Let's start with those people who can carry a tune.
Followed by those who write for major daily newspapers and pull down big salaries but who didn't bother to learn how to spell. I refer today to Barry ("Buy Me a Vowel") Svrluga, who, in the Washington Post sports pages wrote: "His last game, by all rites, should have been Aug. 25." You can't blame an editor for that one. Or SpellCheck. But you can blame Barry and a long list of Post writers who perform the greatest of linguistic gymnastics but can't pull up the right word.
Mostly, I am jealous of Keith Olbermann.
I never watched Sports Center when it began because I am old-school and didn't care for the tone now known as "snarky." To me "snark" is what "spunk" was to Lou Grant. I want to vomit when I watch Jon Stewart or am forcibly exposed to Stephen Colbert, both of whom do the kind of humor I was getting sent to the office for in junior high but without having to make faces to make point.
Olbermann's grace is that despite a background in sports, and his record of having been fired at least once by every current and former network, he is a newsman. I always thought MSNBC was the best of the cable news outlets, and when, after 9/11, he began taking the 8 p.m. slot, I saw what other people liked about him. As I mentioned about sports announcers yesterday, the noticeable difference is that he is well-read and erudite.
So, I like and envy him because he is doing that which I aspired to do. Combine intelligence, wit, elegant writing and stage presence. That I sound like him in print and someone thinks I looked like him is flattering enough. But now he has also become TV's only liberal commentator with the balls enough to say on the air what I have been saying in newsgroups for years: George Bush is a big fat liar whose "higher father" is not GHWB, nor God, but a short little corporal who wore a mustache and danced a jig. At least that guy actually served in combat.
Last night, Olbermann called Bushitler out in the kind of essay we haven't heard since before Edward R. Murrow sold out and propagandized for the State Department.
Today, Bushitler proved Olbermann correct once again by signing a bill regarding who may edit Department of "Homeland" Security reports and then announcing he will violate the law and reserve the right to edit them himself. As if the poor boy even knew what a comma is. It is certainly not the loss of nearly 2,800 American military who died for his perfidy.
"Countdown" is on MSNBC at 8 p..m. Eastern time and repeated at midnight. It is composed of straight news, good interviews, "oddball" stories, weep-and-laugh-out-loud exposes of Fox News and, of course, the commentaries.
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I am willing to bet that one story he might comment on tonight is the New York Times piece about $4,000 designer "no-sneeze" cats bred and cloned to eliminate the allergens that drive their owners crazy. Says the CEO of the -- sorry cardiologists -- cat lab, you aren't just buying a cat, you are buying a medical device!
Well, ain't that the medical device's pajamas.
It seems to that there is always a landslide of information and commentary supporting the right while any other oppinions are softened to the point that they are sometimes not heard at all.
ReplyDeleteOne radio hack we have here claims to "attack the issues head on" and while that may be a catchy phrase he does in fact attack more from the right flank than head on.
And...what fun is it owning a cat if your best jacket doesn't look like the cat wore it first?