Yesterday morning (in the wee hours as it were) I wrote a short post about Keith Olbermann’s commentary the other night, and the response of some posters at Free Republic.com (the ubiquitous “freepers) to what he had said.
In reaction to that diary, a member of our community, someone I respect a great deal though we do not always agree on issues of substance or of style, Arthur Gilroy, posted his own diary, entitled Olbermann And The Marginalization of Effective Dissent. His diary is, at present, on the recommended list. I urge you to read the piece that he wrote in its entirety. I’ll quote just a brief section of it here now, because it’s important to what I will have to say later:
Now make no mistake…I think that Mr. Olbermann is serious, attentive, and honest in his efforts. And overall, pretty near correct in his positions as well. As correct (as far as I am concerned, anyway) as he can possibly be and still manage to regularly appear in any mass media capacity on the public mediaspace. […]
[Olbermann] is just not heavy enough…and/or he is not in a “heavy” enough position. In this case, the chicken and the egg are mutually dependent. You cannot GAIN that kind of weight while stuck in a dependent, marginalized position, and you know damned well that Mr. Olbermann is not presently in the running to overthrow Baby Doll Couric or any of the other Barbie/Ken doll blathering heads and most likely never WILL be in that position. Not so long as the PermaGov runs things. The Corpserate Media simply will not ALLOW someone like Murrow to gain commanding position over a career. Not today they won’t. And the balkanization of TV…5000 stations instead of 7, innumerable networks instead of 3…makes that sort of commanding position almost impossible to attain anyway.
Having read Arthur’s diary this morning (I confess for the first time) I realized that while I agree with much of what Arthur has to say about the marginalization of dissent in our major media these days (for reasons too numerous to get into now), I felt he deserved a reply from me. Or maybe I just felt the need to express the thoughts that ran around in my brain while reading his quite perceptive analysis of the current media landscape in our country, one dominated by the voices of corporate interest, right wing hatred and bullying and shameful kowtowing to the dark power that rules in the White House (rules over us but does not govern, I might add). For better or worse, here they are:
Arthur you may be right. But big things sometimes come in small packages. As to the effect that Olbermann’s comments might make on the political climate that is tearing our nation apart, we shall see.
Myself, I alternate daily, even hourly, between optimism and pessimism. The sources of my pessimism are all too easy to chronicle.
I fear that we are being set up for another stolen election this Fall. I fear the Democratic Party will never fulfill the hopes progressives have for it. I fear another war, before or after the election, one that may start a conflagration whose dimensions we cannot predict, with consequences too terrible to imagine. I fear more terrorist attacks may come to our shores. I fear an economic depression to rival the Great Depression may be brewing. I fear the rise of a Fundamentalist Christian fascism that would eradicate the last vestiges of that dream of America of which we were taught in our youth. I fear a coming global catastrophe from our reckless and criminal use of fossil fuels to poison our air and alter our climate.
Against that, all I have to place on the other side of the scale is a little hope. Keith Olbermann, marginalized as he may be, feeds that hope. The people here at Booman Tribune and around the left side of the blogosphere feed that hope. Al Gore with his crusade against global warming feeds that hope. The increasing irrelevancy of the pundit class as more and more people look for alternative viewpoints online feeds that hope.
Arthur, even you feed that hope because I know, despite your oft expressed cynicism (well deserved as it may be) you are still here, you are still passionate, and you are still fighting for what used to be called simple human decency before the right wing turned it into a curse word.
That hope is all I have to combat my fears. Maybe it isn’t enough. Maybe its a foolish denial of reality, but its still there. For the sake of my Children, and everyone else’s children, I have to believe it isn’t an utter delusion.
Thank you Steven.
for so eloquently saying what I failed to in my comment yesterday. I am not a writer and find it difficult at times to express exactly what I was feeling. Thanks for doing it for me. I agree 100%.
My cynicism may not be as great as AG’s, then again it might. I too fear a terrible October surprise, if not a September surprise as well. I think very little of the integrity of the Media these days. However, like Steven D. and others, I view Olbermann’s commentary with a degree of hope. BushCo’s chief henchman has been called out in prime time no less; who would have thought it possible? So with my cynical shield still held high to ward off the possibility of disappointment, I will allow myself a glimmer of hope.
