CBS 'Public Eye' Blog: Keith Olbermann 'Overstates'?

June 7th, 2007 11:19 AM

I know. The first thing you thought was, "well, DUH!" Of course Keith Olbermann "overstates". He is a raving lunatic, for Heaven's sake. But, it took long enough for the left leaning MSM to catch on and Public Eye is gently -- and I DO mean gently -- trying to get their truthiest of truthers back on track, apparently. After all, they don't want to hurt his widdle feelings, or nuthin'.

Public Eye's Matthew Felling starts by buttering up Olby's fragile ego with an estimate on how much "media capital" he's "earned" with his show, but soon wonders why he went to far into tin-foil hat territory with his rant that Bush was really responsible for the recent JFK Airport terror plot.

Keith Olbermann has developed a reputation – he’s earned media capital, if you will -- by raising serious questions about the political climate in America. But last night, he squandered a bit of that account in a 16-minute segment in which he attempted to make the case that the JFK terror plot was little more than a cleverly-timed political ploy by the Bush administration.

The segment went through chapter and verse of how curious the timing has been of many Bush terror alert announcements and arrests – how they frequently seem to follow, and swallow, news that isn’t friendly to the White House. There has been rampant discussion of the consistencies of these coincidences in the media over the years.

It’s a concern. But Olbermann stretched that concern to a very thin and tenuous extent last night.

Mr. Felling blogs on to explain that his truther pal, Olby, thinks the announcement of the terror plot only happened when it did so that the Democratic presidential Debate that night would be somehow overshadowed by the news.

Felling tries to warn Olby against this way-out sort of conspiracy theorizing:

Hammering away at things that aren’t there - or barely there - is a surefire way to dilute your message. Though he likes to point out this political tendency whenever possible, Keith Olbermann is beginning to make the same mistake.

Yes, Public Eye was VERY soft, indeed, on Olby with their gentle warning.

Let's face it, Keith Olberman is hardly to be taken seriously. He seems to me the male version of Cindy Sheehan, but the Daily Koz and Moveoners out there love his rants. Apparently so do the folks at Public Eye as they seem interested in "helping" him tone down to stay "credible".

But, as to his absurd conspiracy theory we must ask one question...

WHY would the Bush administration waste so much time and energy to "overshadow" a Democrat Presidential debate that is so entirely meaningless? It's too far from the election for this debate to have much real impact on anything and the Dems haven't even come close to picking a candidate at this time. Most Americans have no interest in the debates of either party as of yet.

For a conspiracy to be worth the effort, wouldn't there have to be some great pay off? What would the pay off be to disrupt this particular, practically meaningless debate? What great benefit would Bush get by this monumental effort at conspiracy?

Slim to nil is the answer to that one.

In any case, it is amusing to see Public Eye blog treating their truther pal so gently. In fact, it's a shame they give him any credibility at all.