Olbermann, O'Reilly, and Gibson (Hint: Not a Law Firm!)
I love the fistfight that's brewing (exploding) between Keith Olbermann of MSNBC (formerly with ESPN) and John Gibson and Bill O'Reilly of Fox News. Olbermann is not known as a liberal pundit, while Gibson and O'Reilly have made names for themselves as vocal conservative commentators.
In a nutshell, Olbermann called for Gibson to voluntarily resign after Gibson said on his show that people that observe the "wrong religion" (i.e., not Christianity) will be judged harshly by their maker. O'Reilly responded, separately, to Olbermann's naming him winner (and runner-up) of his "worst person in the world" contest, by citing how many more viewers he (O'Reilly) has, than does Olbermann.
On MSNBC's Countdown, host Keith Olbermann named Bill O'Reilly "worst person in the world" for promising to "bring horror into the world" of those he believes are waging a "war" on Christmas. Olbermann also awarded O'Reilly "[r]unner up" honors for naming himself "[t]he only television journalist" who "didn't put Abu Ghraib pictures" on his or her program; Olbermann added: "Wait, wait -- you think you're a television journalist?"It's hard to tell if Olbermann is grandstanding to increase ratings (a real possibility) or becoming a self-styled Edward R. Murrow of the present generation. I'm just enjoying the sparks.
Thoughts? Cheers, jeers, and predictions?
posted by Sean @ 12/28/2005 06:12:00 PM
6 comments
6 Comments:
I'm not quite sure what to make of Olbermann. (Although I love his retort to O'Reilly's reference to his larger viewership- "8 million flies can't be wrong.") Someone on that Newshounds blog pointed out that attacking other commentators isn't necessarily the work of a journalist. And, while his jabs at Gibson and O'Reilly seem to come straight from the Daily Show playbook, I do appreciate the fact that someone is willing to call these blowhards to task. But, Edward R. Murrow he is not. If memory serves me correctly, Murrow made his name as an uncomprimising journalist who never allowed himself to be influenced or cow-towed by the subjects he was covering. Olbermann may win some fans for standing up to the conservative right's talking heads, and for that I'll give him credit as a political commentator, but not as a journalist of Murrow's ilk.
Yeah, sticking it to O'Reilly is always fun, but Olbermann is no hotshot journalist himself. Moving from SportsCenter to a talking-head job on MSNBC isn't exactly the Murrow/Cronkite path to journalistic excellence. My guess is that he's expressing real disgust at those other two, AFTER having made sure that it "wouldn't hurt" to do it publicly, ratings-wise. Kill two birds, as they say...
Quoth Harris:
...who never allowed himself to be influenced or cow-towed...
I've been cow-towed before. You see, in the country, there is a lot of mud, and when you get your pickup truck stuck and you don't have a tractor handy to pull it out, you can just hitch a rope to the nearest bovine and let her tug you out.
I think you meant kowtow, right? :)
The sad thing is, I am not joking at all about using cows to pull a stuck vehicle out of the mud. Been there, done that.
Ahhh, Josh... just wondering... were you and my brother drunk and/or high when you hitched a cow to the car?
No, your brother was high when he plowed his car into a cow.
He had no part in the cow-towing incident. And I'll thank you not to mention it to him, or I'll never hear the end of the redneck jokes. ;)
Hmmm... well, I would surmise that Murrow never kowtowed to authority OR was cow-towed. But, I cannot speak with certainty to the latter.
Post a Comment
<< Home