Is Olbermann the Hannity of the Left?

At Time's "Tuned In"

Contra Olbermann:

. . .Olbermann is edging ever-closer to self-parody, or, worse, predictability. (As soon as the Clinton gaffe broke, blog commenters were wondering how ballistic he would go, and he obliged, and how.) Even if we concede his argument—that Clinton was at best callously and at worst intentionally suggesting she should stay in the race because Obama might be killed—every time he turns up the volume to 11 like this lately, he sounds like just another of the cable gasbags he used to be a corrective to.

Posted by James Poniewozik

Olbermann is exactly the same as Hannity or any other extreme partisan. They both get offended at the drop of a hat. I mean that literally, incidentally. I'm sure there is an actual hat somewhere that, if dropped, would offend one and bring joy to the other.

Posted by KH

I am a liberal Democrat who lives in suburban NYC. Keith is an embarrassment to us liberals. He has turned into a left wing version of Anne Coulter/Rush Limbaugh. When I mocked those so called right wing pundits, I always was proud to say that those of us on the left were above those games. Olbermann has brought us down even further than he perceives Senator Clinton to have done.

Posted by samka

Pro Olbermann:

Many see clearly that the Clinton nomination rationale is being given legitimacy the same way the Iraq War was given legitimacy by the MSM.

Especially in light of Scott McClellan's affirmation that the MSM let down the country by not doing its job with a critical eye to truth vis a vis Iraq, I imagine journalists who value their word, like Olbermann and Mathews, are determined not to be dragged into another tissue of lies - not spin, just plain lies.

Olbermann may be passionate, but he does not make up things out of thin air. He is left and unashamed - it's about time we had a chance to hear a strong, articulate cable voice on the left.

Like most viewers, I taken in a bit of everyone who is gabbing on all the cable channels. The folks at MSNBC are sustaining a who demographic of disenfranchised folks who have tolerated the media manipulation of the Bush-Clinton White House long enough.

Give us our moment, please…I'm sure things will eventually swing back the other way.

We value Olbermann because he had the guts to speak out when every one else played it safe and helped lead us into one fine mess via Bush.

Yes, he was incensed by Clinton's RFK remarks. I, myself, had my stomach flip and the blood drain out of my head when I heard them…if Hillary doesn't realize that the RFK assassination remains the tenderest of issues, she is really disconnected.

You don't remember the horror of a beloved figure dying unless your purpose is to lament that loss.

Posted by Stormy Malone


Or look at the recent "controversy" reported by the Associated Press over whether NBC News' reputation as an objective news outlet is being tainted by virtue of the "liberal" commentators MSNBC features. Nobody questioned whether CNN's objectivity was imperiled by featuring the likes of Glenn Beck and Lou Dobbs, nor, for that matter, did anyone raise these questions about NBC when, for years, MSNBC shows were hosted by the likes of Tucker Carlson, Joe Scarborough and Michael Savage.

But a single unapologetic Bush critic appears on the TV -- Keith Olbermann -- and this rarest of occurrence suddenly leads to controversy over whether the "respectability" of television news can survive while allowing a single "liberal" voice to be heard. The New Republic's Isaac Chotiner just wrote that he's been watching MSNBC "for the novelty of seeing outspoken liberals on television." What rational person can sustain the "Liberal Media" myth when seeing real liberals on the TV is a "novelty"?

Glenn Greenwald

While understanding where the contra Olbermann people are coming from, I'm still in the "pro" camp with Greenwald and Stormy. As I wrote in my RFK Assassination post, I think that Olbermann is in danger, not of becoming a parody of himself, but of diminishing the specialness of his special comments by, yes, getting outraged at the drop of a hat. There are things to be truly outraged about, and many of Olbermann's special comments articulated very accurately the outrage I felt and heard no where else in the MSM giving it voice.  For that I am grateful to Olbermann.

Olbermann perhaps too self-consciously sees himself as an heir to Edward R. Murrow, and his lonely critical voice in the MSM perhaps gives him some justification for that claim, but it would be a shame if he were to become broadly perceived as a merely left-leaning Sean Hannity. I think that's a real danger.

Comments

[Jason]

I would add a couple points. First, there's a substantive difference between Olbermann's show and those of, e.g., Hannity. Countdown devotes more time -- by far -- to clips of its source material (speeches, congressional testimony, hearings, etc.) than any other news program out there. Hannity just bloviates. Second, while Olbermann's point of view is always clear, he clearly segregates the comparatively rare time he devotes to pure editorializing.

Third, the Special Comments are given much more historical and political context than anything Hannity, O'Rilley, Limbaugh, and their ilk offer.

Finally, I've never found Olbermann to be especially partisan. He just looks that way, truth now having a liberal bias and all, especially in the light of all the other newscasters who "report" that the Bush has just announced that the color of the sky is Wednesday but Democrats disagree. I expect -- OK, I hope -- that he won't be any different in calling out the failings of an Obama administration.

[Jack Whelan]

Jason--

I agree on all four points. I think the problem is style rather than substance. He's trying to be entertaining and he's trying to be Edward R. Murrow--and there's a stylistic disconnect.

He also says things that are just annoying. For instance in his interview with McClellan last night, he says: I don't mean this question to be self-aggrandising, but do you think that Bush's critics were mostly right? It's an interesting question sullied by his egotism. It would have never occurred to me that he was thinking primarily of himself as the Bush critic par excellence unless he tipped us of that he was with the self-aggrandising remark. Obviously he was.

Ok. So he's human. And despite my annoyance with his Hillary special comment, four out of five of comments are right on the money. He is doing what nobody else on daily news TV is doing, and he deserves serious props rather than quibbling criticism. But I understand where the contra Olbermann types quoted above are coming from.