Keith Olbermann was recently suspended from his position at MSNBC when network president Phil Griffin discovered that Olbermann made donations to three campaigns in last week's mid-term bloodbath.
It's truly stunning how ineffectual MSNBC is as a poster child for the manufactured boogeyman that conservatives call The Liberal Media Conspiracy. At least Fox News lives up to its reputation as a myopically conservative entity of power-hungry attention whores and fear-peddling megalomaniacs. Honestly, if The Mighty Liberal Media does exist, someone should let them know that Olbermann is actually on their side.
MSNBC head Griffin said the problem wasn't that Olbermann made these contributions, but that he made these contributions without prior approval from the network. I say the problem is that Olbermann works for a poor excuse of a news network that couldn't expose the truth behind a flaming bag of dog crap on Devil's Night.
Now, I know, let's not resort to name calling, right? These cable news networks are delicate flowers with honestly scripted emotions, commercially fragile moral codes, and souls as sensitive as silent fairy farts. And make no mistake, in America, cable networks are free to disseminate their information and opinions all over their audience's face. As my grandfather used to say "Opinions are like assholes; they're small brown rings that poop comes out of."
However, it's a little frightening that America has reached a point where Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. can donate unlimited amounts of cash to political campaigns but MSNBC employees can't spend the money they earn during the day without daddy's approval.
Apparently, nobody informed Olbermann that he was earning his wages in company scrip when it came to his personal political donations.
If you're a fan of Keith Olbermann, there are two options:
A) We can start a petition to get Keith Olbermann reinstated at a milquetoast corporate mouthpiece that has failed in its duty to act as a hard news outlet for a mainstream audience.
OR
B) We could encourage Olbermann to be part of a new media endeavor that won't waste its time competing with the equally embarrassing news network charade that is CNN.
I'm going for the latter. Keith, I'm hiring, and here's my pitch:
•I'm starting a new, progressive-minded, cable television news and information network. It will be funded by conscientious corporations that prioritize informing our citizens rather than propagating the current cycle of feeding viewers nothing but empty information, celebrity polls, and buckets of soundbite chum.
•You will have full control over the content that airs on your show.
•Let's get Anderson Cooper on board, too. I'm thinking that a cultural revolution would be possible if the two of you didn't have to kowtow to network heads. Give him a call, I've got Andy's number.
•Our slogan: "A Network That Doesn't Treat You Like A Slack-Jawed Gibbon."
•We will interview politicians from all across the political spectrum and will not let them answer questions with campaign slogans or straw-man diversions. We will conduct ourselves in the tradition of hard-hitting, old-fashioned, American journalism rather than coddle them with cotton candy gloves in the hopes of getting a decent post-interview photo op.
•We won't pull any punches on exposing manipulative, exclusionary, or hypocritical political policies.
•We will air sweet-ass, socially-relevant films like Network, The Godfather, Night of the Living Dead, The Manchurian Candidate, Easy Rider, They Live, Citizen Kane, and Idiocracy. It will actually be something that people will want to watch.
•We will be honest about reporting on politics in this country.
Sound good? Great.
Now, the only obstacles in starting this network is the fact that I have no money to start this media enterprise. Nor do I have any potential financial backers. Nor do I have any connections in the television industry. (I had a class once with a teacher who wrote for Seinfeld for a couple of seasons...Does that count?)
Now that I think about it, I guess my resources for starting a progressive media/news outlet are pretty limited. I mean, all I have are my own aggressively proactive insights built with the cognitive bricks of logic, factual evidence, and rational thinking. So I guess I'm pretty much guaranteed of never having access to a large, mainstream audience. Even if I did, I'd probably get shut down for doing something that pissed off the wrong person, anyway.
Damn.
Being a part of the all-powerful Liberal Media sure does suck.