When hope is gone, the seeds of revolution have already been sewn. As an old guy, I do not crave revolution, but rather restoration of the political system that made us the beacon of hope for many folks for many generations.
So for this day or two anyway, kudos to Mr. Olbermann!
But we must be prepared for the bait-and-switch. The powers that be are not happy with Bush: He has delivered some things they wanted (like the destruction of civil liberties and due process of law) but has seriously mishandled foreign policy.
For example, the sowing of chaos in Iraq is a fall-back position, plan B to the plan A of controling it outright, and this plan too is showing signs of failing.
So Bush will likely be replaced. That is where the bait-and-switch comes in. Both the DLC and the paleo-cons are having thoughts of a more competent autocrat to carry out the plan of controling world oil. The War for Oil is to continue. Needless to say, that is not a progressive agenda. But it will be the easier sell to the American public.
After all, a progressive agenda means in fact, living sustainably, and THAT means (in fairly short order) giving up our cars. Which Americans are still not ready to do, and probably won’t do until after the economy has crashed outright.
Hooray for the optimists and the pesimists. Hooray for the idealists and the cynics. We need each other.
Hooray for balance.
Hooray for all the wonderful people at BT.
Most of all hooray for hope.
I read some of the diaries on here and other blogs where the commentators seem resigned to doom and gloom — sometimes even if the Democrats take over Congress in the fall — and I think to myself, “What’s the freakin’ point?” If I felt that badly about the prospects for America, I’d move to Canada or Mexico.
Nope, I have to have hope, because I can’t live with the alternative.
All of you, including Steven and AG, make me think about where the source of our hope comes from. Where I think AG is right is in his expectation of an “October” surprise – or at least some form of worse things yet to come.
So I start thinking about others in history who have had no reason to hope – and yet did. What was Mandela’s source of hope while he was in prison all those years? And he’s just one example. What I think about is:
I’m sure there’s lots more to how you sustain hope – but that’s my thinking at the moment.
with what you have.
Keith Olbermann is stuck in a medium which, for better or for worse, has its roots in entertainment rather than journalism. You can see that in the way Countdown is structured, with pieces like “Let’s Play Oddball,” “The Worst Person In The World,” the inevitable celebrity “news” roundup and even in the format of the show, which is structured in a way to make one expect that there are five stories that day worth considering.
That’s just the way it is. To attract an audience you have to make it worth their while to watch, and the American people expect to be entertained when they turn on their televisions. Even when they watch their news shows.
When I read Arthur’s diary, a couple of old phrases came to my old storyteller mind. First, “a spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down.” Or as Bill Cosby used to say, “Stay tuned for adventure and fun and before you know it you might learn something before it’s done.” If KO can slip a little bit of truth in there with the entertainment, I’ll take it.
And second, “In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king.” Sure Olbermann is no Murrow. He doesn’t pretend to be, and no one thinks he is. But rather than gripe because he doesn’t measure up to the giants that used to walk the earth, I’m happy that someone with a bully pulpit is finally getting up and saying what a majority of Americans are thinking. And when you compare him with the other commentators on TV today, he stacks up very well indeed.
Sure Olbermann is no Murrow. He doesn’t pretend to be, and no one thinks he is. But rather than gripe because he doesn’t measure up to the giants that used to walk the earth, I’m happy that someone with a bully pulpit is finally getting up and saying what a majority of Americans are thinking. And when you compare him with the other commentators on TV today, he stacks up very well indeed.
I believe you and many others here are missing the point. Olbermann or any other reporter may be the next Murrow POTENTIALLY, meaning they may well have the skills to be like Murrow, but the corporate ownership environment (The Bosses) will just not allow these potential good journalists to do what the facts tell them to do. Look at Dan Rather, and how he got burnt and sacrificed for trying to be a real reporter. Olbermann may well meet the same fate unless he tempers his criticism, or more likely has his criticism tempered for him.
