Just when you thought Keith Olbermann couldn't possibly find some scrap of news to make The Great Leak Case the top story of the evening, he surpasses himself once again. The Big News on Tuesday's Countdown was Scooter Libby hiring an expert witness re memory loss. Since memory is a key defense to the charge, this is surprising...why?
Then it was off to polls. Has Olby ever reported on the Rasmussen poll that has had the President well above 40% for weeks? Har. But when a CBS poll comes out that "Mister" Bush's approval rating at 34%, it's a headline story. What KO doesn't tell you is that the pollsters apparently oversampled Democrats. Keith talked with Dana Milbank, and neither of them reported another finding in the poll: 66% said the media overdid the Cheney hunting story. Maybe that one hit a little close to home for Olby.
A regurgitated NBC tape from Chip Reid about the Dubai debate mentioned a Coast Guard report that alleged a number of holes in the security plan. It did not include the statement issued by the Coast Guard that the security issues were from an early assessment, and that these "holes" no longer exist. In fact, the Coast Guard is officially on board with the proposal, though you'd never get that impression from The Hour of Spin.
The #4 story found Olby making high-school double-entendres ("all rise", "oral arguments") about Anna Nicole Smith and her adventures at the Supreme Court. Things went from bad to worse: puppet theater. Savannah Guthrie of CourTV dropped by for in-depth analysis. "Oddball" was introduced with an irrelevant historical reference from 1692, followed by the #3 story. It was another OlbyAttempt to ingratiate himself with Howard Stern. Sooner or later Stern will have to go on Countdown just to stop KO from cable-stalking him. The CBS-Stern lawsuit was explicated by Tom O'Neil of InTouch magazine, and despite Olby's insistence on claiming that CBS was engaged in "legal entrapment" (!), O'Neil thought the blunder was Stern's.
The #2 segment opened with a brief shot of New Orleans, then it was back to recycled news from the mothership: missing Katrina pets. Celebrity fluff and baseball rounded out the show.
In the Media Matters Minute, Brit Hume was "worst" for saying this on Feb 27:
Senator Reid is right. Dubai Ports World is owned by the United Arab Emirates. However, they are not getting control of the ports. They are getting management of some parts of some ports.... Harry Reid made some news, even though some of what he said was factually challenged.
Olby, of course, embraces the Media Matters spin, quoting Brit Hume himself using the term "control" "as recently as last Wednesday":
The Bush administration was trying today to dig itself out of a political hole on the question of who should control some of the nation's ports.
That was the most recent example either the Soros site or KO could find of this egregious worst-worthy abomination. Might that be because, in the six days since then, a lot more information and detail about the proposal has come to light? Brit Hume wasn't complaining about the term being used last week. He was criticizing its use just yesterday, when anyone who has paid attention would know that "control the ports" is at the very least a hyperbolic exaggeration. Sort of like Olby's "newscasts".
And that's The Hour of Spin for this, the 13th day of the Keith Olbermann CoverUp.
From: Keith Olbermann
Date: February 27 2006
Subject: Re: Tonight's Show
To: David Brock
CC: Daily Kos, Huffington Post
BCC: George S.
Dear Dave,
I received your email and I understand your concerns. But you have to realize that when I say my producers force me to do something, sometimes it's really true. You know that eventually somebody would catch the fact that I keep referring to "Mister Bush", and not "President Bush". And sure enough, last week a particularly annoying blog called me out on it. And my producers were not happy. They don't understand the mutually beneficial arrangement we have going on. So tonight, I was literally forced to use the phrase "President Bush", not once but twice. I didn't like it, and I'm sure that dastardly blog will claim this is another victory on their part. But, despite what you may read elsewhere, I'm really not trying to get myself fired.
Remember, I got in a lot of good licks that went right over the heads of those producers. And that abominable blog too. Did you see how I led off the show? All that talk about "bad news coming in waves", and then I just rattled off every negative anti-Bush story I could find: FEMA, NSA, Cheney, ports, Iraq blunders, the National Guard. It was hilarious! It really did sound like there wasn't any news anywhere that was in any way favorable to the White House.
