Nov 10, 2008 01:34 PM
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New York, 5:37 AM
Wed Feb 10
56 posts in the last 24 hours
What? Why... why is this happening? What is Keith Olbermann doing on The View? Look, there he is, looking weird and uncomfortable. He told them all he doesn't vote (!), and they all yelled at him. All of them! Even stupid Elisabeth Hasselbeck yelled at him, for this not voting, and she is actually totally in the right.
Keith does this "not voting is a symbolic stand" thing because he is obsessed with the idea that he is a Big Serious Important Old-Timey News Man. You know who else makes a big point of saying he is so non-partisan that he doesn't vote? Len Downie, the former executive editor of the Washington Post. Len, in the words of Michael Kinsley, "does not even allow himself the luxury of deciding whom he would vote for if he was into that sort of thing."
We'll freely admit that it is stupid and unfair to say "Keith Olbermann is a big fat liberal" just because he hates George W. Bush with great intensity. It is quite possible to intensely hate George W. Bush as a conservative, a moderate, a libertarian, an Anti-Federalist, a Whig, or a fascist. It is reductive and stupid to equate hatred of George W. Bush and the modern ruling Republican party with any political ideology beyond an affinity for competence and morality in government. And, you know, genuinely unbiased objectivity does sometimes mean saying "Jesus Christ this administration is terrible." That's not a political statement if it's true!
But, Keith, it does not make you Serious to say you don't vote. It doesn't change the fact that you would've voted for Obama. It doesn't actually fool anyone, either. None of those View ladies would have any of it! You disappointed Whoopi.
So we'll agree that we honestly have no idea what Keith Olbermann's political leanings are beyond hating George Bush if he'll stop pretending to be too Serious-Minded to participate in the vast voting conspiracy.
And hey, maybe we'll get a chance, in an Obama administration, to figure out what Keith Olbermann's politics actually are! Because he just signed on through Obama's re-election campaign, hosting Countdown on MSNBC through 2012. NBC even gave him primetime "essays" on the network news and he gets two specials a year on regular NBC. Man. NBC had to give him network gigs to keep him from taking his show and moving to another channel, supposedly, though there is not a channel left, on the TV, that Keith Olbermann has not already worked at. And he left nothing but bad blood at all of them.
Send an email to Alex Pareene, the author of this post, at alexp@gawker.com.
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