MSNBC Fires Keith Olbermann

Back in early November I wrote about the fear that MSNBC might take a hard lurch to the right if Comcast's take over of NBC was approved and former Bush fundraiser Steve Burke (pictured at left) was placed at the helm of MSNBC. Sadly, such fears were apparently justified as evidenced by Keith Olbermann's departure from MSNBC which Olbermann announced last night. As I indicated in November, the boyfriend and I have been faithful in watching MSMBC, but if the management wants to kill the cutting edge and much needed investigative approach of Olbermann and Maddow - who may be next in Burke's cross hairs - then our viewing habits will change and MSNBC can kiss out loyalty goodbye. John Aravosis at America Blog is unhappy as well and here our some highlights (make sure you sign the petition backing Olbermann):
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Keith says he was told "this is going to be the last edition of your show." Here's the rather curt statement from MSNBC.
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Wow. Not a smart move by MSNBC. More than a few folks on Twitter, and elsewhere, are noting the interesting coincidence of Comcast being given approval to take over NBC just three days ago. Rather interesting timing. It's also interesting that the Republicans take over the House and suddenly Keith is gone - perhaps MSNBC has decided it wants more conservatives, or at least to lose its fiercest liberals.
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If I were CNN, I'd hire him fast. This is the kind of energy and intellect CNN needs in its evening shows (not that it doesn't have some good talent). But Olbermann knows TV. And he's no Glenn Beck, but at the same time is a perfect counterpoint to the Becks of the world.

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Again, it looks like my days of tuning into MSNBC all evening is a thing of the past. I will tune in for Rachel, but beyond that my comment to MSNBC is go f*ck yourself.

Is Pending Take Over of MSNBC By Bush Donor Behind Olbermann Suspension?

Personally, I am both disheartened and livid over MSNBC's suspension/firing of Keith Olbermann for what in the grand scheme of things are totally insignificant political donations - especially when compared to Rupert Murdoch's $1 million donation to the GOP. Yes, I will continue to watch Rachel Maddow's show, but the rest of the MSNBC lineup can kiss my ass goodbye. My displeasure is all the stronger inasmuch as it now seems that there may be some skulduggery going on. While it is true that final approval of Comcast's take over of MSNBC is still pending, it seems all too possible that the targeted MSNBC might be trying to please its future masters in advance by whacking one of the best journalists around in my opinion simply because he criticizes the political bedfellows of Comcast. If I were Rachel Maddow, I'd be sweating bullets waiting for the next shoe to drop.
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It is increasingly frightening to me that so much of the MSN seems to be more and more an extension of the conservative political machine. Rather than report facts or - heavens forbid - challenge GOP assertions, the anchors just parrot GOP talking points. Case in point: Diane Sawyer's interview with John Boenher. I thought I'd vomit. It might just as well have been a GOP paid commercial. If Steve Burke (oictured above), a former Bush donor, is going to be at the helm of MSNBC, I suspect we can soon write MSNBC off as a serious news source. Here are highlights from Think Progress:
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We have been notified that Comcast has not yet officially taken over MSNBC/NBC Universal. . . . . once Comcast gains final approval from federal regulators to move forward, Comcast COO Steve Burke, a Bush fundraiser, will be placed at the helm of MSNBC and other NBC companies.
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As many bloggers have noted, conservative MSNBC host Joe Scarborough has donated to Republican candidates for Congress while promoting the same candidate on air, but has never been disciplined. Moreover, Gawker notes that MSNBC has been exempt from the formal NBC ethics rules for years. It is still a mystery why MSNBC selectively applied NBC’s ethics rules to Olbermann.
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Comcast’s latest regulatory battle has been to oppose Net Neutrality — a rule allowing a free and open Internet — because the company would prefer to have customers pay for preferred online content.
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Olbermann has been a strong voice in favor of a free and open Internet. Republicans, on the other hand, have supported the telecommunication industry’s push to radically change the Internet so corporate content producers have the upper hand over start-ups like blogs, independent media, small businesses, etc. As Reuters has reported, the incoming Republican Congress has signaled that it will vigorously side with companies like Comcast against an open Internet.
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Frankly, I don't believe that this action against Olbermann is a coincidence. Also, if we lose a free and open Internet in this country, it will be one more step towards a very scary America where the supposed principles of the nation are increasingly trashed and ignored by the far right and big business.