Now that brings up another one of your points. I did reference a story from Insight magazine, and we know how far-right reactionary they are. But--and this is where I am just pure genius!--I didn't really get it from them. Do you think I'd read such crud? I learned about it from Raw Story. The neocons love to bash them because their accuracy rate is so bad. So I left that part out. You have to admit: genius.
Speaking of neocons, I know you liked that piece we ran about the founder of the neocon movement who wrote a book disavowing it and the Bush administration. You will notice we didn't do a piece giving the pro-neocon position. You know me better than that. The same thing goes for that Democrat we put on to bash those idiot Republicans mindlessly opposed to gay adoption. After all, why bother giving the other side of an issue when you and I both know the other side isn't worth hearing?
I am pleased, however, that you found the latest attack on Bill O'Reilly to be worthwhile. (That diabolical blog will probably claim this is #64.) You realize, there really wasn't much news on the O'Reilly petition, and actually I had to contrive something to justify even mentioning it on the air. But that how we keep the story alive, and nothing is too much trouble for a friend like you, Dave. I hope you don't mind my giving free plugs to the Daily Kos and the Huffington Post. They are two of my primary sources of unbiased news, and I'm hoping that someday we can work out a mutual PR arrangement like I have with you and Media Matters.
Of course I lived up to my end of that bargain tonight when I made Bill "worst person" yet again, content straight from the pages of your website. Would this count as attack #64a, or #65? I'm sure that despicable blog will obsess on that question for days! Remember, I'm counting on you to have video of these segments up within the next 24 hours maximum. Our relationship is not just a one-way street, you know.
Before I sign off here, thanks for the kind words about my new sign-off on the air. Just between you and me, and completely off the record, it wasn't my idea. George suggested it to me. I don't know where he comes up with this stuff. The man is not just a financial genius--he's a political genius! An intellectual's intellectual! Of course he was very raw and untutored when I first met him. But that's another story.
Thanks again, Dave, for writing. Next time we get together we'll talk about some of your ideas for improving Countdown. Your suggestion that we give Lawrence O'Donnell a nightly commentary spot sounds promising.
As a week of Keith Olbermann mercifully came to a conclusion, Olby headlined another big scoop:
It isn't just six ports involved...it's 21. They just forgot to mention the other 15.
No, Keith just neglected to report until tonight that there are 15 small ports that are also part of the deal. That fact was not breaking news elsewhere--only on The Hour of Spin. But it was The Great Leak Case that was forcibly crammed into the lead spot on Friday night, based on the unsurprising (and non-headline-worthy) decision that secret testimony is going to remain secret. David Shuster, Old Unreliable, explained it all.
Olby went on to read from a Jay Rockefeller letter claiming that recent leaks are all the fault of the Bush administration. It's a remarkably evidence-free charge, but it came from the right, or rather left, side of the aisle so Keith gave it a lot of play. That was the cue for Richard Wolffe to join in; his take was that it may be politics but there's a "pattern of behavior" in this "secretive" administration.
In the #4 slot was "port politics", where Keith claimed he uncovered a huge contradiction:
On Wednesday the White House had said that the President learned about the port deal after the fact from news reports. Today, though, Scott McClellan told reports that, no, Chief of Staff Andrew Card notified the President about the deal more than a week ago, on Thursday, February 16th.
Now we're going to do something really sneaky. We're going to check the transcript of the White House briefing for Wednesday. And this is what McClellan said at that time:
he learned about it over the last several days. I couldn't pinpoint the exact time, but last several days, recently.
