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Combining two items into one here...
1. News. Inside Cable News reports today that Keith defended a recent post
by Harry Shearer to The Huffington Post when someone wrote in to criticize it. Shearer, responding to a recent AP poll in which some people actually said they considered Bill O'Reilly a "journalist," replied with an essay on "What Is a Journalist?"
Someone over at the Romenesko page of Poynter Forums (which I actually like) extrapolated from Shearer's essay that he was saying that journalists are "overpaid" and "greedy"--which, the writer claimed, Shearer had no business saying. considering what he gets paid to do "Simpsons" voiceovers.
Well, Keith charged into the breach for his buddy (you can always count on Keith) and said that nowhere in Shearer's blog entry did he see anything about him saying journalists are "overpaid" or "greedy." (What he DOES say is "Journalists sometimes make too much money getting out of the studio too seldom so they can mingle with other journalists who are resentful because they never get into the studio at all"--which Keith agrees with, and I think all the rest of us would, too. Hey, I think Keith thinks *Keith* gets too much money for what he does.)
Leave it to Keith to reach in and extract words that have been stuffed in the mouth of someone he likes! :loveya:
2. Not news, but still interesting, I think. I just picked up James Wolcott's book "Attack Poodles and Other Media Mutants: The Looting of the News in a Time of Terror" (published rather early last year). I had never read it before, but I am so glad I did. Wolcott, who, like Keith, doesn't claim to come down solidly on one political end or the other, nevertheless takes mostly the conservative yapping dogs of the media to task for being such, well, yapping fools. This book is laugh-out-loud funny (the chapter on Peggy Noonan alone, complete with a tender description of the first time she saw Ronald Reagan--or, more specifically, one of his feet--is worth the price of the volume), but if you do nothing else (and I would buy it if I were you, even if it is a bit dated now), it should get you reading his blog (as it will me). Best of all, he's the first author I can find so far who has put a description of Keith and Countdown between hard covers.
After describing MSNBC as a news network desperately floudering for an identity, here's what he says:
"...MSNBC became a Frankenstein's monster of dug-up spare parts. Under the direction of Erik Sorenson (whose Viking warrior name could be Erik the Unsteady), MSNBC embarked upon one star search after another to fill spots in the chatter department. It looked high, re-signing the mercurial Keith Olbermann...It was a welcome homecoming. Olbermann is the thinking person's thinking person--quick, imperturbable, commanding, telegraphic in his delivery, enveloped in electrical tension, a Clark Kent with attitude. Pure fuel cell efficiency, he looks as if he doesn't sleep at night but recharges in a Borg alcove. Where some anchors wax folksy in their humorous takes on the news or act post-strinkingly pensive...Olbermann is a throwback to the old school of newsroom cynics, his irony urban, caustic, platinum-edged. He originally left MSNBC nauseated by the nightly Monica-thrash he had to referee, writing scathing columns for Salon on the slimy wallow that cable news had become. The format of his current show, Countdown--five segments on timely topics--prevents one fit of manufactured hysteria from flooding the full hour.
..."Mostly, however, MSNBC looked low. Real low. And when that wasn't low enough, it looked lower, draining swamps, scouting the bus depots, recruiting from the mole people. Nonpolitical picks such as Olbermann...were the quality exceptions. Intent on finding a conservative superpatriot to out-flag-wave Fox News, MSNBC kept reaching deeper into the sack and digging out Mr. Wrong."
Really, if you have somehow missed reading this book already, don't miss it. You will probably get more laughs out of it than you do out of Leno's monologue tonight.
Did I say "LENO"???? Yeah, just in case anyone forgot...! Keith tonight! Don't miss it!!!
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