Moe Lane

From TPM’s report about Current TV (it’s apparently a fringe Internet TV thing) dumping Olbermann:

In an open letter to Current viewers, the company’s founders, former Vice President Al Gore and Joel Hyatt, said the network’s values are “no longer reflected in our relationship with Keith Olbermann.”

OK. Well, if it’s about values, then…

Former New York Governor Eliot Spitzer, who had recently filled in, will replace Olbermann starting Friday night, premiering his new program “Viewpoint.”

…Wait.  What?

Moe Lane

Search your heart; you know it to be true.

I just got sent a link to this Salon article about how Keith Olbermann threw a fit – and please note that while I am not claiming that foaming at the mouth and loss of motor skills/bowel control was involved, neither would I be surprised if it occurred – over the way that people reacted to his reaction to the entire Julian Assange rape allegations thing.  Apparently he quit Twitter in a huff – which is a weird thing to write about a supposedly adult man, but what the heck.

Moving away from the Assange issue itself, what strikes me about this article is the way that the author presents her conclusion that Keith Olbermann is inherently childish, elitist, and untrustworthy almost as if this was not already known about the man.  I assume that this is because said conclusion was a genuine revelation to said author; which suggests to me that the Left really needs to get out more.

Moe Lane

PS: Oh, Keith?

Moo.

‘JSOC’ being short for the ‘Joint Special [Operations] Command,’ which is known to normal people as a group that coordinates communications and operations among various American Special Forces organizations*.  The alleged would-be spy Bryan Martin allegedly traded secret documents to an FBI operative in exchange for roughly $3,500; there’s no indication as of yet that he was working with anyone else, but between this and the Wikileaks Manning case it looks like the US intelligence community is on heightened alert for potential espionage problems.  Looks like it’s not the end of history, after all.

Moving along, the confusion of Hot Air over how cheap this transaction was is why I’m bringing it up.  You see, this kind of money is the rule, not the exception.  Hollywood aside, foreign governments do not pay out large amounts of cash to would-be spies.  They are, in fact, usually very cheap about it: for every Aldrich Ames there’s there’s a dozen Markus Hess’s.  However, the exception is generally found among American intelligence groups; the CIA in particular supposedly has a policy of paying very well for this kind of information.  It’s not like the Cold War, where we could get highly trained and educated foreign professionals to crawl across broken glass in exchange for a green card and a retail franchise in Terra Haute, Indiana – but if you’re a disaffected member of the repressive and shortsighted regime currently running your country, by all means: give Uncle Sam a call.

Moe Lane (crosspost)

(more…)

I’m a little surprised that Hot Air and Mediate took this long to determine that Olbermann’s suspension was just a publicity stunt: after all, I called it last week.  Although it would have been funny if he had been traded out for Grayson.

Moe Lane

PS: If you’re wondering how a mere two days’ off could be an effective publicity stunt, consider that it was directed towards the netroots.  That crowd is… undiscriminating in what gives them satisfaction, poor fellows.

Background: Marco Rubio released an ad last week – one that was pretty clever in and of itself, and possibly even ‘cheeky’ – taking advantage of Rachel Maddow being… well, Rachel Maddow (and including a cheerful invitation for people who disagreed with Rubio’s tax relief views to watch Maddow, instead). Ms. Maddow responded by giving Marco some more campaign ad fodder:

Way to make Marco’s argument for him, there: as Ed Morrissey noted, “Who knew Rachel Maddow was a Tea Partier?” – Because, really, Crist’s embrace of the current administration is doing Florida absolutely no favors.

Marco Rubio for Senate.

Moe Lane (more…)

…about Tucker Carlson, from time to time, in the past.

Please be advised I repudiate any and all such statements that might have been made, apologize for any hurt feelings that might have resulted from them, and will be happy to discuss the matter further with Mr. Carlson if he should feel that the previous two statements were insufficiently contrite.