McClellan said he wasn't sure of the date, but KO says, aha! He knew about it way back on February 16. February 16 was exactly six days before that White House briefing. Was Olby saying six days vs "several days" is some sort of contradiction? Was he claiming that Andy Card telling Bush about the press uproar is a smoking gun? And was he not aware that February 16 was still "after the fact", despite the deceptive wording of his "report"? Was Keith just trying to pull another fast one on his gullible viewers? Or is pier pressure getting to him? David Gregory, The Voice of Reason, filed a taped report giving his prognosis on the deal.
An 1825 reference introduced "oddball", and then the most predictable segment of the evening: "Big Giant Head Takes On Countdown". Given that this makes Olbermann O'Reilly Attack #63, some might think Olby got that headline backwards. (Nothing new there.) On Thursday O'Reilly did a "most ridiculous item of the day", suggesting that viewers sign a mock petition to bring back Phil Donahue in the Countdown timeslot, because Phil had much better ratings. Is KO now cracking under peer pressure? This was his reaction [QuickTime video clip]:
Then he read the whole petition, injecting unfunny explanatory comments (unfunny to everyone except The Laughing Stagehand). Olby changed the subject from viewers to viewers within a particular demo, and based on that claimed that Bill had made a "factual error". It went on and on and on, including a montage of Great Moments in Olbermann O'Reilly Attacks and Keith himself (plus a few dozen MSNBCers) signing the petition.
In the #2 slot, a documentary about an amnesia documentary, followed by celebrity news (alas, poor Olby: no Tom Cruise) and foxy felons. In the Media Matters Minute, the "worst persons" were the staff of Fox's Your World, for doing an analysis/debate segment on whether civil war in Iraq could have an upside. As far as Keith is concerned, the subject matter itself is enough for ridicule, because Media Matters said so. But this is what the discussion itself was like:
DAVID ASMAN: How could this sectarian violence, dozens of people being killed including some Americans, how could this be a good thing?
LT COL BILL COWAN: As tragic as the events are of the last few days, the fact of the matter is, this forces Iraqi leadership--political, religious, tribal leaders, military security--to either get on board, stand up together and bring things into a unified Iraq, or it really does escalate to something bad. So these terrible events are causing people, leadership people, to make decisions and look at what's going on.
COL P.J. CROWLEY: This is only going to deepen the sectarian divide that already exists.... Our troops are caught in the middle, and as we know from Lebanon in the early '80s, that can't be good.
Now maybe KO considers this to be the worst possible discussion in the world. No wait, that's not possible because he has no idea what was discussed. He's basing his opinion on the headline, because that's all that Media Matters fed him. Next week Keith will be inaugurating a new series: reviews of movies he never saw.
And that's Countdown for this, the 9th day of the Keith Olbermann CoverUp.
Do you sometimes get the impression that Keith Olbermann still hasn't gotten over the last Presidential election? That on weekends he still travels down to Ohio to dig through rotted-out ballot boxes looking for a few more Kerry votes? Far be it from us to suggest so, but it's interesting to note how he referenced governmental leaders in his opening segment:
Mister Bush
Senator Rick Santorum
Senator Carl Levin
Senator Bill Frist
Mister Bush
On Thursday's Hour of Spin, Olby began with Karl Rove's concession that the President would be amenable to a delay in the ports deal. He played a clip from Rove "in a radio interview", and managed to avoid mentioning that the clip came from Fox News (the Tony Snow Show). Petty. Oh, and he still got it wrong, claiming it happened "late this afternoon". Tony's program airs from 9:00 am to noon, Eastern time. That's our Keith, always on top of breaking news.
Dana Milbank, shorn of funny clothes and clown makeup, said it "looks like" the administration was circumventing the law in not having an automatic 45-day delay. He did not reveal where he obtained his law degree. Then it was on to The Great Leak Case, and that means the discredited David Shuster haunted the Countdown set once again.
