Keith Oberman is an MSNBC host whose sympathies clearly don't lie with George Bush. I imagine he's a Democrat, but I don't find him extreme. If he is a Democrat, he is unusual in that he is quite funny. Republican talk show hosts usually have the upper hand in the "sardonic wit" department. But one thing is for sure--he's a clever beast.
I smile whenever I watch his show at the end (usually when putting children to sleep). He always ends with the comment "one thousand, four hundred, and ninety-whatever days since Mission Accomplished in Iraq." Clever beast I tell you. How do you argue with the point: George Bush was rather naive to think the battle was over just because we were in control of Baghdad. And now this war has lasted longer than we were in World War I and the Korean War, and in about a year, we will have been in Iraq longer than WW2. Don't pull the endless war on terror idea--the war in Iraq is a different thing.
Today his cleverness showed as he noticed that Tony Snow knew what was coming down yesterday when he berated the Democratic party for the defeat of Lieberman in Connecticut. Lieberman lost for his support of the war in Iraq, and Bush used the defeat of Lieberman to argue that the Democrats are weak on defense. It is hard not to conclude that the Bush administration took advantage of the fact that a "defense" issue was going to arise today to set up the Democrats as weak on defense. Very clever... has the look of Karl Rove. Frankly, you can't blame them from using the knowledge to their own advantage.
In fact, being a Republican, I received an email from Ken Mehlman yesterday, chair of the Republican party with the same message: "if you stand for a strong defense and victory in the War on Terror, you have no place in the [Democratic] party and you must be purged."
I had wondered yesterday why the Republicans were making such a big point about the Lieberman defeat. I guess now I know why.
Of course Oberman was not to be deterred. He showed a clip from July 4 in which Bush happily proclaimed that the war in Iraq was taking the war to them so we don't have to face them here. Then he showed a clip of Bush yesterday I think, noting that we shouldn't think that we are safe here in America. Does anyone really think that the Islamic psychos can't spare twenty or thirty from Iraq to blow up themselves somewhere else?
Clever beast, that Oberman. He just sets you up with clips and tidbits... you draw the conclusion.
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9 comments:
the "you must be purged" sounded very twilight zone-like...
"You have been declared...obsolete!" (are you even a TZ fan?!)
I'm ashamed to say that I don't even know what TZ is.
It's still hard for me to think of Olbermann as anything but a Sportscenter anchor. Besides, he's O'reilly's competition, I thought you were a good Republican. Ha
The "Sportscenter" persona is what makes him great, I think. He just doesn't take anything seriously... it's all inunendo and "nudge, nudge, wink, wink." Clever beast.
I will confess that I have watched Fox quite a bit more during the Israeli and terrorism stuff. Then again, I've watched more CNN too than usual. Normally I only turn on CNN on the weekend when MSNBC does all their biography and behind bars stuff... I can't stand MSNBC Investigates.
I'm okay with this way of looking at it as long as we remember 1) it's the US that is at war with these extremists, not Christianity and 2) that we are not at war with all Muslims. We should do all we can to empower moderate Muslims and inspire them to work against the self-destructive crazies in their midst.
P.S. This is not a comment on what the Koran teaches but on the fact that moderate Muslims at least think their religion is a religion of peace--why would we want to convince them otherwise?
Great choice of Olbermann for your source of news. I enjoy his commentary as well. Of course, I'm the guy who gets the majority of his political news from The Daily Show. Ha!
Did you see that the Gas City petting zoo was on the Daily Show? It's one of the many sites listed for Indiana as a possible terrorist target. Poor Emus. Hey, it got us a lot of bucks from the government.
Knowing Muslims and actually interacting with very conservative Muslims on a daily basis, I must say that I find much of this talk in the comments incredibly unsettling. It is unsettling because it shows that we have as much ignorance of those who wage war against us as they have of us.
BTW, many Muslims actually consider jihad to be an inner struggle, not a war. It is meant to depict a spiritual struggle/war in the soul. It is only in recent times that it has come to mean "War against the West" - in fact, that may actually be able to be correlated with the West's giving of Palestinian land to Israel, who actually left it about two thousand years ago.
I was glad to see Gas City on the Daily Show. My dream job would be as a Daily Show correspondant.
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