“Keith is a liberal, so am I. There are other people on this network whose political views are shared openly with our viewers. We are not a political operation. FOX is. We are a news operation. The rules around here are part how you know. Keith Olbermann attracted the ire of the right-wing and raged against what he saw as the errors and sins of the previous administration. Keith was also the one who brought to light FOX News’ water-carrying role for the Bush administration,” Rachel Maddow said in defense of her MSNBC colleague on her show Friday night.
Rachel Maddow’s defense would mean something if, for one moment, anyone in America regarded her or Keith Olberman as actual serious newspeople and not editorialist ringmasters. They can throw up Fox personalities’ contributions all they like; Fox doesn’t have a rule against it, so what does that have to do with a policy inherent to MSNBC? It wasn’t the right wing who snuck into MSNBC offices under the cover of nightfall and secretly created the policy that Olbermann broke; and lo, it wasn’t Fox or the Vast Right Wing Conspiracy who whispered into Olbermann’s ear and told him to not seek exception – which he may have been granted – from his superiors.
I had actually sort of taken Olbermann’s side in this but I’ll stop if they think it good strategy to actually blame conservatives for MSNBC management decisions. Is Maddow lecturing her bosses? Because I personally could give a rat’s ass who any of the Great White Wonders over at MSNBC donate to, on air or off of it. I support journalists’ freedom to privately donate as they wish, which would seem that Maddow does too and thus, looks at it as an expression of speech (which then makes their support of Citizen’s United somewhat comically ironic). I like the absence of this policy because it removes from them any plausibility concerning bias.
Those attacking Olbermann do so for two reasons:
1. He’s a hypocrite. Maddow notes this but then tries to come out with a long list of people she claims have done the same thing – but no, they haven’t, because they haven’t been critical of the practice like Olbermann who once famously stated:
“I don’t vote,” Olbermann said, saying it is the only thing he can do to suggest journalistic objectivity. “It’s a symbolic gesture.”
There is no analogy to make to lessen the criticism of Olbermann’s insubordination because he hung himself with a failed Alinsky tactic (Doing Alinsky Wrong 101), that is, the standard he presumed others held and thus used as a weapon against opponents. The problem is that weapon becomes a weapon against self when the target doesn’t assign to it equal value.
2. He tarnished his (theirs) credibility. This criticism only works on the left because these are the only people who truly believe that Olbermann actually had credibility with which to begin. They honestly think that his donations were worse than his televised bias on any given night of the week – or the election coverage they giggled through like freshman swigging Zima at a frat party. That Maddow thought her announcement “Yes Keith’s a liberal and so am I” was news shows that she apparently has no idea how she is perceived.
If Maddow wants hypocrisy, perhaps she should do a little broadcast missive on how her parent company benefited from an Obama bailout – or, she could discuss how her superiors have actually violated their own policy:
In a statement, FAIR pointed to Center for Responsive Politics data, showing that GE made over $2 million in political contributions during the 2010 election cycle alone. In addition, GE spent over $30 million on lobbyists during the same election cycle and gave over $400,000 to Democratic and Republican governors since last year.
If Maddow doesn’t have a conservative bogeyman for her show how will she ever be able to attract ratings on one of the most ridiculed networks ever? Perhaps this is why she refuses to place blame where it belongs: squarely on the shoulders of one Keith Olbermann for not following workplace rules.
As she herself said:
‘There is an explicit employee rule that prohibits … if you don’t ask for an exemption you are bound by the rule …”
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