The #4 slot was South Dakota voting to outlaw most abortions. Pete Williams gave a prognosis, Olby pronounced the law "draconian", and a good time was had by all. After another serving of "oddball", KO decided to rattle off prewar criticisms of the Iraq plan, citing what Colin Powell said to "Mister" Bush, and saying, see? He was right! After a regurgitated NBC report, Olby brought in another MSM reporter, Michael Weiskopf of Time, for a predictable go-round. Iraq needs a tyrant, according to Mike, to hold the country together. KO mentioned, for what seemed like the 89th time, that Bush had been warned this would happen.
The Great Britain bank robbery was #2, via another rerun from NBC News. Then it was celebrities and doggie doo as an energy source. In the Media Matters Minute, Rush Limbaugh was a runner-up, and Bill O'Reilly (attack #62) was "worst". Once again, he managed to finger both a conservative and a Fox News employee, keeping alive the Guiness-worthy streak of a liberal or a Democrat never doing anything that qualifies as "worst". And it was a double-header for the Soros site, which will soon pay Olby back by giving him the agreed-upon publicity.
That's The Hour of Spin for this, the 8th day of the Keith Olbermann CoverUp.
Once again the ports were the lead item on The Hour of Spin. It's a story that Keith Olbermann was totally disinterested in and didn't touch until this week. Coincidentally, that's when it really exploded on the blue blogs. Wednesday's Countdown began with Olby crowing about how the President wasn't in on the decision making until last week. After the obligatory montage from Scott McClellan's daily briefing, we got a rundown of all the evils of the UAE over history. One of the items he mentioned as if it were news: members of the UAE royal family once met with Bin Laden. (Reported by "worst person" John Gibson on Fox days ago.)
Howard Fineman bloviated about the politics of it all as Olby suggested "there's got to be a fall guy". Howard thinks there will be some sort of compromise worked out, saying that Bush issuing a veto threat in the first inning means he really won't do it. Keith had an oh-so-clever retort:
Of course it may not be the first inning. He may just have shown up late for the ball game, because nobody told him there was a ball game.
KO then delivered more of yesterday's news, about Treasury Secretary John Snow's past involvement with a railroad company that was sold to Dubai Ports--after Snow had already left. Suggesting that the administration's stance is all about money, he brought in David Sirota, who naturally echoed that view.
Mr Sirota was introduced as if he were an impartial expert, so we will tell you what Keith didn't want you to know. Sirota is a fellow at the far-left Center for American Progress, and writes for the Huffington Post and AlterNet. He is one of those sophisticated writers who makes Olbermaniacs swoon by calling Newt Gingrich "smarmy, dishonest, and corrupt". As Sirota railed against NAFTA, trade deals, the China PNTR negotiations, etc, KO was awed:
I feel like I'm Howard Beale listening to the speech about the college of corporations in the movie Network.
Keith wishes he had the credibility of Howard Beale.
New filings were the excuse to make The Great Leak Case the next story. And, like a bad penny, the discredited David Shuster was back. They chatted about the "I was too busy to remember" defense, with Shuster saying it "sounds like" Scooter Libby ain't telling the truth. Otherwise, it was a stale rehashing of old talking points.
Speaking of stale, we got "oddball" with another tiresome, overblown intro ("78 years ago today...). The #3 story (powerball winners) began with a reflection on something that happened 150 years ago (can't Keith come up with a new template for pompous preambles?). #2 was the death penalty flap in California (via a regurgitated NBC tape) followed by the usual celebrity "news". Poor Keith: there was no Tom Cruise tonight. Then the #1 story: Donald Trump vs Martha Stewart. The disturbing Michael Musto made another unwelcome appearance.
Olby again lifted from Think Progress in naming as "worser" Orrin Hatch. That takes care of the GOP/conservative slot. Now what about the Fox News slot? Media Matters to the rescue: Bill O'Reilly, "worst person" for his comments about FNC contributor Neal Gabler. That's attack #61, and the first in almost three weeks. Regardless of what his bosses at A-Mess-NBC tell him, KO just can't go cold turkey on this Olbsession.
That's The Hour of Spin for this, the 7th day of the Keith Olbermann CoverUp.
