Howard Beale Presents

Best guess on the Interwebs is that somebody at Fox News had too much eggnog and confused “Nobel Prize Winner” with “Holocaust Survivor”.

[via Young Manhattanite]

Everybody’s getting a chuckle today out of this frame from a cartoon sitcom that peaked about fifteen years ago. But honestly, you can’t top the original.

“MSNBC said Friday that it is suspending ‘Morning Joe’ co-host Joe Scarborough for two days after he acknowledged giving eight previously unknown $500 contributions to friends and family members running for state and local offices during his tenure at the network, a violation of parent NBC’s ban on political contributions by employees without specific permission from the network president.” [Politico]

“On Thursday, [Fox News Chairman Roger] Ailes apologized to the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) for describing NPR brass as ‘Nazis.’ He wrote: ‘I was of course ad-libbing and should not have chosen that word but I was angry at the time because of NPR’s willingness to censor Juan Williams for not being liberal enough.'” [Daily Beast]

Keith Olbermann [Twitter]

We’ve enjoyed Countdown, nightly, for about two years now. As our esteemed apocalyptic vulgarian FlyingChainSaw observes, it’s like watching Crooks & Liars live. Although unlike our esteemed apocalyptic vulgarian, we think that’s a good thing.

So we don’t come to this mess from the perspective of an Olbermann-basher. We like Keith. He’s fun. He’s the only reason we even turn on the tube at 5pm Pacific. San Diego has a 24-hour jazz station. We have options.

That said, we agree with MSNBC management: Olbermann violated a clearly stated ethics policiy, and his suspension is not unwarranted. Olbermann did the same thing with Richard Wolffe, after all.

What disappointed us after the news broke Friday is that we’re in the minority. At least among progressive bloggers — the progressive bloggers we also read daily as we scrape the Internets for story tips. They’ve ignored entirely the facts of Olbermann’s suspension, and the principles behind it.

And in so doing, they’ve shown themselves to be hacks.

Let’s take a tour…

Read more »

Last time around, he quit Daily Kos but kept his show. Maybe this time he’ll have more incentive.

Keith Olbermann suspended after donating to Democrats [Politico]