he found it hard to be objective when it came to Obama. “That’s your job,” she says. Then she suggested he “find another line of work.”
She didn’t name him, maybe because she didn’t bother to look it up. But the supposed member of the “commentariat” who said that was not, in fact, a commentator. It was NBC News correspondent Lee Cowan, who covered the Obama campaign throughout the primaries, and who, as Ms. Couric would have found out had she bothered to examine the context of his remark, was speaking with refreshing honesty, acknowledging that the environment of that campaign, and the ferocity of the candidate`s supporters in the primaries, challenged a reporter to be especially professional and vigilant in separating the hype from the news.
So, Keith, what drew your righteous wrath is that Couric seems unimpressed with the supposed hypervigilance of your friend and his “refreshing honesty.” Sounds like she simply expected the guy to do his job and do it well or make room for someone who would.
Maybe, Keith, Couric was a bit courageous in calling out, however subtly, a member of the talking-white-boy-club. But we’re simply astounded you can get all upset about this comment when so many other comments provoke nary a single nostril flare, much less a throw down from the great Countdown Pontificator.
Identifying much, Keith? Maybe it IS all about you. And maybe if you keep that tushie in a bunch you’d better get a colorectal screen too.
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Other “KO is a Tool” articles
Time
LA Times
Jossip
Radar
The Week
The Nation
and even HuffyPot (authors: Sklar, Shea)
Today’s NYT has a quote from Keith regarding Clinton coverage:
Keith Olbermann, the host of “Countdown” on MSNBC, said that while there were “individual, sexist, mistakes,” there was no overall sexism.
Any suggestion that MSNBC “was somehow out to ‘get’ Senator Clinton is false and unfair,” Mr. Olbermann wrote in an e-mail message. “We became a whipping boy.”
He said that after Feb. 5, when Mrs. Clinton went on a losing streak, her campaign strategy was to blame the news media, which he said was “its only fuel.”Still, he said, there was “constant reflection and analysis at MSNBC, and I must say there was constant good faith in trying to make certain Senator Clinton was not treated unfairly.”
Good old Keith. Classroom monitor on the towel-snapping planet. What would Murrow say? Not much.
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