The pundit class has been chattering today about what in the wide world of sports the President was thinking when he said he was sticking by the proposed port sale to the UAE. We have our own theory. The White House is trying to drive Keith Olbermann stark raving bananas. Today they made real progress:
The President threatens his own party's leaders!
Translated from hyperbolic OlbySpeak, that means he said he would veto a bill.
[Republicans] say no to turning security at six key ports over to the United Arab Emirates!
The second day in a row for this Olbermann lie. Security remains in the hands of the Coast Guard, Homeland Security, and the rest of the same people who handle it now.
Is this the political crisis of the Bush administration?
Was that drooling around Olby's mouth, or foaming? Some day HDTV will be able to resolve those fine details. Keith said this was "the most politically controversial Presidency since Abraham Lincoln", giving heavy play to the various GOPers who have expressed reservations about the deal. Jim Vandehei of the Post was today's first designated crony, and Olby turned to him for a prognosis on how this would play out.
Stop the tivo! Vandehei? This is the same Jim Vandehei who, less than 24 hours before Dick Cheney spoke to Brit Hume, said on A-Mess-NBC:
He's never going to come out publicly and talk about this.
Oh. Kay. Matters didn't improve when Craig Crawford took his turn. Olbermann's Brain called this "another [Harriet] Myers moment", and snickered his way through another predictable round of playing human echo chamber. The GOP could lose control of Congress, he claimed, almost causing Keith to flip his wig.
After repeating the lie about security being in the hands of "a company owned by Arabs" (no racial stereotyping here! no profiling here!), KO went to Evan Kohlmann. He tried to explain to Olby that terrorists can infiltrate any company, not just one run by "Arabs", and all this fuss was a red herring and a canard. He did endear himself to KO by talking about the Bush administration and inspection of packages. Still, we have to be thankful any time a contrary point of view is permitted to make a cameo appearance, even if it is spiced with the anti-administration rhetoric that is a sine qua non at Countdown.
After a reference to that well-known Supreme Court Justice "Joseph" Alito came another session of "oddball", again introduced in Olby's overbearing fashion ("It's 25 years to the day..."). The #3 slot brought us the well-worn story of the lost dog from the dog show, and Keith actually spent time interviewing a pet psychic (or, as KO insisted on calling her, an "animal communicator"). Incredibly, he treated this character as if she really could talk via telepathy with dogs and get visions of where they are. Olby showed more skepticism in his fake newscast on the tv show "Surface"!
Next it was back to the Supreme Court, with Keith using the politically correct terminology "late term abortion" to describe the controversy that will be heard by the Court. A regurgitated NBC report took care of the details. The #1 story was all about the gym teacher who took payoffs to let kids out of his class.
The "worst person" was chosen not from Media Matters, but from the equally far-left ThinkProgress. It was, of course, a Republican, and a conservative to boot (a twofer!): Orrin Hatch. KO's recitation was lifted almost verbatim from their article. ThinkProgress, like its parent group, is another fine product of the George Soros machine.
At The Hour of Spin, there is usually a dog that did not bark. On Tuesday's edition it was the terror indictments that were "breaking news" this afternoon. Not one word. What's this, a possible success in the war on terror? Well, we just don't have time for that. Instead we get a dog's dinner of celebrity sleaze and a woman who reads the thought waves of animals.
That's The Hour of Spin for this, the 6th day of the Keith Olbermann CoverUp.
Keith Olbermann had a scoop on Monday's Hour of Spin. At least he tried to make it seem like it was a startling new development:
A bizarre secret wriggles out of a symbolic shipping container.
The ports coming under the control of a Muslim country, all of a sudden on Olby's radar. Fox has been reporting on this controversy for at least nine days running now, but apparently Keith just got the memo. Even so, that doesn't mean he got it right:
US ports, security for which is now in the hands of the United Arab Emirates.
