Keith Olbermann Suspended for Embarrassing His Boss

So, MS-NBC decided that Keith Olbermann’s donation to a few Democratic candidates was enough to earn him an indefinite suspension, huh? It’s good to know that the network’s rather generous ethical guidelines do have some limits.

I have no intention on joining the growing chorus of conservatives who have taken up their various Implements of Justice with which they hope to strike a noble blow for free speech. The case seems simple enough to me. MS-NBC has a rule, Olbermann broke it, the hammer fell. End of story. Put me on the side of the woman Olbermann once scurrilously called “a mashed-up bat of meat with lipstick” without running afoul of his employers.

Olby’s defenders say it’s wrong to punish opinion journalists for supporting candidates and causes.

But:

1) MSNBC has always promoted and allowed Olbermann to preen as an award-winning journalist and broadcaster of Edward R. Murrow’s caliber — above the fray and superior to the rest of us in the print/broadcast media who are open and honest about our political and ideological biases.

2) Whatever NBC’s guidelines may be, it was the basic journalistic failure of the Murrow wanna-be to disclose the donation on the night he hosted one of his cash recipients that seals his fate and undermines whatever iota of credibility his station has left.

Good night and good riddance.

On the other hand, I an certainly glad that the noxious pustule of ignorance will have less influence on the body politic than he did before. With him off the air, the collective IQ of the nation will rise 20 points in a week; the IQ of the left far more and far sooner. Oh, sure, there’ll be some weeping and gnashing of teeth, but who cares what Olbermann does in the privacy of his own home?

I’m sure that some of my friends on the left will take this opportunity to claim that Olbermann’s long-needed suspension means there is no leftward bias to the media. When you hear that, you may feel free to laugh and point at the village idiot who spouted such nonsense. The truth, obvious even to Ray Charles in a dark room at the bottom of a mine at midnight, is that MS-NBC is the closest thing to ProgTV as you can get without actually sporting a donkey logo and commercials that exhort watchers to pray toward FDR’s grave five times a day. If an objective journalist took a job there, they’d be dead in days from loneliness.

Here’s what really happened, or so it seems to me. Olbermann’s sitting in an indefinite Time Out because he widdles on his boss’ sense of moral superiority. See, MS-NBC was fine with Olbermann giving an hour of “in-kind” contributions to the Democratic Party every night because they could always claim he was an opinion guy hired to say whatever he thought. Their hands remained clean enough for Phil Griffin, the guy who suspended Olbermann, to pillory News Corp (parent of hated superior, Fox News) for its rather large political donation. Once Olbermann wrote those checks, though, Griffin could no longer claim his people were squeaky-clean. What’s worse, Olbermann donated to one Democrat, Raul Grijalva, the very day he had the guy on his show and didn’t bother to tell anyone about it. So not only did he embarrass his boss, but he let his boss get blindsided by it. That’s why he got benched. Olbermann may fancy himself a latter-day Murrow, but he’s still his boss’ lapdog. Consider this the leash-yank to bring him back in line.

Other Posts of Interest:

• Aren’t You Nice for Paying Keith Olbermann’s Salary?
• Shocker: MS-NBC Gives Another News Show to a Leftist
• Last Night’s Media Orgy, Starring Barack Obama at Malcolm McDowell

Tags: Keith Olbermann, Media Bias, MS-NBC

Category: Oh, THAT liberal media.