Leave to a brilliant mind like Keith Olbermann, who finally decided to show his face on live TV after Nov. 3's Democratic defeat, to throw a temper tantrum about the public display of opposition to Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi's that occurred on the west lawn of the U.S. Capitol on Nov.5.
After Olbermann and Washington Post columnist Eugene Robinson all but declared Rep. Michele Bachmann, R-Minn., organizer of the "House Call" event, an enemy of the state, they predictably came to the conclusion the event was racist. However to overcome that hurdle, Olbermann suggested organizers "pay" minorities to show up to make the cause look more diverse.
"On an associated point with this, how do the organizers of this not realize, ‘You know what, we had better get somehow, even if we have to pay them to show up, some black faces, some brown faces, some Asian people or somebody in this crowd other than the crowd we were seeing?'" Olbermann said. "Every piece of videotape I looked at looks exactly the same. This is otherwise going to look like a pro-Apartheid rally in South Africa 35 or 40 years ago."
Robinson concurred and took it even further by suggesting not just today's event, but the entire Republican Party was "hostile to minorities."
"Well, now this is going to sound tendentious, Keith," Robinson said. "But I went to the Republican National Convention last year and you did not see many minorities there. And look, this is a party that has been more and more hostile to minorities, to Latinos, to African-Americans - it's certainly perceived that way. And this didn't help that image at all. That seems to be the hand they've decided to play."
"It's terrifying," Olbermann replied.
Olbermann's "terrifying" declaration was unclear if it was in reference to Robinson's breakdown or the actual Republican Party itself.