Well, that would be true, except: 1. the transfer has to be approved, which it hasn't; and B. the UAE will not be in charge of security (those functions remain with customs, Homeland Security, police, etc). So Olby is over a week late, and inaccurate to boot. That's "the future of tv news" for you.
In his trademark unfair and unbalanced style, KO brings in only one side of the issue. And in true Olbermann fashion, it's a Democrat, Robert Menendez. Never mind that Congressman Peter King was on this issue first and took the lead on it. He can't come on Countdown. He has an (R) after his name. And he wouldn't fall for KO's leading questions:
Does it feed into a bigger issue that we have talked a tough game about improved security...
Matters turned to a poll about Cheney being too "secretive"; that and the NSA business was the excuse to drag in Time's Mike Allen. Allen mentioned the "tough, fair questioning of Brit Hume", and KO couldn't let that stand:
Tough, fair questions. Not necessarily any follow-ups.
Man, give it a rest already! After all, you got that big exclusive with Michael Schiavo.
The latest audio from UBL was the #4 story, headlined as "Remember Me?" It was relegated to a regurgitated Andrea Mitchell report. After "oddball" (pretentiously introduced with another one of those "It was 35 years ago..." history-trivia lead-ins) we got a reminiscence of the late Curt Gowdy. This led into the controversy over Bryant Gumbel's remarks on the Olympics (another dispute that finds KO a week late and and several Euros short). After describing the reaction from "far-right blogs" Olby brought in Tony Bruno to talk about Gumbel and Rush Limbaugh (once fired for some incendiary comments he made on ESPN). Olby tried to claim that there was no "moral equivalence" between the comments of Bryant and Rush (predictable), but all he could get out of Bruno was stuff like "I don't know", "it depends", and so forth.
The rest of the show was the unknown powerball winner, celebrities, and more celebrities. The creepy Michael Musto graced us with another appearance, complete with "jokes" about Cheney being drunk. When KO wrapped with his oh-so-clever "Mission Accomplished" sign-off, we were reminded of that UBL tape again. One of the things the terrormeister went out of his way to mention was...the "Mission Accomplished" speech! Is it surprising that Usama Bin Laden and Keith Olbermann both have the same talking points?
That's The Hour of Spin for this, the 5th day of the Keith Olbermann CoverUp.
There is no doubt Olbermann Watch is having an impact. That was demonstrated Thursday, when Keith had to do three stealth rollbacks of falsehoods after we exposed them here. Now someone is so worried they have arranged to have a new website set up. If they are to be believed, they aim to recruit people to counter our efforts to hold Olby responsible for his journalistic sins!
KO claims he is "nonpartisan", but we know better. That's why we're happy to see Olby apologist sites spring up. They show how his Hour of Spin is a magnet for moonbats. When you visit keitholbermann.org, the first thing you see is a navigation menu with ten items. Nine of them pertain to KO. The tenth? A link to the "Al Franken Fan Club".
But the window into these people's psyches is found in the "Keith Olbermann Forum". Here fanboys and fangirls can fantasize about imaginary Olbermann ratings surges, share "steamy and sometimes kinky Keith fantasies", bash Bush and Cheney, invoke Halliburton, and prepare to defeat Olbermann Watch with their superior numbers and upper-class intellects.
What follows are literal, word-for-word quotes from this latest attempt to prop up the sports guy. Warning! The bad spelling, embarrassing grammar, and potty language have been retained, intact, just as the intellectuals posted them.
would somebody please tell me when anyone at Halliburton is going to be held accountable for anything? what the hell is up with that? all of Cheney's best pals are raking it in hand over fist, and none of this shit sticks to him? that is one arrogant bastard.
Cheney is the f---ing antiChrist. that's so disgusting. why does the country let him get away with that sh-t?
did you know that Antonin Scalia went with Cheney (on Air Force Two, by the way) on a duck hunting trip...suck-suck. two bad he wasn't on the quail hunt as well....
i hate both of those assholes with every fiber of my being.
