MSNBC's Keith Olbermann on Wednesday night used his Countdown show to deliver a vitriolic personal attack on Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, “a reality check of Donald Rumsfeld's incendiary speech, a special comment on his attack on your right to disagree.” Olbermann concluded his program with a six-minute diatribe against Rumsfeld: “The man who sees absolutes, where all other men see nuances and shades of meaning, is either a prophet, or a quack. Donald H. Rumsfeld is not a prophet.” Olbermann equated the Bush administration with “the English government of Neville Chamberlain” which "knew that its staunchest critics needed to be marginalized and isolated.” The MSNBC star charged, “The confusion is about whether this Secretary of Defense, and this administration, are in fact now accomplishing what they claim the terrorists seek: The destruction of our freedoms, the very ones for which the same veterans Mr. Rumsfeld addressed yesterday in Salt Lake City, so valiantly fought.” The U.S., Olbermann asserted before concluding with Edward R. Murrow's "we must not confuse dissent with disloyalty," now “faces a new type of fascism.”
Olbermann opened his hour by claiming that during a Tuesday speech before the American Legion convention, Rumsfeld “compared critics of the current war in Iraq to those who tried to appease Adolf Hitler and the Nazis before World War II.” In fact, Rumsfeld simply worried about how not all realize how “we face similar challenges in efforts to confront the rising threat of a new type of fascism” from the Islamic world. Olbermann brought aboard DNC Chairman Howard Dean, proposing to him: “Is it, do you know, technically possible to impeach a Secretary of Defense and have we gotten to that stage after these remarks?” (Transcript follows. I realize Mark Finkelstein beat me on some of Olbermann's rant, but this post has additional quotes and video)
Video clip (3:20): Real (5.6 MB), Windows Media (6.5 MB), plus MP3 audio (1.2 MB)
[UPDATE 08-31 2:30 by Matthew Sheffield. Allahpundit correctly calls Olbermann's schtick for what it is: "an instant classic of nutroots porn." By his count, there are seven threads on Democratic Underground worshipping the MSNBC anchor.
Allah's more right than he knows. I counted four at DailyKos, including one from the boss. Here's the first comment on that thread:
It was breathtaking to watch. Luckily, a Kossack had mentioned earlier today that he'd be doing some commentary on Rumsfeld, so I made sure I was home to watch it.
Wow. What an amazing commentary. Keith is about the only one out there willing to say the unfettered truth so boldly. I played a recording of it for my friend over the phone, and he was in awe of it too.Last month, I marveled at Olbermann's incompetence as a broadcaster. Wednesday's rant proved he's also a poor marketer. Apparently, it is the official Olbermann strategy to reach out to leftist bloggers in the hopes that he'll get enough word of mouth so that more people will be willing to watch him than Headline News, i.e. above last-place in the ratings. (Details here.)
Trouble is, it ain't working. Olbermann's numbers have remained stagnant. They'll remain that way because not only is there a small number of people with acute Bush Derangement Syndrome, those poor souls are split up between Bill Maher, Jon Stewart, and the local mental institution. There simply aren't enough people to pull Olbermann out of the ratings basement.
But hey, at least he's good for a few unintentional laughs.
UPDATE 11:46 by Matthew Sheffield. The Kos Kiddies have noticed this posting and have launched a furious effort to "prevent the swiftboating of a journalist" by spamming MSNBC with emails in support of their self-described non-liberal idol. My favorite comment from the thread:
Hotmail is not working right now...gotta wonder...]
Wednesday night on the “Bloggerman” blog page for Keith Olbermann, MSNBC.com posted the full text of Olbermann's closing diatribe on the August 30 Countdown, his first blog posting since June 7:
The man who sees absolutes, where all other men see nuances and shades of meaning, is either a prophet, or a quack.
Donald H. Rumsfeld is not a prophet.
Mr. Rumsfeld’s remarkable speech to the American Legion yesterday demands the deep analysis -- and the sober contemplation -- of every American.
For it did not merely serve to impugn the morality or intelligence -- indeed, the loyalty -- of the majority of Americans who oppose the transient occupants of the highest offices in the land. Worse, still, it credits those same transient occupants -- our employees -- with a total omniscience; a total omniscience which neither common sense, nor this administration’s track record at home or abroad, suggests they deserve.
Dissent and disagreement with government is the life’s blood of human freedom; and not merely because it is the first roadblock against the kind of tyranny the men Mr. Rumsfeld likes to think of as “his” troops still fight, this very evening, in Iraq.
It is also essential. Because just every once in awhile it is right and the power to which it speaks, is wrong.
