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October 28, 2006
Keith Olbermann and the Seriousness Quotient
In a recent post on the growing irrelevancy of what passes for political analysis in America, the half vast editorial staff quoted a wonderful piece by Thomas Sowell:
With a war going on in Iraq and with Iran next door moving steadily toward a nuclear bomb that could change the course of world history in the hands of international terrorists, the question for this year's elections is not whether you or your candidate is a Democrat or a Republican but whether you are serious or frivolous.That question also needs to be asked about the media. In these grim and foreboding times, our media have this year spent incredible amounts of time on a hunting accident involving Vice President Cheney, a bogus claim that the administration revealed Valerie Plame's identity as a C.I.A. "agent" -- actually a desk job in Virginia -- and is now going ballistic over a Congressman who sent raunchy e-mails to Congressional pages.
If you are content to see life and death issues of war and peace addressed with catch phrases like "chicken hawk" or to see a coalition of nations around the world fighting terrorism referred to as "unilateral" U.S. action because France does not go along, then you are content with frivolity.
We were reminded of that passage today when we saw this list of Olbermann's Worst People in the World. Could anything make our point more forcefully?
Included on his list are Evildoers such as Bill O'Reilly (featured an astonishing 32 times), Rush Limbaugh (10 times), Doubters of Global Warming (blasphemers!), and arch-fiend James Taranto of Wall Street Journal (a drinker of kitten blood from the purloined skulls of Native American infants if ever there was one).
Folks whose actions notably failed to raise even a blip on Herr Olbermann's moral radar screen of wrong/badness, thereby making them ineligibly for membership in the elite fellowship of the Worst People in the World?
1. Saddam Hussein, who during his 30+ years of terrorizing his own people (a halcyon era fondly referred to by liberals as "containment") was apparently not able to perform up to the Olbermann standard:
* In 1988, the Hussein regime began a campaign of extermination against the Kurdish people living in Northern Iraq. This is known as the Anfal campaign. The attacks resulted in the death of at least 50,000 (some reports estimate as many as 100,000 people), many of them women and children. A team of Human Rights Watch investigators determined, after analyzing eighteen tons of captured Iraqi documents, testing soil samples and carrying out interviews with more than 350 witnesses, that the attacks on the Kurdish people were characterized by gross violations of human rights, including mass executions and disappearances of many tens of thousands of noncombatants, widespread use of chemical weapons including Sarin, mustard gas and nerve agents that killed thousands, the arbitrary imprisoning of tens of thousands of women, children, and elderly people for months in conditions of extreme deprivation, forced displacement of hundreds of thousands of villagers after the demolition of their homes, and the wholesale destruction of nearly two thousand villages along with their schools, mosques, farms, and power stations.* In April 1991, after Saddam lost control of Kuwait in the Gulf War, he cracked down ruthlessly against uprisings in the Kurdish north and the Shia south. His forces committed wholesale massacres and other gross human rights violations against both groups similar to the violations mentioned before. Estimates of deaths during that time range from 40,000 to 100,000 for Kurds, and 60,000 to 130,000 for Shi'ites.
* In June of 1994, the Hussein regime in Iraq established severe penalties, including amputation, branding and the death penalty for criminal offenses such as theft, corruption, currency speculation and military desertion.
2. Robert Mugabe, a man who surely loves habeas corpus like it was his own mother.
3. Moammar Ghaddafi:
"The United Nations itself has voiced concern over Libya's human rights practices, including extrajudicial and summary executions perpetrated by state agents, arbitrary arrest and long-term detention without trial, systematic use of torture and other ill-treatment or punishment, imposition of the death penalty for 'political and economic offenses,' and numerous restrictions on freedom of expression."In 1986, Qaddafi's agents blew up the La Belle Disco in Berlin, killing two Americans and wounding dozens; in 1988 Libyan agents blew up Pan Am 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, killing 270; and, in 1989, they blew up a French airliner over the Sahara Desert, killing 170. Qaddafi has equipped and financed dozens of terrorist groups including the IRA (Ireland), ETA (Spain), and several Palestinian terrorist organizations, thereby earning Libya a spot on the U.S. State Department's list of state sponsors of terrorism. Libya has ongoing programs to develop weapons of mass destruction including nuclear, chemical and biological weapons. Of these, Libya is thought to have made the most progress with chemical weapons, with facilities in the towns of Rabta and Tahuna.