I'm Sara aka keithlova. I love Keith as we all do!
i'm interested in raising the profile of KO's fans on the web. he's a problem child, so he's gonna need support. the brass at MSNBC need to be aware of what a gem they have in KO and not take it for granted
fuck he better not get fired god I would fucking die if he does
Keith Olbermann is a total rock-star stud! are you kidding me? damn! he is the hottest guy in the solar system.
Highest Rated Show on MSNBC!
he could start KO Magazine, like Oprah's O, and be on the cover every month.
I've posted comments on the olbermannwatch site before, and they do go right through... but it doesn't matter what you say if it's in defense of KO. They always have a negative response at the ready.
I don't think we are ready for those folks here, yet. I think we need 100 or so solid Keith supporters so we can beat the trolls back. We are getting there though, 20 real users in less than a week!
Florida Governor Bush and his self-aggrandizing Secretary of State Katherine Harris stealing the election for his brother? yep. that's us. you can understand what Countdown means to me, then. some days it is an island of sanity.
It appears some of these people were voted off that island long ago, on this, the 3rd day of the Keith Olbermann CoverUp.
It was the best of times. You had black box voting, Ohio irregularities, misleading Florida statistics, investigations, secrecy, and those diabolical voting machines. Those were the days, my friend. We thought they'd never end. If only you could go back to those heady times of moonbat theories and relive the thrill of the conspiracy hunt once again.
Well you can. On Countdown!
[Whittington] got the day of the shooting wrong. At least as far as we know he got the day of the shooting wrong.
The frontal view [of the official diagram] shows shaded areas indicating injuries on the left side of Mr Whittington's body. His injuries, of course, occurred on the right side.
If you wanted to create an environment of suspicion and doubt, you couldn't have done a better job...
What is going on here!?
For Sherlock Olbermann, the game's afoot. And who better to join him in another web of conspiracies than a slip-and-fall lawyer? Attorney George Parnham was the first guest. Why? Because Parnham was ready to do The Master's bidding.
You will recall the script was finalized on Thursday: attack the sheriff. Tonight was Act II. It was a sloppy investigation. It could have been "criminal negligence". Keith was on a roll, and he wasn't about to let up:
Is there a point at which some higher authority has to step in in Texas to clean the investigation up?
Parnham, of course, rushed to agree. He wouldn't have been there otherwise. He said, what to Olby, were the magic words: "possible criminal conduct". Keith's adrenalin started to flow. His mouth was dry; his legs were weak. But he managed to restrain his excitement and keep a calm, if disturbed, head under his wig.
Michael Duffy of Time was next to subject himself to Olbermann's withering interrogation. "It was amateur hour", he opined, and they chatted about the PR failures involved. KO did not ask Duffy about any of his tinfoil theories. He did not ask Duffy about how bad the investigation was, and how we need someone higher up to do it all over again. Is that because Duffy would have given Keith's fevered fantasies the horse laugh? That would explain why Olby wouldn't even broach the subject with him.
KO did cite an article by Peggy Noonan. Hmm, when was the last time he did that? The 11th of Never, perhaps? But tonight Noonan rated attention in Spin Central because she wrote an article--all together now--critical of the administration.
The #4 slot brought us another update on The Great Leak Case. Libby wants secret documents. That's "breathtaking", said Olby in reading and displaying on-screen two lengthy quotes from Prosecutor Fitzgerald's filing. How many quotes from Libby's filings were similarly featured? Har. A reporter from the leftist Boston Globe served the usual function as an Olbermann replicant.
After a session of "oddball" that was especially grating, thanks to The Laughing Stagehand, we got crime "caught on tape". The #2 story was a deadly mudslide (via regurgitated NBC report) followed by the usual celebrity fluff. Closing the program was a report on a lottery winner, delivered by Monica Novotny. She appeared happy, now that she only has to sit next to Olby one night a week, if that.
There was Big News on Countdown Thursday night. Keith Olbermann even put it in the opening tease:
The Vice-Presidential announcement that he has the right to declassify secret stuff!
