Olbermann better suited for ESPN

I recommend the story on Beck and associated lines of thought which appeared in the New Yorker
earlier this month. Google away.

 

For those of you who missed the 60's and wondered why many thought Howard Cosell was an ass hole get a 2nd chance to see how Cosell was like in the form of Olberman.

 

Olberman can't hold a candle to Cosell. Not when he was at ESPN, not now. Millions hated Cosell, millions got a kick out of him. No one really gives a crap about Olbermann---he's just part of an NBC/MSNBC machine that sees itself as the contrarian viewpoint to FoxNews and along the way they delude themselves into thinking they are an FNC competitor. Now that's a joke.

 

Maybe Olberman will have to go back to ESPN now:

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1110/44734.html

"MSNBC host Keith Olbermann made campaign contributions to two Arizona members of Congress and failed Kentucky Senate candidate Jack Conway ahead of Tuesday’s election — a potential violation of NBC’s ethics policies."

If NBC News wants to keep a shroud of credibility they will dump Keith today.

 

On one hand, Olbermann made a huge mistake with these donations.
On the other, how can you tell your on-air people not to donate when you're making big donations yourself? Anyone on Fox who tries to make hay of this should be smacked upside the head with the seven-digit contributions Murdoch made.
I would favor Olbermann's firing under one condition: the same fate befall any on-air talent or high-ranking executive on any of the network or cable news operations who made donations this cycle. It would end up like the Baseball Hall of Fame if you made assholery grounds for exclusion.

 

But the NBC policy seems clear enough.

 

Among others.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/11/02/AR2010110207572.html

http://mediamatters.org/research/201010270005

It's a long list.

Still, if the NBC policy is clear and Olbermann violated it, he should suffer the consequences.

 

I know people go quickly to Beck/Hannity/O'Reilly whenever Olbermann is attacked, but the one big difference I saw the other night is that Olbermann actually anchors MSNBC's coverage.

At least those right-wing guys are put in a corner where you know they're analyzing the results in their own way, not reporting them. There's a separation there.

From a journalistic prospective - take politics out of it - the MSNBC coverage on Election Night was a complete embarrassment to ethics or standards. Making fun of live (R) guests who are on air, having meaningless dirt dug up on any R who won ... say what you want about any other station, and most times you'd be right, but ... wow.

 

You know you get the far right slant on Fox and the far left on MSNBC; still, some of the stuff I saw during and after the election shows just how silly both sides are and how bad the election coverage was. The day after the election, Chris Mathews was making a point about Sarah Palin. He showed a clip of Rudy Guliani on The View in which he said, concerning Palin's qualifications, that in terms of experience, Palin was more qualifed to be president than when Obama first started to run. The clip ended long enough to hear the moans and laughter from The View women and then cut back to Mathews and his guest. Mathews then said, "Yeah, but the big difference is one has witten a book and there is no evidence the other has ever read a book." Cheap shots like that destroy any credibility Mathews and his ilk might legitimately try to make. The same holds true with Fox from other extreme. MSNBC commentators continue to call Bush stupid or voters who don't think and vote like they do. All that does is alienate a huge block of viewers. Bush has been gone for two years. To still call him stupid and blame the economy and everything else on him is beating a dead horse.

 

The difference between anchoring and analyzing has become pretty blurred in cable news. At this point, they're virtually all whores - they just have different johns.

 

Suspended.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/11/05/keith-olbermann-suspended_n_779586.html

But who'll suspend Roger Ailes?

 

If he was at ESPN, paying the people he covers wouldn't be much of an issue. (See "The Decision")