Alarming News: I like Morgan Freeberg. A lot.
American Digest: And I like this from "The Blog That Nobody Reads", because it is -- mostly -- about me. What can I say? I'm on an ego trip today. It won't last.
Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler: We were following a trackback and thinking "hmmm... this is a bloody excellent post!", and then we realized that it was just part III of, well, three...Damn. I wish I'd written those.
Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler: ...I just remembered that I found a new blog a short while ago, House of Eratosthenes, that I really like. I like his common sense approach and his curiosity when it comes to why people believe what they believe rather than just what they believe.
Brutally Honest: Morgan Freeberg is brilliant.
Dr. Melissa Clouthier: Morgan Freeberg at House of Eratosthenes (pftthats a mouthful) honors big boned women in skimpy clothing. The picture there is priceless--keep scrolling down.
Exile in Portales: Via Gerard: Morgan Freeberg, a guy with a lot to say. And he speaks The Truth...and it's fascinating stuff. Worth a read, or three. Or six.
Just Muttering: Two nice pieces at House of Eratosthenes, one about a perhaps unintended effect of the Enron mess, and one on the Gore-y environ-movie.
Mein Blogovault: Make "the Blog that No One Reads" one of your daily reads.
The Virginian: I know this post will offend some people, but the author makes some good points.
Poetic Justice: Cletus! Ah gots a laiv one fer yew...
Can I be blamed for it — Keith Olbermann making a colossal ass out of himself one more time hardly seems to me to be an occasion for inspection anymore. And so my observations about Olby were buried in the comments section.
(Buck thought it difficult to see any value, whatsoever, in Mr. Olbermann and his form of infotainment; I was volunteering to our friend in New Mexico that perhaps Olbermann is useful as a diagnostic warning light, tattling to us about three things that are going horribly wrong in our society today.)
But Gerard didn’t agree with my decision to bury this in a thread. He gets the final word. This is the nature of blogging; it is not for the timid. Whoever thinks things need or deserve more publicity, wins the argument. If you’re the original author, and you have regrets about what you said, well that’s all on you.
It’s a good thing that doesn’t apply here.
The ever-popular (with me and discerning readers across the web, Morgan Freeberg knocks off world’s worst anchorclone, the logorrhea-infected and pale imitation of Bill O’Reilly, Keith Olbermann in a shoot from the hip comment at his site. A masterful bit of jazz. His three point program for Olbermann sinking:
One, we got a bunch of people walking around free as you & me, who think the word “courage” applies to some washed-up sportscaster who regularly babbles his five-minute clips of foolishness, in a sovereign state whose government guarantees nothing bad will ever happen to him because of it. No harm can come to him instigated by the government, and with very few exceptions, said government will be obligated to prevent any harm coming to him when instigated from elsewhere. I struggle to think of a safer thing anybody can do, anywhere, and still be called “courageous” for doing it.
Two, is his cookie cutter approach. He’s given props for, if one allows for synonyms and euphemisms, something that could be fairly encapsulated by the word “originality.” Mr. Bill from Saturday Night Live, as I recall from memory, was far more original than Keith Olbermann. He could be dragged off by a previously-thought-instinct flying dinosaur at nine o’clock tonight, and with a modestly artistic touch to the recycling of his old clips at regular intervals thereafter, nobody would ever notice.
Three — partisanship. Naked partisanship. Waitaminnit … purely naked partisanship wouldn’t be such a big problem, because it wouldn’t involve such staggering cognitive dissonance. This is partisanship dressed in a tastelessly cut speedo. A “Bizzaro-Olbermann” could be manufactured that would hurl exactly the same brand of bile at well-known democrats, using exactly the same voice inflections. Keith’s most devoted fans would sneer and snark away at Bizzaro … you know it … and you also know, they’d never admit it, either in prospect or in retrospect.
See, I don’t think of Olbermann as the disease, I think of him as the symptom. None of the three of these things would be going on, in a healthy society. At least, they wouldn’t be so widespread.
The fans are to blame. Olbermann is to be credited with educating us how many people are bouncing around in this thing we call “life,” lacking even basic skills to discern fact from act, truth from fiction.
And so, when a bridge collapses due to a design flaw that was implemented forty years ago, it’s blamed on the controversial policies of a current administration, and the blaming achieves mobility and currency.
We’ve become a little too safe and comfortable. In a culture where the survival of the individual depends on cognitive wherewithal, we’d be a little bit less reckless.
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Olbermann is still an asshat, with no redeeming value whatsoever, symptomatic of larger things or not. As is, say, Janene Garofolo. Or any other person who thinks the public display of BDS is somehow relevant or meaningful. IM(not so)HO.
- Buck | 01/17/2008 @ 14:34So my “symptom of a deep societal problem” argument doesn’t convince you that Olbermann has value to contribute, eh?
Well…you know, I’m pretty sure if you have him stand on your newspaper or important assembly instructions on a windy day, he’ll keep them from flying off…he’s usually wearing a necktie, so he might come in handy if you run out of TP…
…at that point, we’re kind of getting to the bottom of the barrel.
- mkfreeberg | 01/17/2008 @ 14:56…at that point, we’re kind of getting to the bottom of the barrel.
Which is precisely where that asshat lives. His physical address is doubtlessly something else but his URL is “bottom of the barrel.” Dot Net…or maybe Dot TeeVee.
I could make another analogy, but I respect Godwin’s Law.
- Buck | 01/17/2008 @ 21:55