MSNBC Presses Obama on Campaign Promises

The New York Times has a story on the way that some of the MSNBC news show hosts are calling out President Obama on the disconnect between his campaign rhetoric and his actions now that he's in office. I believe that many people - be they liberals, independents or moderates - are increasingly discussed that instead of being a LEADER, Obama is being a follower and seeking to force Congress to take a leadership role instead. Over dinner last night, in fact, we got on this topic and one of our friends noted that Obama has utterly failed to lead in the manner of FDR, Truman, Lincoln and other presidents who LEAD Congress to enact change rather than sit on their hands or give meaningless nice sounding speeches followed by no action. Personally, I am disgusted with Obama's failure to deliver on campaign promises and I know more and more people who say they will either vote against him in 2012 or stay home - unless the GOP candidate was some type of lunatic like Sarah Palin. Here are some story highlights:

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If President Obama happened to glance at “The Rachel Maddow Show” last Monday, he might have winced. Ms. Maddow pretended to celebrate the passage of a health care overhaul bill in the House, calling it “potentially a huge generational win for the Democratic Party” — but then halted the triumphant music and called it an “electoral defeat.” The Stupak amendment, she said, was “the biggest restriction on abortion rights in a generation.” Then she wondered aloud about the consequences for Democrats “if they don’t get women or anybody who’s pro-choice to ever vote for them again.” She returned to the subject the next four evenings in a row.
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The spectacle of Democrats sniping at one another is not new, but having a TV home for it is. MSNBC — sometimes critically called the “home team” for supporters of Mr. Obama — has even hit upon the theme with a promotional tagline, “pushing back on the president,” in commercials for “Hardball,” Chris Matthews’s political hour.
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“Our job is not to echo the president’s talking points,” said Phil Griffin, the president of MSNBC. Our job is to hold whoever’s in power’s feet to the fire.” . . . But is it good business? MSNBC is projected to take in $365 million in revenue this year, roughly the same amount as last year, when the presidential election bolstered its bottom line. Three years ago, before making a left turn, it had revenue of about $270 million a year.
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It is certainly reaching the White House. Anita Dunn, the departing White House communications director, calls Mr. Olbermann and Ms. Maddow “progressive but not partisan,” and in doing so, distinguishes them from Fox News, which she considers a political opponent. The MSNBC hosts, she said in an e-mail message last month, “often take issues with the administration’s positions or tactics and are never shy about letting their viewers know when they disagree.”
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Ms. Maddow said that apart from an off-the-record meeting between Mr. Obama and commentators that she attended last month, she has heard little from the White House. Mr. Griffin said, “We heard a whole lot more from the Bush White House.” . . . Sitting down to a midnight dinner in the East Village after her program on a recent Thursday, Ms. Maddow had shed her suit for a T-shirt. Four minutes in, a fan asked for an autograph. “You’re doing great work,” he said while she signed her name.
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MSNBC’s political tilt — and Ms. Maddow’s ascension to one of the most influential positions in progressive America — are still starkly new phenomena. A Rhodes scholar with liberal radio roots, Ms. Maddow started to host MSNBC’s 9 p.m. hour on the eve of last year’s presidential election, at a time when MSNBC was wrestling with its political identity. New viewers materialized overnight, peaking at nearly two million a night in October 2008. Without an election to drive viewership, her program averaged 880,000 viewers last month.
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Topics often tackled on Ms. Maddow’s program include the relationship between the United States military and politics (something she is writing a book about) and the repeal of the “Don’t ask, don’t tell” policy toward gays in the military. Two gay members of the military, Dan Choi and Victor Fehrenbach, approached Ms. Maddow’s producers about coming out on her show, in March and May respectively. Introducing Mr. Fehrenbach, Ms. Maddow intoned that he was about to be fired “in the shadow of these political promises left unfulfilled.”
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I think Rachel (and Keith too) are wonderful. I am so over news anchors and alleged commentators merely parroting the administrations talking points without ever asking if the statements are true or consistent with past promises. And Rachel is no easier on the far right. I particularly love it when she finds former video footage of some GOP demagogue making statements utterly the opposite of their current rant. Hypocrites need to be exposed for the liars that they are and MSNBC is doing a great service to the country. For readers who have not watched the network's evening shows, you need to do so.

