Keith Olbermann's return to MSNBC Tuesday night was "graced" by radical filmmaker Michael Moore, who expressed his belief that Obama is so far a hopeless capitalist tool and that NBC is a pro-Bush network by letting the former president have so much air time to sell his memoir (even as Matt Lauer tossed hardballs.) Naturally, Moore wasn't asked by Olbermann to consider the hours of free air time NBC-Universal offered Barack Obama this fall (with no Matt Lauer hardballs) in an attempt to save Democrat seats. Moore brought the sarcasm before the viciousness:
OLBERMANN: All right. Finally, later on we're going to through what's been -- what's been missed in the Bush autobiography. But you're in it. Do you want a chance to respond to what your -- what he's got you in there -- this craziness?
MOORE: Yes. Well, first of all, great to see President Bush back. You know, it's the short attention span. We missed -- we actually needed him a couple weeks ago to remind ourselves who was responsible for these two wars, who was responsible for this crash on Wall Street, who created this mess that our grandchildren will be cleaning up. Nice to see him back.
I wish that NBC itself had a little more balance and a little more -- I mean, I just -- I mean, I'm just not that I'm taking this personally, but I -- he trashes me in his book, and he makes a reference between Osama bin Laden and myself. I mean, that shows how insane and crazy these Republicans are and have gotten.
And -- you know, I mean, I made a film. This is what upset him. I made a film and I showed how he sat there for seven minutes --
OLBERMANN: Right.
MOORE: -- after he was told the nation is under attack and then he just sits there reading "My Pet Goat."
OLBERMANN: He needed to know how it turned out.
There's actually nothing funnier than watching a leftist on the Olbermann show suggesting the NBC folks need more "balance," when Olbermann hasn't had a conservative guest on for many years. MSNBC viewers might think that Bush had written that Michael Moore is just like Osama bin Laden, like a vicious negative campaign commercial. But instead, Bush mocks bin Laden for stealing Moore's talking points. The Daily Caller reported:
Bush reflects in “Decision Points” that the October surprise of his 2004 presidential campaign against Sen. John Kerry was an Oct. 29 Osama bin Laden tape “mocking my response to 9/11 in the Florida classroom” — something Moore did in one film — as well as warning Americans of another terrorist attack. “It sounded like he was plagiarizing Michael Moore,” Bush wrote of bin Laden.
There's nothing "insane or crazy" in that. Many conservative commentators made the same connection. The terrorist leader chastised Bush for leaving “50,000 of his citizens in the two towers” because he considered “a little girl’s story about a goat and its butting [to be] more important than dealing with airplanes and their butting into skyscrapers.” You would think Moore would be thrilled at the idea that they're watching his propaganda in caves in the Middle East.
Since Michael Moore never advocates for of his socialist beliefs as much as he advocates for the glorification of Michael Moore, he made the supposedly dramatic offer that NBC could balance its allegedly pro-Bush book publicity by running “Fahrenheit 911” for free, as if outdated propaganda about the paradise of Saddam Hussein's Iraq is what the country really needs in 2010.
MOORE: And other things I pointed out in the film, in terms of his connections to how this war happened and how he and Halliburton and the others were going to make money from it. I would love it actually if my plea -- if Mr. Immelt or anyone who's watching here at GE, if they would -- if they -- I will give them for free "Fahrenheit 9/11" to run on NBC --
OLBERMANN: Wow.
MOORE: -- as balance to all the publicity they have been giving President Bush this week and his answers about, you know, the worst thing that happened to him was Kanye West and all these. I hope we never forget what this man did. Parents, tonight, thousands of them sit at home, their children no longer with them because of a war that was essentially a lie. So, that's my answer to Mr. Bush.
OLBERMANN: A hell of an answer it is. Michael Moore, it's a pleasure to have you back.
MOORE: It`s nice that you're still here. Please don't leave.
OLBERMANN: Good to see you, my friend. Wish I were in the book.
Olbermann was bitter enough about his exclusion to pander to his audience, proclaiming about Bush: "He wants you to buy his book. I endorse this. Hell, we all need toilet paper."