One has to wonder what Mr. Olbermann's criteria are for what makes someone worthy of being denounced as "The Worst Person in the World". Mass murder, suppression of the media, torture, rape, developing and deploying weapons of mass destruction, terrorism against America and her allies?
Not a mention. Not one.
Who does he harp on, night after night after night? The President of the United States of America, and the Department of Defense. In short, our own government who, in his very words, are "more dangerous to our liberty, than is the enemy it claims to protect us from."
Still want to take Keith Olbermann seriously? Be our guest. Apparently he has decided what side he is on, and what he is afraid of: a government he claims is trying to crush dissent and trample our Constitutional rights. And to prove that, every night he goes on national TV and screams at the top of his lungs about how un-free this nation is and how our precious freedoms are vanishing.
Got it.
Posted by Cassandra at October 28, 2006 12:22 PM
Comments
IMO, Freiherr Olberman is a tool and a fool.
He should go back to sports commentating.
I'll bet his ratings would go up.
Posted by: Unkawill at October 28, 2006 03:29 PM
Cass, you sound like you are just getting all bogged down and energy-deficient. What you need is something fun and entertaining to take your mind off of it all.........I know! How about another rousing round of "Ask Cassandra"? That's sure to get your blood going.......
*running away quickly*
Posted by: Sly2017 at October 28, 2006 03:49 PM
I guess I made the list (sort of) as a doubter of global warming...not that I doubt that the average global temperature has risen by one whole degree (Farenheit, no less!) over the last 100 years; I'm just not convinced I should buy into all the dire "gloom and doom" predictions made about it.
Especially the bit about the Gulfstream shutting down, and freezing Europe...
Posted by: camojack at October 28, 2006 04:17 PM
And didn't I hear about some Danish scientist or something who have a new theory about global warming being directly related to solar radiation?? I haven't seen that study getting wide press. I'll have to dig up where I read about that....
Posted by: Miss Ladybug at October 28, 2006 04:27 PM
You're deliberately missing the point. The Worst Person in the World list isn't a laundry list of the world's terrorists and perpetrators of plain old evil. It's for bringing to light and condemning stupid people who do stupid, thoughtless things that make the world a worse place. Or lesser-known people who commit evil on a small scale...like attempting to poison their own kids for insurance money.
Posted by: Think at October 28, 2006 04:46 PM
So, who is a serious commenter? John Derbyshire, Mark Steyn, Camile Paglia... who else? Who's carrying the weight of the real discussion? The think tanks in DC and elsewhere? The military, internally. Presumably there's a separate and hostile set of deliberations going on at State and a few other places. But that's not in the public eye.
Posted by: Grim at October 28, 2006 06:38 PM
It's for bringing to light and condemning stupid people who do stupid, thoughtless things that make the world a worse place.
You mean, maybe, like going on national TV every nite and scaring the crap out of people by distorting history and telling them their own government is more dangerous than the terrorists who are trying to kill them?
Got it.
Posted by: Cassandra at October 28, 2006 06:49 PM
Oh, and by the way, words do have meaning.
If what you want to do is condemn stupid people who make the world a worse place, come up with some evocative name that conveys that.
But "Worst People In the World?"
This is why it's so hard to take Olbermann seriously. He exaggerates everything out of all proportion to its true meaning. A dictator who kills hundreds of thousands of people? OK - him I'll call a "Worst Person in the World".
Bill O'Reilly?
Give me a freaking break. He's mildly annoying at best. Change the channel.
Posted by: Cassandra at October 28, 2006 06:53 PM
What, Keith had no shout out for Bill Clinton and Boutros Boutros-Ghali for turning their backs on 800K+ Rwandas slaughtered in 100 days?
All Keith is doing is looking for "traffic." That's why he starts these wars with folks like O'Reilly. Kinda like a smaller blogger picking a fight with someone in the top 10.
Posted by: William Teach at October 28, 2006 10:10 PM
Olbermann is like Andrew Sullivan. They both shook the money/ratings tree and noted from which side of the tree the most money fell. In both cases it was the left side.
Those two know their audience and they cater to it.
Posted by: Daveg at October 30, 2006 10:24 AM