Eric D. Snider

Eric D. Snider's Blog

Archive for September 27th, 2006

The Olbermann smackdown, and the lack of response to it

Wednesday, September 27th, 2006

I don’t watch much TV news, having learned years ago that most of it is unintentionally superficial and unintentionally funny. (I prefer to watch things that are superficial and funny on purpose.) I do catch clips online now and then, however, when something is brought to my attention that’s worth noting.

Keith Olbermann’s 10-minute commentary on his MSNBC program “Countdown” earlier this week, which you can watch here, fits that description. I enjoyed Olbermann’s sense of humor when he was an L.A. sportscaster in the 1980s, and I’ve recently been entertained by his constant harassment of Bill O’Reilly on “Countdown.”

But I never would have expected the level of gravitas and incisive commentary that he displays here. He reminds me of Edward R. Murrow (whose commentaries were dramatized in “Good Night and Good Luck”) in that it’s not enough to read the transcript of his remarks. You have to watch his face and hear his delivery to get the full effect of the scathing things he’s saying.

(By the way, you can watch the Bill Clinton interview from two days earlier, which Olbermann’s piece is partly a response to, here.)

Having watched the Olbermann clip without much introduction and having been stirred by it, I poked around the Interwebs to see how the conservative blogs were responding. I don’t read many political blogs of any denomination, so I had to do some Googling to find conservative ones.

The few I found that mentioned it at all were depressingly predictable: They harp on Olbermann’s manner and delivery and don’t even try to rebut the things he actually SAID.

“Watching this douche clumsily trying to channel his paranoid rage into lofty rhetoric has been one of the true joys of blogging these past few weeks.”

“It appears to me like it’s almost as if he feels he has to top himself with each new commentary. Be more outlandish … more daring … more critical.”

“I think Olbermann’s ‘Special Comment’ testifies eloquently to his and his fans’ ‘issues’ and requires little elaboration.”

I guess the reasoning is that if you’re writing a conservative blog for conservative readers, you don’t need to explain why Olbermann is so wrong. Your readers already KNOW why. So I wish someone would explain it to me, a more-liberal-than-conservative person who doesn’t read the political blogs every day and doesn’t know why Olbermann’s commentary is so off-base. He seemed to me to be making excellent points and to be making them exceptionally well. He’s actually SAYING something, which is more than any of the bloggers (that I could find) did in response to him.

P.S. I know liberal bloggers do the same thing: A conservative says something, they automatically mock and ridicule him without regard for what he actually said. It’s the major reason I don’t read political blogs, because both sides are equally jackassish about it. The Olbermann thing is what happens to be on my mind at the moment, that’s all.

Server migration

Wednesday, September 27th, 2006

WEBMASTER’S NOTE: If you are reading this note (and I have a sneaky suspicion you are), you are seeing the new server. Congratulations!

As previously mentioned, we are moving ahead with our plans to switch to a new Web host, on account of our current company, Dreamhost, sucks mightily. (You may have noticed the site was down for a while Tuesday afternoon. Again.)

My fat brother Jeff, who handles the technical side of this site and uses small words to explain complicated things to me, said that the changeover will mean this: Sometime today (Wednesday), the comments feature on this blog will be turned off. This is because the switch from one server to another will be happening, and anything posted in the interim would get lost. Once the transition is complete — 24-48 hours — you’ll be able to post comments again.

In the meantime, everything else should work fine. You should still be able to browse the site and read stuff; you just won’t be able to add new comments on the blog. But considering you couldn’t do that at all up until a week or so ago, I imagine you can probably live a couple days without it again.

Subscription Center

Eric D. Snider's "Snide Remarks"

This is to join the mailing list for Eric's weekly humor column, "Snide Remarks." For more information, go here.

Subscribe

Eric D. Snider's "In the Dark"

This is to join the mailing list for Eric's weekly movie-review e-zine. For more information on it, go here.

Subscribe
 
This site created and maintained by Jeff J. Snider