I am convinced that the vast right wing conspiracy does exist, and it maintains itself to a great extent by propaganda disseminated through media control. The right wing bosses will not allow a free press with journalist doing their jobs, they will only allow Katie Courics and shark attacks, and children being molested and kidnapped at epidemic proportions. Be afraid, be very afraid, and trust your right wing government to protect you.
Only the internet has any hope of overcoming this propaganda barrage, but the internet has its own problems. It has credibility gaps, conspriacy theory tendency problems, and group think blindness.
There’s a great deal of truth in what you say, and your points are well taken. But remember the title of my post: “Sometimes you do the best you can with what you have.”
Corporate America, including MSNBC, is concerned about one thing and one thing only: money. If Keith Olbermann could make General Electric and Microsoft a hundred million dollars by bringing down the Cheney administration, don’t you think they would not only let him do it in a heartbeat, they’d give him everything he needed to get the job done? I certainly do.
The truth is, though, that to most Americans news is about as sexy as flossing your teeth. It’s something that has to be done on the way to other stuff. So, the networks don’t give it the resources a well-informed electorate deserves. But as you almost say in your post, that leaves an ecological niche for those of us who do care what’s going on out there. It’s small now, but I’m hoping we grow into it as more of us figure out that, if we want to see change in the media, we have to be the change. We either have to provide the leadership on the news and force television and print to follow our lead, or we have to join the mass media and start our own news service with real journalism. I would love to see the latter happen, but again, it comes down to money, and I have no idea where the resources to do such a thing right would come from.
Corporate America, including MSNBC, is concerned about one thing and one thing only: money. If Keith Olbermann could make General Electric and Microsoft a hundred million dollars by bringing down the Cheney administration, don’t you think they would not only let him do it in a heartbeat,
First, I agree with the part of your comment where you say that the internet has to evolve into any real media replacement, if such will happen at all.
However, I do not necessarily agree with your quote I listed above in this comment. I do agree that corporate America is only concerned about money in the long run, but that surely does not explain why the hell General Electric wishes to own NBC! Why are large, multi-national corporations buying up all media outlets?? Is that the best way for them to make big money directly from the feeble TV shows that pass for entertainment. I think not.
The multinationals are buying media outlets to enrich themselves indirectly through propaganda dissemination that opens the door to these corporation to the real money, namely global control of resources through control of people and governments.
I believe that Rather was set up by Rove with that fake memo, for the express purposes of bringing him down before he got too popular and powerful. Not that that would have happened — we’re always looking for the warts in those we would make heroes.
But I look to people like Helen Thomas, who keep fighting no matter what the bastards try to do to keep her down…and she too has noticed a change in the press corps; they are less compliant, less deferential — they’re more willing to challenge the status quo. And you know they wouldn’t be able to get away with that unless their producers and editors and other bosses didn’t sense the sea change in public opinion.
Yeah, we’re not at the top of the mountain yet, and we’ve got a long way to climb — but the view will be awesome when we get there…
And you know they wouldn’t be able to get away with that unless their producers and editors and other bosses didn’t sense the sea change in public opinion.
An interesting concept this idea of what would the right wing propaganda machine do if they sensed their BS was not working anymore! Would they try to mind-alter the common man even harder, and/OR would they first try to throw some crumbs in the direction of the dissent to look more responsive?? Noticed the way I phrased this because even if they threw some crumbs, you got to know that their original mind-control agenda was still intact because their complete control of power is still dependent on their ability to keeps people’s attention occupied by the presentation of false, fear-inducing bogeymen and to blind people via extreme nationalism!!
Stop waiting for a media personalities to come to America’s rescue. Murrow and Cronkite at CBS were one-time historical events caused by the fact that everyone in that timeframe established their credentials as war reporters in WW2. A whole generation of journalists who had seen war up close and had been changed by what they saw. That’s never going to happen again. The only journalists that are escaping theaters of war with their lives now are the ones that stay so far in the rear that they never see the horrors.
There’s too much background noise in the media for any one voice to change anything now. Only a political leader is going to be able to cut through the noise enough to cause any political change today.
We need to select political leaders with enough of a spine that they can stand up to the criticism that creating change will cause.
