Murrow of the Moment

In the firestorm of idiocy that was the Clinton impeachment circus, the only reliably sane coverage I could find on television was by a new guy on cable named Keith Olbermann. Then as soon as that national nightmare was over, he disappeared, back to sports reporting, from whence he apparently came.

But a few years ago he came back to news, just in time to become the only reliably sane and therefore courageous voice in the current international nightmare that threatens to become the Big Sleep of western civilization. Until recently his show featured a few barbed witticisms, some minutes of incisive interviewing and some odd but often apropros cultural references for maybe half of his alloted time (minus commercials), and then the tabloidish silliness that presumably pays the bills. For at least part of that time--I think starting pretty recently-- he's used the Edward R. Murrow sign-off that became the title of the George Clooney movie about Murrow's on-air showdown with Joe McCarthy, "Goodnight and Good Luck."

But within the past several weeks Keith Olbermann added something more--a series of commentaries, three of which are already classics--that have taken on the entire Bush administration with a directness and eloquence that has made him the Murrow of the moment.

Thanks to the Internet, you can see for yourself here. He has twice defended the critics of Bush policies on Iraq against the attacks by Bush officials seeking to demonize those critics by comparing them repeatedly to Nazi appeasers. (Although I don't believe he has yet noted the irony that some of the targets of McCarthyism and the Blacklists of the 50s were people classified as subversives for having been "prematurely anti-Fascist" in the 1930s.)

The second of these commentaries was in response to Bush's supposedly non-political TV addresss on 9/11, which was also effectively skewered by that other reliable voice of sanity, Jon Stewart of the Daily Show, our cable channel court jester. As far as I'm concerned, the most hopeful signs for a national moment of sanity are not opinon polls but the higher ratings for Stewart and Olbermann, while O'Reilly and Faux News sink.

Olbermann's commentary on the failure to erect so much as a memorial on the site of the Twin Towers also began as a defense against the implications of Bush and his Roving Bushites, in very strong terms: And anyone who claims that I and others like me are "soft,"or have "forgotten" the lessons of what happened here is at best a grasping, opportunistic, dilettante and at worst, an idiot whether he is a commentator, or a Vice President, or a President.

He recounted the enormous support Bush got after 9/11, and what he did with it. "History teaches us that nearly unanimous support of a government cannot be taken away from that government by its critics. It can only be squandered by those who use it not to heal a nation's wounds, but to take political advantage. Terrorists did not come and steal our newly-regained sense of being American first, and political, fiftieth. Nor did the Democrats. Nor did the media. Nor did the people. The President -- and those around him -- did that."

How dare you, Mr. President, after taking cynical advantage of the unanimity and love, and transmuting it into fraudulent war and needless death, after monstrously transforming it into fear and suspicion and turning that fear into the campaign slogan of three elections? How dare you -- or those around you -- ever "spin" 9/11?"

And with another statement, in a way Olbermann comes full circle:

The polite phrase for how so many of us were duped into supporting a war, on the false premise that it had 'something to do' with 9/11 is "lying by implication." The impolite phrase is "impeachable offense."

Having been one of the few to forthrightly show his astonishment and chagrin at the spectacle of the Republicans inflating and distorting a petty financial adventure never proven to be illegal, before they obsessively promoted a minor sex scandal into the second impeachment of a President in American history, he has returned to be probably the only TV commentator to utter the suddenly forbidden word "impeachment" about a President who has prima facie committed more outrageously impeachable offenses than Richard Nixon.

I would not be surprised that if this Republic happens to survive this moment he is the Murrow of, Keith Olbermann disappears again, perhaps to turn his attention back to something that may not make any more sense but is at least less harmful, like the stirring sport of studio poker.

(And as a little journalistic aside, having just seen Goodbye and Good Luck again, I noted that in the first few minutes, someone--presumably a journalist-- introducing Murrow at a journalism banquet, misuses the word "historical," when he meant "historic." It is a distinction spelled out in the AP Handbook, which a good journalist should know. I'm still curious whether that 1950s journalist made the mistake, or the 21st century screenwriter.)