If you don’t already know, The Daily Caller bought the keitholbermann.com domain name and is now using it to flick Keith Olbermann’s left earlobe on a steady, but not quite regular basis.  Hi-jinks, as they say, ensued.  The quote of the day is not actually:

“Some might step back and allow Mr. Olbermann to drain his bladder on the first amendment – indeed, on the Bill of Rights itself,” said Carlson. “Not us. No, by God, not us.”

It’s:

And in the meantime, Tucker Carlson may be reached at his personal email address, keith@keitholbermann.com.

Honestly, you’d have thought that Olbermann would have bought the darn thing up himself. I guess that they only taught that sort of thing in the other Cornell…

Moe Lane

The ratings drain, that is. He went down the rhetorical, ethical, moral, and mental health drains a while back.

Yes, all at once. On a Zodiac. With the engine redlined.

Anyway:

Olbermann averaged 268,000 viewers last month in that sector. That’s just several thousand sets of those eyes more than Campbell Brown over on CNN. According to one count, Keith even finished in that time slow behind Nancy Grace. Nancy Grace!

And she’s on Headline News, Headline News, the repetitious TV channel the repetitious TV channel inflicted on all U.S. airline travelers within any boarding area around the clock so that when, at least an hour late, each person is finally crammed into plane seats between professional wrestlers, they actually feel relieved.

In case you haven’t guessed yet, Keith Olbermann isn’t precisely on Andrew Malcolm’s Christmas card list, either. and that’s not even the nastiest thing that he wrote…

Moe Lane

(Via Hot Air Headlines) I don’t know if Mediaite deliberately omitted the reason for former President Bill Clinton’s refusal to attend a Keith Olbermann-boosted ‘free clinic event.’  It’s entirely possible that the actual reason (warning: FDL link) – that Clinton thinks that the event in question is a thinly-veiled primary campaign event against Senator Blanche Lincoln (D, AR) and for Democratic Senate hopeful Bill Halter – was simply uninteresting to Mediaite, which is of course that site’s privilege.

That being said, this kind of allegation is newsworthy.  A former President accusing a more-or-less prominent Leftist television commentator of playing internal Democratic party politics with people’s health care coverage?  This should have been front and center on the site.  Heck, it should be above the fold on the New York Times.

‘Should,’ not ‘will.’

Moe Lane

PS: Does MSNBC… approve of this?

Crossposted to RedState.

Via AoSHQ, Joe Scarborough mocking Keith Olbermann.

I guess we’re going to see whether Olbermann’s allowed to make someone from his own partisan opinion network Worst Person In The World.

Crossposted to RedState.

Just in case: that’s RedState dot COM, Keith.  Have you noticed that nobody in the media ever updates their links?

Here’s the (very entertaining) timeline:

• Thursday, September 3rd, 11:18 PM: Glenn Beck calls for his Twitter followers to send him information on “CASS SUNSTEIN, MARK LLOYD AND CAROL BROWNER” (all caps in the original, which is honestly a bit much).
• Friday, September 4th, 3:36 PM: Dave Weigel reports on all of this.
• Sunday, September 6th, 12:05 AM: It becoming clear that Van Jones is a crazy 9/11 Troofer and a generally not-particularly-mainstream fellow, he resigns as Green Jobs Czar (via AoSHQ).
• Sunday, September 6th, 10:14 AM: Keith Olbermann declares a Crusade against Glenn Beck (via Verum Serum).  This is to be an epic war of battle between Olbermann and Beck, yadda yadda.
• Tuesday, September 8th, 8:21 AM: Media Decoder hesitantly points out that media-on-media wars may not be the smartest things in the world; and is treated to a righteous, stylized response from Olbermann himself.
• Tuesday, September 8th, 8:22 AM to 9:46 AM (time indeterminate): Somebody in either MSNBC or GE notices that Olbermann is calling for a Crusade.
• Tuesday, September 8th, 9:47 AM: Olbermann calls off the Crusade (via Newsbusters & Instapundit).

There is, of course, no evidence whatsoever that GE sent Olbermann was off to bed without his binky.  Personally, I’d have enforced a timeout and Olbermann being made to write out ten things that he liked about Glenn Beck, but that’s just because I’m a dad now.

Moe Lane

Crossposted to RedState.