Keith Olbermann becomes his own worst enemy

I had taken Countdown off my DVR schedule and had restricted our access to MSNBC because I didn’t want my adolescent daughter exposed to the ridicule and contempt for women that passes for news on that channel, But I dropped into Countdown last night for a few minutes to check the coverage of the Deval Patrick beta test of Obama’s campaign and was horrified by what I saw. There was Keith Olbermann, his voice dripping with contempt for Hillary Clinton with every word.

Having isolated myself from everything but C-Span for the past couple of weeks, I had no idea it had gotten this bad. If you watched cable TV, you might very well get the impression that Clinton’s campaign is hanging on by a slender thread and every action by it makes it more likely to snap at any second. There is no stupid move she and her advisors are not capable of making and they inflict so much damage to her that *when* she finally gives up, she won’t be able to recover politically. Why doesn’t she just drop out now and spare us having to watch her being humliated, as the new media feels they must? Why does she insist on tearing the party apart by continuing to run, as Howard Fineman suggests?
The over the top hand-wringing, the contempt, the “expert” after “commentator” who tsk-tsk’d and made their grave pronouncements was reminiscent of something. I just couldn’t put my finger on it.

Then it hit me this morning.

There was a day back in 1998 when Keith Olbermann had his first show on MSNBC when he was talking to a quartet of some blonde bimbo Republican “elves”, going over the Lewinski scandal, ONE MORE TIME, when I saw the same look of disgust on Keith’s face as must have flashed across mine last night. It’s the same damn thing! He was being forced to rehash the same sordid material night after night and over time, his disdain for the scandalmongering was becoming more evident. The elves would go on about how Clinton was a disgrace to his office, he couldn’t do anything right, no one liked him, why were we being subjected to having to watch this and why didn’t he just resign for the good of he country? And Keith *hated* it. Hated having to talk about the same sordid details all of the time. Hated how we couldn’t move on to anything else. And who cared anyway? Clinton was still wildly popular.

I remember Keith resigned not long after than night. It was pretty obvious why he did it. If he was going to have a new show, he wanted to report the real news. So, he started cable hopping from sports desk to sports desk and then finally, back to MSNBC as the reincarnation of Edward R. Murrow.

Or that’s how it seemed until recently. Now, he’s doing the work of the elves himself. He’s indulging in the same over-the-top breathless coverage of Hillary Clinton that he so despised in the Lewinski years. He’s not a journalist anymore but a tabloid specialist, channeling mob violence on the Villagers’ and Big Blog Stores’ behalf. He has become his own worst enemy.

But here’s the thing. Hillary Clinton is liked by a lot of the same people who didn’t give a rat’s ass what her husband did in the Oval Office cloak room. No one cares if the Villagers are raving lunatics who are going to bay at the moon until Hillary leaves the public stage. Keith should know this. He should know that this over the top vicious coverage of everything Clinton is what drove many of us away from TV news in the first place. He makes a big deal about how reprehensible Fox “News” is but then he is copying the Fox 1998 script almost identically. It does more damage to his brand name than to hers. If she’s driven off, this whole episode will be notorious as being the worst abuse of media power that was ever imposed on a presidential campaign.

I want to know what made Keith do it. What made him sell out and start attacking a person who we all know doesn’t deserve this kind of treatment. I’ve been following her campaign and it’s not performing badly. It made some adjustments, it’s had to raise some money. But if these are the kinds of things that should doom a campaign, John McCain should have been out months ago. And no one seems to be concerned that Obama’s campaign is dropping wads of cash in states that he can’t win. That doesn’t sound efficient or smart but I guess because he has more money than God (or he *used* to) his campaign tactics are above scrutiny.

Someone from the Village should clue me in. What is it about the Clintons that drives otherwise perfectly rational people absolutely insane? Seriously, Keith, I want to know. Because I don’t see it. Is it criminal behavior? Is it something personal? Did they cut you off in traffic, waterboard you, steal your iPod? What?!

I suspect that part of the reason Keith is acting out is that David Shuster was suspended over what he said about Chelsea Clinton. Yes, that was pretty rough and I expect that the Clintons were pretty mad about it. But until you have your own daughter, Keith, you will never understand that they were not overreacting. And it certainly doesn’t give YOU any excuse for behaving like your worst enemies.

And as for Hillary, you know what to do.

BTW: I’m back to work today so posting will be light. If anyone has some tasty links, put them in the comments and I’ll do a web roundup a little later.