The O'Reilly vs. Olbermann Smackdown

An entertaining, high-stakes fight is underway between the cable blowhards and their corporate overlords: Fox News and Bill O'Reilly vs. NBC and Keith Olbermann. Short take: Olbermann attacks O'Reilly, O'Reilly gets pissy; Roger Ailes demands NBC muzzle Olbermann, NBC declines; O'Reilly starts attacking execs at General Electric (NBC's owner) as traitors for the company's dealings in Iran.

The immediate takeaway is that O'Reilly and Ailes are thin-skinned; they can dish it out but they can't take it. And so they will go to absurd lengths to shut up their critics. I have a hard time believing that pique is the primary motivation, though.

Here's one theory: What's going on is an attempted precision strike to take out Keith Olbermann's unique space in the universe of cable yakkers.

Though he might balk at the term, Olbermann is a Fox-style liberal. There's no one else on TV who fits that description. Most of the "liberals" on TV news fall into the crypto-liberal category, like Dan Rather. Even George Stephanopoulos would call himself a newsman first. That's advantage Fox, which can tag them with the "liberal" label and force them to deny it. (Which they sometimes can't - double advantage. Or which they respond to by taking their cues from Fox - triple advantage.)

As a liberal on a traditional, non-ideological news network, Olbermann breaks this pattern. It actually is dangerous to Fox, whose raison d'etre is the notion that liberalism is secretly shading the competition's news programming. If liberalism is out in the open, and liberals and non-ideological reporters can coexist on cable news, Fox's project to obliterate those distinctions in people's minds - everything on NBC is liberal bias, so go with conservative bias instead - falters.

Olbermann has also tapped into something. His outraged rants against the likes of O'Reilly and Fox, and against George W. Bush and Dick Cheney, channel a kind of populist anger at Republicans that is surging as the Bush years wind down. And though Olbermann goes over the top at times, often his rants are right on. People should be outraged, for reasons too numerous to mention here. It's a wonder ratings-starved cable networks don't do more to harness this - there's gold there.

Once, Fox thought it had the market cornered on over-the-top populist outrage. No more. Hence the logic to the idea that Olbermann-must-be-destroyed. If Ailes succeeds, the networks will think twice before trying to replicate the Olbermann formula.

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Comments

[tedbear]

Those with any question about the Fox network being so dangerously conservative need only tune in for a minute. The only thing I ever watched on Fox was Greta VanSustern, because I liked her straight forward information gathering. When the Rev. Wright thing came out, goodbye Greta. She is suddenly about as insane as O'Rielly. The entire network is full of "commentators" and program "hosts" who will stoop to anything to further their cause of hate for the working class and Democrats. Hannity is another really sick personality - he is almost pityable he is so ignorant and it looks like he doesn't even have a clue that you can see straight through him.

Keith Olberman is the most sane person on cable news. He is also paired at times with Rachael Maddow who is a gem. I watch MSNBC now almost exclusively. Cnn was generally the main channel for me, but Keith Olberman and Rachael Maddow are worth the time. Not only hysterically on point, accurately on the mark.

[BobLablah]

So it's OK for Olberman to attack Fox, but not OK for Oreilly to attack GE? Explain please.

[jfor]

Are you sure O'reilly hasn't attacked GE he has attacked everyone else. Surely you agree that O'reilly and Ailes as well as the entire Foxnews line up all have thin skin. Thin and translucent skin, the kind of skin you can only find when high priced skin oils and special loofahs are used to scrub, buff and polish the skin. Skin so smooth that you mistake O'reilly's forehead for a slab of highly polished granite. Skin that glows so brightly you could say it almost shimmers thats the kind of skin you find at Fox.

[MzTexas]

These two have become the same person. As a former HUGE Olbermann fan . . . been with him since Day 1 . . . I think Olbermann's been reading too much of his press and has become a legend in his own mind. I still agree almost 100% with most of what he says about O'Reilly and most importantly, about this criminal administration, but his manner and his approach has become interchangeable with O'Reilly's. He has become mean-spirited and extremely biased in his reporting.

BTW, Olbermann does not consider himself a "liberal." Objecting to the totally non-conservative agenda of this non-conservative, RINO administration, does not make one a "liberal." Makes them smart.

[Rrhain]

How does tax-cuts for the rich, destruction of the environment, desecration of the military, anti-woman, anti-gay, anti-immigrant, whites-only, etc. make someone something other than "conservative"? That's been the line since before Reagan. When your leaders have been touting the exact same failed policies for decades, then it is no longer "in name only." It actually is the Republican Party.

There is no such thing as a "good Republican." You don't have to be a Democrat, but it is impossible to be a "good Republican."