Tuesday, November 09, 2010

How Is MLB like NPR?

I'm a fan of Keith Olbermann much in the same way that I'm a fan of Woody Allen. The younger, funny one was the best. Then came all the trouble. Some might argue that taking up with the adopted daughter of your wife is less objectionable than making contributions to political candidates. Neither did Keith, but he did have a clause about conflict of interest. Woody's interest was conflicted, but not contractual.
I used to love Olbermann's sports bluster. It was the perfect oversized rush of opinion that makes otherwise meaningless sporting events take on amusingly mythic proportions. There was always a certain amount of wink-and-grin in what he did that let us all know that it was a game, after all, and he was getting paid for talking about a game. All that bombast was really just stuff and nonsense, but we were all in on the joke.
When Keith landed on MSNBC, it seemed like an interesting stretch, but he made it work. Take it from a guy who spent four years referring to the leader of the free world as "Pinhead," I appreciated the fact that there was another cynic out there jabbing his finger in the collective chest of an administration. He rode that horse hard into the election of a new president. He was unafraid to shine a light on "the worst person in the world." Across the cable system, another jester suggested that maybe pointed vitriol of either stripe might be simply feeding the fire that is burning under our feet. The hypocrisy ball was lobbed back and forth, and then suddenly there was this: Keith Olbermann was suspended indefinitely without pay for making contributions to the campaigns of several Democratic candidates. The same ones he was reporting about on election night a week ago. It wasn't exactly a Rick Sanchez or Juan Williams moment, but that's the world we're living in now. Sportscasters "tell it like it is," even when they come off sounding a little partial to the hometown team. That's a sweet sound. Maybe Keith Olbermann just needs to get sent down to the minors. I wonder if MSNBC has a farm team.

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