- Make no mistake. He didn't quit. He was pushed, the final
straw perhaps being the January 18 FCC-approved Comcast-NBC Merger. Its
chairman/CEO Brian Roberts co-chaired the 2000 Republican Convention host
committee, and COO Stephen Burke/now NBC Universal CEO tilts heavily to
Republicans. According to Public Citizen and Think Progress, he raised
at least $200,000 for Bush's 2004 campaign, served on his Council on Science
and Technology, and may wish to make MSNBC another Fox, despite pledging
no "interference with NBC Universal's news operations."
-
- Think Progress asked: "Why would Comcast be interested
in silencing progressive voices?" Because it opposes issues they support,
including Net Neutrality, stiffer media regulation, and restraints on being
able to buy telecommunications and media companies freely.
-
- Despite having MSNBC's highest ratings, Olbermann's gone
like (once top-rated) Phil Donahue ahead of Operation Iraqi Freedom. At
the time, a leaked network February 25, 2003 memo to All Your TV.com, said
he presented a:
-
- "difficult public face for NBC in a time of war....He
seems to delight in presenting guests who are anti-war, anti-Bush and skeptical
of the administration's motives." It outlined a nightmare scenario
of his show becoming "a home for the liberal antiwar agenda at the
same time our competitors are waving the flag at every opportunity,"
promoting war, not diplomacy and peace.
-
- For those on the far right, Olbermann, like Donahue,
became too hot to handle, personality issues mattering less than staunchly
right wing politics. Expect MSNBC to feature more of it, shifting more
to the right like Fox and CNN, racing to the bottom to see who's more pro-business,
pro-war, and anti-left of center ideologically. MSNBC's remaining prime
time hosts take note.
-
- On January 23, Washington Post writer Paul Farhi headlined,
"Olbermann-MSNBC split had been brewing for a while," saying:
-
- He "often clashed with his employers, condemning
- sometimes quite publicly - directives with which he has disagreed. His
departure fit a pattern (of) frequent run-ins (often) result(ing) in (him)
leaving a job....His sudden exit prompted widespread suspicion of interference
by Comcast."
-
- According to one MSNBC insider, "there were strong
indications that the timing wasn't coincidental. (It was) right,"
but not for the first time. After leaving ESPN in 1997, a network official
said "He didn't burn the bridges here; he napalmed them." This
time, ideology, not contentiousness, made the difference, but neither side
is saying.
-
- Earlier articles criticized his less than pure progressive
credentials, accessed through the following links:
-
- http://sjlendman.blogspot.com/2010/08/liberal-media-rest-in-peace.html
-
- http://sjlendman.blogspot.com/2010/08/iraq-pullout-mission-accomplished-or.html
-
- At issue was unabashedly supporting Obama/Democrat policies,
including:
-
- -- imperial wars without end;
-
- -- anti-labor opposition to the Employee Free Choice
Act (EFCA), and agenda to destroy, not create, jobs when they're most needed;
-
- -- a "Race to the Top" scheme to destroy public
education;
-
- -- stiff-arming budget-strapped states, and freezing
out millions trapped by poverty, homelessness, hunger and despair;
-
- -- militarizing Haiti, opposing democracy, and backing
the Honduran coup, ousting a democratically elected leader;
-
- -- supporting banker bailouts and bogus financial reform
for Wall Street, not main street;
-
- -- endorsing preventive detention, police state surveillance,
and plans to assassinate US citizens named terrorists, with or without
proof; and
-
- -- bogus health care reform, for many weeks the top Countdown
story; Olbermann shamlessly promoting Obamacare - a destructive scheme
to ration care and enrich corporate providers, making a dysfunctional system
worse.
-
- For months he was staunchly one-sided, revealing flawed
progressive credentials for a pro-business agenda when not jousting with
Fox News or his nightly buffoonery, acting more like Bozo the Clown than
a newsman. It's why critic David Forsmark called his program "Meltdown,"
nightly "public ravings," not real news and information. Too
often, it was evident by topics chosen, preferred guests, and discussions,
supporting Democrat party politics, not good governance and public needs.
-
- Georgetown history Professor Michael Kazin called him
"O'Reilly on the left - completely predictable, unfunny, and arrogant."
University of Chicago Professor Harold Pollack said he "can be smart
and funny, but I've basically had my fill. My life is full of shticky and
rude blowhards already. Why add another?" Harper's editor Luke Mitchell
described him as "irritating and his obvious sexism is reprehensible,"
despite some positive attributes, putting him head and shoulders above
his Fox and CNN counterparts.
