Wednesday, October 7, 2009

Why I might stop watching Keith Olbermann.

I hate the News.

Not the news itself, the News. The personality driven, gameshow host, ha ha I got you, I only listen to what I wanna hear, I'm too lazy to do anything but quote what was told to me as opposed to doing my job, oh look who got his dick wet where he shouldn't have...Afghanistan? Huh? News.

I'm sick of this shit.

And as much as I love Keith Olbermann I'd be a hypocrite not to acknowledge that he is a part of it. Rachel too.

Here comes Grumpy Old Man. When I was a kid, there used to be documentaries on TV. Mainstream 3 broadcast network TV on serious issues. Now we have entire series devoted to being in prison. We used to have Special Reports, now we get Special Comments.

I love special comments. I love that Keith Olbermann almost single-handedly changed and continues to change the political news landscape to one where we Liberals get to fluster and puff too.

But here's the thing. What we need, what we really need, is not going over every day who said what to whom, who's writing a book, who is lieing and who is telling the truth, but comprehensive analysis of the issues.

We know Fox will never do that. MSNBC has decided to become the more liberal side of that argument with the exception of Joe Scarborough in the morning. I don't know what the fuck CNN has become. That network hasn't been worth shit since they gave that idiot Wolf Blitzer his own show.

Yesterday I caught that snide smug bitch Campbell Brown being indignant that David Letterman hadn't realized how his current staff would suffer from constant press calls due to the recent revelation of his affairs. She was actually laughing at him for having the audacity to prioritize his career, his colleagues and his family over it not occurring to him that his staff would be inundated with insinuating phone calls from a press too lazy to cover, oh say, the actual questions of what a Public Option is, or the history of Afghanistan and its wars. CNN has Anderson Cooper and Christiane Amenpour. Everyone else isn't worth a bad fuck in an alleyway let alone having a news show.

MSNBC barely has a news show anymore...It's all news interviews but no actual coverage. FOX...well, FOX is just a rag paper to promote the agenda of an aged, depraved and greedy man from Australia and the known liar Roger Ailes.

Only The News Hour with Jim Lehrer is news coverage that actually deserves the moniker. They pick one or two of the days stories and devote the entire time to those stories including a real analysis. Then once a week they have Mark Shields and David Brooks discuss and somewhat debate, in a reasonable tone the week's events.

We need indepth documentaries on the various healthcare systems around the world. Not this he said she said crap. We need a history of the nations we are at war with to understand how they got to where they are and what has worked and what hasn't.

We need to stop the finger-pointing journalism. We don't need Keith to tell us that Sean Hannity is a douchebag, much as I LOVE “Worst Person In The World”. For most thinking people, its a given.

We're never going to get it though. Once Ted Turner sold CNN to Time Warner and NBC decided to run something with Microsoft and Fox decided to abandon covering the news altogether, it was all over.

At this point, we only have ourselves to blame that we have ignorant people who can't spell marching on Washington and declaring Glenn Beck a hero, because we are all we've got.

We can watch our people on the “news” networks for comfort. That's fine. But we can't stop there because clearly no one is going to use those forums to educate us beyond who is good and who is bad.

If MSNBC or CNN ever decide they really want to be taken seriously, they will stop playing Fox's game and start covering the news and offering indepth coverage and analysis of real issues.

Until then, I think I might just stick to Dollhouse and Fringe. Ironically Fox shows. Though if Fox keeps fucking Dollhouse up the ass the way it has been I may give up on Fringe too.

5 comments:

Major Bedhead said...

For a few months now, I've been annoyed by Countdown and TRMS for their one-sidedness. I think Rachel is less one-sided than Keith - at least she has people from the other side on there sometimes. But I see the same faces on both shows all the time. If they would put people on there who hold opposing views, it would make both shows that much better, that much more informative.

I won't stop watching either because I still think they have good things to say - witness tonight's hour long special comment from Keith and Rachel's interview with Bermin last night - but I do think they are playing it safe. I don't like safe.

And also? I really, really, really miss Tim Russert. When he was on Keith's show, he'd put Keith back in his place sometimes and I think that was good. So did Jonathan Turley, but he's not on much anymore either.

As an aside, it really frosts my ass that Fox shows Dollhouse and House - my two favourite shows. I fucking HATE that channel. Why do they have to do such good television?

Opinionated Gifts said...

Fox is currently fucking Dollhouse up the ass, and not in the fun way. They suck on so many levels.

Lisa said...

I can't watch the news anymore, whether it's basic channels or CNN and the like. It gives me a headache. It's the equivalent of reading an email written in all caps.

Do you have any suggestions on how I might keep up with the current events of the day without wanting to punch some smirky news "personality" in the throat?!

Anonymous said...

Wow what a great post! It is so frightening, the state of our news. It isn't news and what does it say to our children and what does it say about our society. I don't even have those channels anymore and am grateful for it. I came down with the flu last September after John McCain picked Sarah as his running mate. I was so upset about it that I got physically ill and at that time I was getting all of my news from PBS. If I had had all the cable "news" channels I would have probably ended up in the hospital.

I've gotten most of my real news through episodes of Frontline and other documentaries. There was a really good Frontline about how the news came out that there were no WMD's. It was some guy with a tiny news group who found it (don't remember the details but I know you know what I'm talking about).

Anyway, thanks for this one! Great read! And I just love the way you throw the F word around, it puts so much more passion into the argument!

Laurie said...

I agree! I don't watch the "news" anymore...it is not news it is television entertainment shows constructed to gain maximum ad dollars. Period. And until that changes we cannot count on constructive analysis of the issues. And, sadly, this goes for most print media as well. They just do not have the benefit of the 15-second response--maximum damage in few words. Great blog post!