Keith Olbermann's Special Comment on Prop 8

I have been a huge fan of Keith Olbermann for some time now and tonight he gave one of his special comments that lambasted the Christianists/Mormons/Catholic hierarchy for their hate driven support of Proposition 8. Olbermann is right that their perverted form of religion - which allegedly is based on love - in practice is about anything but love. Hate, intolerance, meanness, self-congratulatory self-righteousness are what dominate their unloving religious beliefs. In practice these haters care nothing about the LGBT lives they harm or destroy nor do they care about the straight spouses who are harmed when LGBT individuals enter into marriages that are doomed to fail because of the unchangeable nature of one's sexual orientation. Having been married for 24 years while I was in deep denial about my own sexual orientation, a portion of his special comment truly hit home:

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"And uncountable in our history are the number of men and women, forced by society into marrying the opposite sex, in sham marriages, or marriages of convenience, or just marriages of not knowing -- centuries of men and women who have lived their lives in shame and unhappiness, and who have, through a lie to themselves or others, broken countless other lives, of spouses and children... All because we said a man couldn't marry another man, or a woman couldn't marry another woman. The sanctity of marriage. How many marriages like that have there been and how on earth do they increase the "sanctity" of marriage rather than render the term, meaningless?"

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The more I see of the Christianist version of Christianity, the more I see it as an evil and clear and present danger to democracy in the USA and the survival of our constitutional system. Watch Olbermann's special comment:

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Calling Out Sarah Palin, a Cretin and Liar

Even a casual reader of this blog would quickly figure out that I REALLY do not like Sarah Palin and view her as a frightening menace. The fact that the Republican Party I once belonged to could nominate such a cretin for Vice President is a testament to how low the Party has fallen and why so many moderates have left the Party like rats fleeing a sinking ship. To be a Republican today, it is nearly a prerequisite that one have a lobotomy first. What I find perhaps the most disquieting about Palin is that she - very much like the Chimperator - is utterly oblivious to her own limitations. Nothing is more dangerous than an over confident stupid person because there is no telling what lunacy they may undertake. Oh, wait. There is one thing worse: an overly confident stupid person who is a pathological liar like Sarah Palin. Keith Olbermann - who I like particularly because he will call out both liars and fools - has a special comment that looks at the Palin menace and hypocrisy. Here are some highlights:

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In the self-pronounced area of expertise of the Governor of Alaska—energy—the real experts of both parties are at a loss to figure out any way, even'drill, baby, drill', that might lower gas prices before 2018. We are at war in two countries and a lame duck President with no reason to check his own imbalance still has dreams of one more.

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Yet, the Governor of Alaska wants to talk about somebody Barack Obama doesn't know very well, and what this somebody Barack Obama doesn't know very well, did, during the year Obama was eight and the Governor of Alaska was in pre-Kindergarten. And she wants to talk about Reverend Jeremiah Wright. And she doesn't object to being introduced with a reference to Barack Obama's middle name. Well, this is my suggestion.

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We, America, also need to forgive poor Sarah Palin of Wasilla, Alaska. They are both in situations that are beyond their ability to cope. They are both stuck in a crucible caused by forces they cannot comprehend. They are both unable to understand what they are doing. After stumbling through a clumsier version of it at Englewood, Colorado, the Governor of Alaska said Saturday at Carson, California: "Our opponent is someone who sees America as imperfect enough to pal around with terrorists who targeted their own country.”

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Governor, Conservative groups have thus far spent ten million dollars this year trying to make something, anything, out of the brief interaction on a charity board between Sen. Obama, and a rehabilitated former domestic radical from the '60s and not even Conservatives have been stupid enough to buy the snake oil, that this was either a close relationship or a nefarious one.

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But of course, you know better, Governor. You're smarter than the rest of us. A reporter asks you a horrible gotcha question like'which newspapers do you read' and it takes you four days to come up with an answer, and somehow it's the reporter's fault. The reporter asks you to name one Supreme Court ruling with which you disagree other than Roe vs. Wade and even though you'd commented on just such a case from Alaska no less not three months ago your eyes turn into a big neon sign reading "Vacancy” and you insist it's because that evil media asked the wrong question.

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So you're the genius Governor, and it's your supporters and the undecided voters who are the dopes who are now going to believe the same mickey-mouse crap that Sen. Clinton couldn't get to stick, and Sean Hannity couldn't get to stick, just because it's you adding that word "terrorist” and that phrase "palling around” and dropping the "g” in pal-ling.

