Unable to compete with Bill O’Reilly, who consistently thrashes him in the ratings, Keith Olbermann has come up with a better idea: accuse his nemesis of “incitement to murder” and propose the “quarantine” of Fox News.
Olbermann used O’Reilly’s comments about George Tiller as his pretext to drive off television the man who drives him insane.
From the opening of this evening’s Countdown.
KEITH OLBERMANN: When hate speech turns into murder. When phrases like “Dr. Tiller the baby killer” become network slogans. When there is a straight line between what was said on that network and what happened in that Kansas church.
Cut to clip of O’Reilly: “in the State of Kansas, there is a doctor, George Tiller, who will execute babies for $5,000.
OLBERMANN: The time has come to quarantine Fox News.
In one of his typically breathless and over-the-top show closers, Olbermann explained what he meant by “quarantine.” Olbermann accused Fox News of “incitement to murder and terrorism,” and proposed an indirect boycot.
OLBERMANN: If there is a solution, it is perhaps an indirect boycott. It is probably your experience, as it has been mine, that stores, restaurants, waiting rooms, often show Fox News on their televisions. Don’t write a letter, don’t make a threat. Just get up and explain. If they will not change the channel, leave the place and state calmly why it is you are taking your business elsewhere.
If you know a viewer of that channel, show them this tape, or just the tape of the attacks on Dr. Tiller that set the stage for his assassination. Fox News Channel will never restrain itself from incitement to murder and terrorism, not until it’s profits start to decline, it’s growth stops. So not so much a boycott here, a quarantine. Because this has got to stop.
Note: Olbermann accused George Bush of “fascism.” Would Olbermann have accepted responsibility if some left-wing lunatic had taken his words to heart in the spirit of Nuremberg, which led to the execution of many fascist war criminals?
Note, Part Deux: Olbermann offered to do his part by pledging to “retire the name, the photograph and the caricature” of O’Reilly. Leaving himself wiggle room worthy of PBO’s promise to close Guantanamo, Olbermann fudged: “the words may still be quoted in the future as developments dictate.”
3 Comments
Oh, for crying out loud, Keithie…get a grip!
Tiller has been called the “baby killer” for years. His poisonous business has been common knowledge for just as long.
Tiller’s enemies were legion, even without Bill O’Reilly.
Mr. Pretentious… (Moss-quitoes Keith???)
Keith’s real problem with BOR…..
“I wish I knew how to quit you!!”
keith olbermann is behaving more and more like Rumpelstiltskin. So I have started calling him Olberstiltskin.
Remember the story of Rumpelstiltskin? The ending is that he becomes so enraged that the queen found out his name that…..
in his anger he plunged his right foot so
deep into the earth that his whole leg went in, and then in
rage he pulled at his left leg so hard with both hands that
he tore himself in two.
See, olbermann’s problem is that the man he seems to hate more than any other in the universe is Bill O’Reilly. And Bill O’Reilly is on at the same time olbermann is. And Bill O’Reilly consistently generates about three times olbermann’s viewership.
This drives olbermann nuts. And he has become increasingly pathological in his on-air hatred of O’Reilly and Fox News (which massively outperforms MSNBC not just in the O’Reilly/olbermann matchup, but throughout prime time and all day.
Since olbermann has called O’Reilly pretty much every name in the book, sneered out pretty much every insult he can think of and is still eating O’Reilly’s dust, he had to find a way to go even further. And this is where he has now sunk.
Shame on MSNBC for allowing, even encouraging, olbermann to behave like an unhinged lunatic.
olberstiltskin. It has a nice ring to it.
Olbermann is in a real snit this time. He suggested that, “Fox News Channel will never restrain itself from incitement to murder and terrorism, not until it’s profits start to decline, it’s growth stops. So not so much a boycott here, a quarantine. Because this has got to stop.” Finally his agricultural education has served him well–he is suggesting a quarantine! As Ann Coulter said in her article about Keith’s Cornell education, Keith did benefit from attending the Cornell Ag. School and he”s proven it by suggesting the the quarantine of Fox News. Had Keith not attended the Ag. School at Cornell, he would have no doubt suggested the boycott. Who would have thought it?