Keith Olbermann: Idiot

There's been a lot of huff and frumm (let's just assume that's an acceptable English turn of phrase) lately over the validity of the cable news channels. Fox News is a mouthpiece for the right. MSNBC is a mouthpiece for the left. CNN is a mouthpiece for Anderson Cooper's dreamy, dreamy lips. Even the White House has weighed in, trying to lock Fox News out of important interviews and other events because of the network's clear anti-Obama bias. But is the problem that a network ostensibly devoted to bringing its viewers the facts of the day has a Republican slant or that it has a slant at all? I'd say it's the latter. Sure, the mere act of editing the day's news to decide what's worthy of coverage automatically gives it a certain subjectivity, but any news network that devotes as much of its time to pure opinion programming as the cable channels do is doing a disservice to journalism. And yes, that goes equally for those on the opposite side of Fox. MSNBC's Keith Olbermann recently took a break from telling us all what a doody head Bill O'Reilly is to take a jab at CNN for being too objective. Olbermann seems to think it's not the job of a news network to inform its viewers but instead to tell them what to think about the news. "People now watch news on TV for elucidation and context and analysis," he told the Associated Press. "They have brought the facts with them, the way we used to bring TV dinners." A weird statement coming from a guy who once told Playboy magazine that Fox News is worse than Al Qaeda and the Ku Klux Klan. Apparently towing toeing nobody's line is less disdainful than towing toeing the line of the gasbags on the other side. Please take this into consideration when choosing which networks to watch. Also note the way Anderson Cooper's suits just seem to bend to the will of his aura. (Note: I am an avowed pinko commie liberal. Though I am consistently annoyed by others of my ilk.) More details here.