‘They’ want to divide and conquer us with fearmongering. Our defense and only source of hope & eventual victory is trust reckless trust. We’ll smother their hatred in suffocating love.
Thoughtful piece, Steven.
I don’t knock around in this community as much as I do in others. That’s my loss, because the writing, thinking, and discussions here are consistently of the highest quality.
And the pace is such that there’s plenty of time to let things sink in and percolate.
Having read a little of AG’s stuff off and on, though, I get the impression that he mostly likes to hear himself talk.
Having read a little of AG’s stuff off and on, though, I get the impression that he mostly likes to hear himself talk.
I hope you will continue to read AG. I find that he, like many others here, is so very concerned about what has happened, is happening, and will happen to this nation.
And he sometimes offers little jewels like this:
“I suppose I have made it clear here that I do not watch much TV, and that when I do it is usually a total surf through the wreckage of what was once the culture of the United States, at least as far as the Corpse Corps would like us to have it. I pull a mental and spiritual condom over each foot of my being and then jump from polluted puddle to polluted puddle, with quick stops to ponder a certain piece of particularly nasty shit or perhaps to admire the rare flower of sanity and beauty that has so far escaped the Grim Corporate Raper’s violent attentions.”
Point taken. Thanks.
It is lamentable to say the least that it’s far too often the case that the stature and position of a person speaking the truth is so much more important than the essence of the truth being spoken; that strategy so often has more weight than substance; that who speaks is more important than what they say.
Philosophically speaking, I don’t believe any society which attributes value in this inverted way can possibly evolve along a positive path for long.
Steven, you are just like me in that respect.
I hear you loud and clear on that one. Funny thing, that is one of the reasons I started getting more interested in computers. (The other is that i am sick of all of the problems that I have had in the past–I can learn to fix my computer, instead of taking it to the computer shop. Takes me forever, as I work from a book, very carefully, but it gets done and costs less!)
So, I’m writing about it. All that bs has got to come out somehow! RFK Jr’s article convinced me that too many people have had their heads buried in the sand for too long.
I’m convinced there is going to be a depression. MI has been hit hard, just like in the last recession. I’ve lived thru one, know all the signs and it is coming. Would I love to be proved wrong!
A friend of mine (good guy), a Christian minister–republican, but not a wingnut, recently said, “I’m convinced we need a revolution in this country.” He also feels that wingnuts give real Christians a bad name. I’ve been running into more who feel that way. (Regrets his vote as well.)
At least in MI, the climate has already been altered. It feels like late September outside, and last winter was too mild. (Don’t know about other areas and global warming is somthing I rely on others, such as you, for information.)
The more of the bs that is starting to come out, although in bits and pieces, is giving me hope too. Thanks Steven!
that this is a form of concern trolling. Olbermann did what no one else in his position would do:
Tell the truth as he saw it.
Yet……
There’s something wrong…
I will tell you what is wrong with this sort of thing. It’s stupid and presupposes that the writer is omniscient. He’s not.
Too say this is to admit of a reality which is fixed and immutable:
Republicans always win.
The corporate media will never change.
There is little hope.
I say this:
The people of this nation are waking up. Having your income drop steadily for 30 years will do that for ya.
When they do….
They will reinvent the progressive movement of the the early 1900s and give the ‘upper tenth’ something to really cry about.
I fear more terrorist attacks may come to our shores.
At least you don’t have to worry about this one. So far, all the terrorist attacks carried out in North America have been our own black ops.
AG loves the blues. So do I. So he should know that no dissent is marginal. It’s not Olbermann’s fault that he’s a host of a wonderful, eccentric, funny and honest program that’s on a shitty cable channel that very few people watch. Does AG expect Wolf Blitzer to make the statement Olbermann did about Rumsfeld and the continuing shameless politicization of our security by the incompetents running our government? Katie Couric? Any other butt weasel passing themselves off as “news” anchors?
No dissent is marginal. The people in power want to marginalize it and attack those who excercise it. Why would any of us want to aid them in that enterprise?
Olbermann was somewhat self-serving in all the teases leading up to what he called his “special comments.” Still, I appreciate that his words were spoken. They are, after all, almost exactly the words many of us have been writing here.