In a small irony, however, Mr. Rumsfeld’s speechwriter was adroit in invoking the memory of the appeasement of the Nazis. For in their time, there was another government faced with true peril -- with a growing evil -- powerful and remorseless.
That government, like Mr. Rumsfeld’s, had a monopoly on all the facts. It, too, had the “secret information.” It alone had the true picture of the threat. It too dismissed and insulted its critics in terms like Mr. Rumsfeld’s -- questioning their intellect and their morality.
That government was England’s, in the 1930’s.
It knew Hitler posed no true threat to Europe, let alone England.
It knew Germany was not re-arming, in violation of all treaties and accords.
It knew that the hard evidence it received, which contradicted its own policies, its own conclusions -- its own omniscience -- needed to be dismissed.
The English government of Neville Chamberlain already knew the truth.
Most relevant of all -- it “knew” that its staunchest critics needed to be marginalized and isolated. In fact, it portrayed the foremost of them as a blood-thirsty war-monger who was, if not truly senile, at best morally or intellectually confused.
That critic’s name was Winston Churchill.
Sadly, we have no Winston Churchills evident among us this evening. We have only Donald Rumsfelds, demonizing disagreement, the way Neville Chamberlain demonized Winston Churchill.
History -- and 163 million pounds of Luftwaffe bombs over England -- have taught us that all Mr. Chamberlain had was his certainty -- and his own confusion. A confusion that suggested that the office can not only make the man, but that the office can also make the facts.
Thus, did Mr. Rumsfeld make an apt historical analogy.
Excepting the fact, that he has the battery plugged in backwards.
His government, absolute -- and exclusive -- in its knowledge, is not the modern version of the one which stood up to the Nazis.
It is the modern version of the government of Neville Chamberlain.
But back to today’s Omniscient ones.
That, about which Mr. Rumsfeld is confused is simply this: This is a Democracy. Still. Sometimes just barely.
And, as such, all voices count -- not just his.
[Video clip linked above begins here:]
Had he or his President perhaps proven any of their prior claims of omniscience -- about Osama Bin Laden’s plans five years ago, about Saddam Hussein’s weapons four years ago, about Hurricane Katrina’s impact one year ago -- we all might be able to swallow hard, and accept their “omniscience” as a bearable, even useful recipe, of fact, plus ego.
But, to date, this government has proved little besides its own arrogance, and its own hubris.
Mr. Rumsfeld is also personally confused, morally or intellectually, about his own standing in this matter. From Iraq to Katrina, to the entire “Fog of Fear” which continues to envelop this nation, he, Mr. Bush, Mr. Cheney, and their cronies have -- inadvertently or intentionally -- profited and benefited, both personally, and politically.
And yet he can stand up, in public, and question the morality and the intellect of those of us who dare ask just for the receipt for the Emperor’s New Clothes?
In what country was Mr. Rumsfeld raised? As a child, of whose heroism did he read? On what side of the battle for freedom did he dream one day to fight? With what country has he confused the United States of America?
The confusion we -- as its citizens— must now address, is stark and forbidding.
But variations of it have faced our forefathers, when men like Nixon and McCarthy and Curtis LeMay have darkened our skies and obscured our flag. Note -- with hope in your heart -- that those earlier Americans always found their way to the light, and we can, too.
The confusion is about whether this Secretary of Defense, and this administration, are in fact now accomplishing what they claim the terrorists seek: The destruction of our freedoms, the very ones for which the same veterans Mr. Rumsfeld addressed yesterday in Salt Lake City, so valiantly fought.
And about Mr. Rumsfeld’s other main assertion, that this country faces a “new type of fascism.”
As he was correct to remind us how a government that knew everything could get everything wrong, so too was he right when he said that -- though probably not in the way he thought he meant it.
This country faces a new type of fascism -- indeed.
Although I presumptuously use his sign-off each night, in feeble tribute, I have utterly no claim to the words of the exemplary journalist Edward R. Murrow.
But never in the trial of a thousand years of writing could I come close to matching how he phrased a warning to an earlier generation of us, at a time when other politicians thought they (and they alone) knew everything, and branded those who disagreed: “confused” or “immoral.”
Thus, forgive me, for reading Murrow, in full:
“We must not confuse dissent with disloyalty,” he said, in 1954. “We must remember always that accusation is not proof, and that conviction depends upon evidence and due process of law.
“We will not walk in fear, one of another. We will not be driven by fear into an age of unreason, if we dig deep in our history and our doctrine, and remember that we are not descended from fearful men, not from men who feared to write, to speak, to associate, and to defend causes that were for the moment unpopular.”And so good night, and good luck.