-
- On June 23, 2008, New Yorker writer Peter Boyer called
him "One Angry Man," saying:
-
- At home one night, he penned "the first draft of
a lacerating indictment of Bush, a twelve-minute-long j'accuse, addressed
personally to" (him). The denunciation hit the high notes of the most
fevered antiwar rhetoric, accusing Bush....his alleged puppet master (Dick
Cheney and those around them) of perpetrating a 'panoramic and murderous
deceit' on America and the world, (saying) 'you yoked this nation and your
place in history to the wrong war, in the wrong place, against the wrong
people.' "
-
- However, he rarely "j'accused" Obama's wars
or other policies the same way. In reports or commentaries, he largely
exempted Democrats from jeremiads, reserved mainly for Republicans and
Teabaggers, bashed separately in nightly Tea Time segments.
-
- Perhaps he should have stuck with sportscasting, the
right venue for fun and games, pranks, horseplay, and tomfoolery. Consumers
of real news and information didn't find much on Countdown. Overall of
course daily, the entire corporate media delivers a diet of managed news,
junk food news and infotainment, supporting pro-business, pro-imperial,
and pro-anti-progressive policies.
-
- Occasionally, however, Olbermann stood tall, earlier
as a fierce Bush/Cheney critic, and what a recent article explained, accessed
through the following link:
-
- http://sjlendman.blogspot.com/2010/12/corporate-medias-version-of-economic.html
-
- Despite turning his program into a commercial for Democrats,
his December 8 special comment accused Obama of turning his back on his
base, saying:
-
- "In exchange for selling out a principle campaign
pledge, and the people to whom and for whom it was made, in exchange for
betraying the truth that the idle and corporate rich....have gotten unprecedented
and wholly indefensible tax cuts for a decade (besides unmentioned earlier
ones under Reagan and generous favors from Clinton), in exchange for giving
the idle and corporate rich....two more years to accumulate still more
and more vast piles of personal wealth with which they can buy and sell
everybody else."
-
- "In exchange for extending what he spent the weeks
before the midterms calling tax cuts for millionaires and billionaires"
money they'll keep, not spend. "In exchange for injecting new vigor
into the infantile, moronic, disproved-for-a-decade three-card Monte game
of an economic theory (what Michael Hudson calls junk economics) purveyed
by these treacherous and ultimately traitorous Republicans, that tax cuts
for the rich will somehow lead to job creation," a shameless lie.
-
- "In exchange for giving tax cuts for the rich which
the nation cannot afford," and they don't deserve. "In exchange
for this searing and transcendent capitulation, the President got just
13 months of extended benefits for those unemployed less than 100 weeks.
And he got nothing, absolutely nothing for" the millions unemployed
longer, "the 99ers."
-
- Yet Obama is "celebrating....Mr. President, for
these meager crumbs, you have given up costly, insulting, divisive tax
cuts for the rich, and you have given in to Republican blackmail, which
will be followed by more Republican blackmail....This is only the beginning
of the reckoning. This is only the first sip of a bitter cup (without)
a supreme recovery of moral health and political vigor (to) rise....and
take our stand for what is right."
-
- It was a rare Olbermann moment, bashing Obama like Bush,
but apparently his new bosses thought sometimes was too much, tolerating
little to the left of Fox.
-
- Not according to New York Times writers Bill Carter and
Brian Stelter, however, headlining their January 23 article, "Olbermann
Split Came After Years of Tension," saying:
-
- No matter his "track record of attacking his superiors
and making early exits, (news) of his abrupt departure (came) as a shock
to his many fans, some of whom accused Comcast" of sacking him.
-
- TV insiders, however, "are astonished that (MSNBC's)
highest-rated host....would be ushered out the door with no fanfare, no
promoted farewell show, and only a perfunctory thanks for his efforts."
Calling the decision "not a termination but a 'negotiated separation,'
(it followed) years of behind-the-scenes tension, conflicts and near terminations,"
besides being unabashedly pro-Democrat.
-
- Now he's gone, leaving left-of-center hosts Rachael Maddow,
Ed Schultz and Lawrence O'Donnell, filling his vacated time slot. Key,
however, is NBC's power shift right, likely portending two choices for
remaining hosts - softened rhetoric or new employment, but expect new corporate
bosses to offer little, if any.
-
- Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago and can be reached at
lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net. Also visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com
and listen to cutting-edge discussions with distinguished guests on the
Progressive Radio News Hour on the Progressive Radio Network Thursdays
at 10AM US Central time and Saturdays and Sundays at noon. All programs
are archived for easy listening.
-
- http://www.progressiveradionetwork.com/the-progressive-news-hour/.
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