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And of course, Governor, those same dopes, and we media morons, we are not smart enough to ask about that pesky Alaskan Independence Party, and why you recorded a speech for its convention last March, and why your husband remained a registered member of it until 2002, even though it was founded by a man named Joe Vogler who wanted Alaska to secede from the United States. The way the South seceded, precipitating the Civil War. The same Joe Vogler who once said: "The fires of hell are frozen glaciers compared to my hatred for the American government, and I won't be buried under their damn flag.”

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Governor, them's strong words, hah? Did he wink as he said 'em? You betcha! So, where does Joe Vogler rank on the scales of "terrorists who would target their own country?" Your opponent's guy Ayers wound up on a volunteer anti-poverty committee in Chicago. But your guy Vogler wound up founding a group that wanted to rip one of the stars off the American flag! Well, ok, Governor, Vogler's more your husband's guy. So it's your husband who's been "palling around with terrorists who would target their own country.” But I'm assuming you've been "palling around” with your husband.

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Governor? Bill Ayres? Your hubby was in this secessionist hate group for which you recorded a video. Governor? Jeremiah Wright? That pastor you credit with helping you become Governor, is either a con man or a psycho who believes he can tell which woman in the village is the witch, and which woman is the governor. And Governor, there's also "The U.S. Council On World Freedom.” You should ask Sen. McCain about that outfit and why he had to scat away from it 22 years ago.

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Because if you think the terrorism con, and the racism sting are going to do anything but bury you and Sen, McCain, you need to pick up one of those how-many-ever newspapers you read and check the headlines to find out what people are really worried about right now. Otherwise, when you said "the heels are on, the gloves are off,” you got as close to telling the truth as you've ever gotten, and without really knowing it.

The Clinton Implosion

It's been interesting reading the various reactions to Hillary, a/k/a Akasha's, assassination comment. None have been positive, but sadly most do not think she was trying to do what Pam Spaulding is calling blowing a dog whistle, nor do they for the most part say what needs to be said: that Hillary needs to get out NOW and that she given unqualified categorical proof that she is unfit for office - in fact, any office in my view.

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I would add that while Pam Spaulding doesn't think that Akasha is signalling all nutcase racists with the hope that someone will take Obama out, I'm sorry to say that I DO think that's Akasha hope - whether conscious or subconscious. She is so utterly obsessed with the mindset that the presidency is hers, that no rules of any kind apply at this point. In my opinion, the Clintons are NOT nice people. Actually, they have never been nice people behind the phony veneer they put on. It's about them and only them and they will resort to anything that aids in their ruthless quest for power. As the saying goes, power corrupts and these two individuals are thoroughly corrupt. Keith Olbermann in his special comment last night summed it all up correctly. Here are highlights (the full special comment can be seen below):

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She actually said those words. **Those** words, Senator? You actually invoked the nightmare of political assassination. You actually invoked the spectre of an inspirational leader, at the seeming moment of triumph, for himself and a battered nation yearning to breathe free, silenced forever. You actually used the word "assassination" in the middle of a campaign with a loud undertone of racial hatred -- and **gender** hatred -- and **political** hatred.

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The politics of this nation is steeped enough in blood, Senator Clinton, you cannot and must not invoke that imagery! Anywhere! At any time! And to not appreciate, immediately -- to **still** not appreciate tonight -- just **what** you have done... is to reveal an incomprehension of the America you seek to lead. This, Senator, is too much. Because a senator -- a politician -- a **person** -- who can let hang in mid-air the prospect that she might just be sticking around in part, just in case the other guy gets shot -- has no business being, and no capacity **to** be, the President of the United States.

Truth Wins Out - GLAAD Documentary Interview

I had my interview with Wayne Besen yesterday which will be used in one or more documentaries being done for Truth Wins Out (http://www.truthwinsout.org/) and GLAAD (http://www.glaad.org/) that will be used to expose the fraud of the ex-gay cure programs. The interview focused on the events leading up to the story about national ex-gay Michael Johnston that showed he was certainly not cured and had been exposing unknowing victims to HIV.

We also talked about the unbelievable fact that the American Family Association ("AFA") is trying to rehabilitate Johnston and is marketing his books and videos which purported that he was "cured of homosexuality by accepting Jesus." I have always found AFA to be among the most dishonest of the anti-gay Christianist organizations, but HOW they can market Michael Johnston's materials when they know his story was an outright lie is mind boggling. AFA is taking hypocrisy to a whole new level and showing once again that all they truly care about is money and using the "cure myth" for political purposes. Rev. Wildmon deserves a "Worse Person in the World" award from Keith Olbermann for this callous deception.