It's another victory for Olbermann Watch! No sooner did we ridicule KO for glossing over this important piece of news, than Keith suddenly makes it a headine 24 hours later. But Olby had more important fish to fry in Thursday's #1 story, namely:
...the vast holes in Vice-President Dick Cheney's explanation of how he accidentally shot a man last Saturday.
This ought to be interesting, but instead of telling us what all those "vast holes" were, it was off to bash the Sheriff and his investigation. Why all of a sudden is the Sheriff in KO's sights? Remember that yesterday Olbermann Watch reprinted the sheriff's quote that he decided when he would interview the Veep. So Olby can no longer pretend like the time was set by Dick Cheney. Olbermann Watch scores another success. What's a sports guy to do? Shift the gunsights! The new target: Sheriff Salinas!
Thomas DeFrank came in to speculate about friction between the President and the Veep. Neither Mr DeFrank nor Keith documented any "vast holes" in Cheney's explanation, but they both seemed to agree that it raises questions about "who's running the store".
Then it was back to bashing the Sheriff again, as well as witness Armstrong. According to Keith, she didn't see everything. Cover-up! What's more, she said they had Dr Pepper at lunch, but Cheney said he had a beer. Liar! Creepy Liar! Olby cited a New York Times report that a deputy had been sent to the ranch that night but did not stay. Keith made no mention of the more detailed article in the Washington Post explaining that the deputy went there to escort the ambulance, but it had already left. Neither did he say just what those "vast holes" in Cheney's description of the shooting were.
For a legal opinion, Keith brought in attorney Stanley Brand, longtime Democrat partisan (a fact unmentioned by KO). Brand's purpose was to rip the sheriff's investigation and to make insinuations. Even Presidents should be investigated the same way as "normal people". It's so easy for witnesses to "compare notes" and fabricate a story. Then it was off to the races with "secretive to the max", Katrina, and the like. Neither Brand nor Olbermann detailed any of the "vast holes" in Cheney's explanation.
In the #4 slot, Olby again did a rehash of where Cheney gives his interviews, and then lied, claiming that in the Fox interview "follow-up questions seemed to be almost nonexistent". All of this was preparation to KO getting around--24 hours late--to Cheney's authority to declassify (illustrated with a clip from the interview that included one of the nonexistent follow-up questions). Richard Wolffe had to set Keith straight (for the umpteenth time): No, Cheney's declassification power does not affect the Libby case.
In another triumph for Olbermann Watch, Keith finally read a verbatim, undoctored version of what Fitzgerald wrote in that letter about Libby and leaks. For the first time his audience was informed that the authority Libby had from his superiors was about the leak of a single document: the National Intelligence Estimate. And it only took us a week of hectoring Olby to get him to report it truthfully. (As in all other examples in tonight's Hour of Spin, there was no admission or acknowledgement by KO of his earlier falsehoods.) By the way, Mr Wolffe did not delineate any of the "vast holes" in Mr Cheney's report of the shooting.
After "oddball", we're at #3: Jack Abramoff. This is one of the top five stories of the day? Only on Countdown. You see, Abramoff arranged a meeting with some Malaysians by contacting Karl Rove. And 31 Senate Democrats want Attorney General Gonzales off the investigation. David Shuster, who we know lied about that Fitzgerald letter, talked about all the people Abramoff "might know" in the White House. Neither Shuster nor Keith specified what those "vast holes" in Cheney's explanation of the shooting might be.
It's the #2 slot, and why is Olby talking about a 96-year-old murder case? Oh we get it, another of Keith's pretentiously obscure historical allegories. The segment was really a regurgitated network tape about the Entwhistle case. Then celebrity news, and a wisecrack implying that Cheney witness Armstrong is a liar. Finally, a dog missing from the dog show. The owners were Olby's guests. Much to our surprise, neither they nor Keith Olbermann explained just what were those "vast holes" in Cheney's account of the shooting.
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