May 17, 2005
Keith Olbermann needs to quit drinking
That's gotta be the only explanation. He's turned into this rabid moonbat conspiracy buff that sees black helicopters and men in black everywhere we turn.
Olbermann's latest target is (no surprise here), as the majority of the time, the Bush Administration. This time he not only blames them for the Newsweek fiasco, but accuses them of treason.
Newsweek’s version of this story has varied from the others over the last two years — ones in The Philadelphia Inquirer, The Washington Post, and British and Russian news organizations — only in that it quoted a government source who now says he didn’t have firsthand knowledge of whether or not the investigation took place (oops, sorry, shoulda mentioned that, buh-bye). All of its other government connections — the ones past which it ran the story — have gone from saying nothing like ‘don’t print this, it ain’t true’ or ‘don’t print this, it may be true but it’ll start riots,’ to looking slightly confused and symbolically saying ‘Newsweek? Newsweek who?’Keith -- couple of things. First off, treason is, by definition, an act that provides aid and comfort to an enemy. I don't see anyone offering any aid here at all; on the contrary, the enemies (and our friends in that neck of the woods) are all pretty damn pissed off.Whatever I smell comes from this odd sequence of events: Newsweek gets blasted by the White House, apologizes over the weekend but doesn't retract its story. Then (White House Press Secretary Scott) McClellan offers his Journalism 101 outdoor seminar and blasts the magazine further. Finally, just before 5 p.m. Monday, the Dan Rather drama replaying itself in its collective corporate mind, Newsweek retracts.
The real point, of course, is that you’d have to be pretty dumb to think that making a threat at Gitmo akin to ‘Spill the beans or we’ll kill this Qu’ran’ would have any effect on the prisoners, other than to eventually leak out and inflame anti-American feelings somewhere. Of course, everybody in the prosecution of the so-called ‘war on terror’ has done something dumb, dating back to the President’s worst-possible-word-selection (“crusade”) on September 16, 2001. So why wouldn’t some mid-level interrogator stuck in Cuba think it would be a good idea to desecrate a holy book? Jack Rice, the former CIA special agent and now radio host, said on Countdown that it would be a “knuckleheaded” thing to do, but “plausible.”
Or would somebody rather play politics with this? The news organization turns to the administration for a denial. The administration says nothing. The news organization runs the story. The administration jumps on the necks of the news organization with both feet — or has its proxies do it for them.
That’s beyond shameful. It’s treasonous.
Second thing. Newsweek's editors took a look at their "evidence" and realized that they'd screwed up. Big time. Yeah, the White House was pissed, Republicans in general were pissed, we conservative bloggers were pissed. We not only had a right to say so, we actually did. Loudly. That is entirely different from "forcing" Newsweek to change anything. "Forcing" someone in the press to change hasn't worked before; what makes you think it would work now? Oh. I forgot. That whole conspiracy thing again.
Third -- lay off of the sauce, man. Your theories are getting wilder and wilder. Your face is starting to twitch.
Trust me on this. No one else would tell you, because next to no one else is watching MSNBC at that hour. Save maybe your relatives.