If it seems like I haven't written much lately, it's not your imagination. Lately I just don't have it in me. There are a number of reasons for this. Part of it is the ridiculous hours I'm working, which has been seven days a week, 65-80 hours over those seven days. Some of it is outrage fatigue. After all, there's only so much internal resources that one has at the ripe old age of 55, and I have to keep my priorities straight in the age of American Diminishment. Since it looks like the guy we put into the White House is getting ready to fulfull the Republican dream of pulling the rug out from under the Social Security system into which I've been paying for thirty-eight years, if working seven days a week is what I have to do in order to have a roof over my head and some mac and cheese on the table in my old age, well, that's what I do. But some days I have to conserve my internal resources for work, and I don't have the luxury of expending it on the State of the World.

As Ian Holm says as Bilbo Baggins in the film version of The Fellowship of the Ring, "I feel thin, sort of stretched... like butter spread over too much bread." Well, I can't remember the last time I felt thin, but you get what I mean. The way it's manifested over the last couple of weeks is a kind of hair-trigger emotionality.

It really started with the Tucson shootings. For two weeks I simply could not look at a photograph of Christina Taylor-Green, or even THINK about her, without bursting into tears. Every step that Gabrielle Giffords, a Blue Dog Democrat who had I known more about her, might have been the focus of one of my anti-DINO rants, makes towards recovery, brings me a kind of joy that only comes from a small beacon of light shining on an otherwise dark, dark world.

Here in the New York area, it's Jets Fever, as the boisterous, goofy, brash, perhaps overachieving New York Jets prepare to take on Ben "Sexual Assault" Roethlisberger, Troy Polamalu, and the rest of the Pittsburgh Steelers in the AFC Championship game tomorrow. For those who hate the Jets, Rex Ryan is an ass, Mark Sanchez is a pretty boy hype machine who doesn't have the goods, and the assortment of scrap heap cast-offs who have found new life with this team are a bunch of scrubs. But for those of us who have been captivated by this team, this asshole of a coach, for whom everyone in the NFL seems to want to play because he seems to galvanize a team the way no "gentleman coach" can, there's something endearing about this bunch of cast-offs like Santonio Holmes and LaDainian Tomlinson and Jason Taylor, this Byronesque quarterback who befriends dying children and loves musical theatre. I won't cry into my beer if the Jets lose tomorrow (or maybe I will, who knows?) because it's been a good long run for them. But a win would again send me off into a transcendent joy that far outweighs any degree of football fandom I might have.

Yesterday I was reading Roger Ebert describing his new chin prosthesis, which he will wear in his segment on a new At the Movies (which premiered last night on PBS). Ebert is such an American institution, and his very public journey with a disfiguring salivary gland cancer has been such a moving one, that simply having him back in the balcony (if in a limited capacity) is a cause for celebration. Again -- something far more significant to Ebert than to those who don't know him, but a small beam of light just the same. (Note: You'll be able to stream the show soon here.)

And then last night we lost Countdown, and it's all part of the same thing. I didn't know Christina-Taylor Green. I don't know Gabrielle Giffords, or Roger Ebert, or Keith Olbermann. And unlike people like, say, Rich Lowry, I do know the difference between actual people and images on a TV screen. But whatever happened to push Keith Olbermann off the air (and despite some rumblings that he just quit, whenever I hear "mutual agreement", you know it always means "asked him to resign"); whether it was outrage fatigue, grief over losing his father last year, an inability to conceive of how to keep the show sharp while "dialing it back a notch", the fact is that many of us invited this man into our living rooms every night for eight years. If it's eight o'clock, it's Olbermann. And now it isn't.

It isn't that we LIKED him, not in the way we LIKE, say, Rachel Maddow. Keith Olbermann never came across as someone you'd actually want to know. Those of us who watched every night knew that he was a bombastic, egotistical ass. But he was OUR bombastic, egotistical ass, and we loved him warts and all. When he was suspended for making the same kind of political contributions that everyone at Fox does (and even Joe Scarborough at MSNBC does), over 250,000 viewers signed a petition for reinstatement. We recognized his faults, but he wasn't our friend. He was the guy we turned to for a voice of sanity in a world full of climate change deniers and Christofascist zombies and ignoramuses who regard facts as just other opinions. At first it was just Keith Olbermann, but he's also the guy who gave us Rachel Maddow in prime time -- a gift for which we can never hope to repay him. And if you saw Rachel refuse to capitulate to the inevitable and ubiquitous filibustering of Club for Growth shill Stephen Moore on Real Time last night you too will be grateful to Olbermann for giving her a well-deserved break:

Olbermann was important to us, but despite his good work in setting up free health care clinics and making it possible for Americans to donate to help provide transplants to Arizona residents doomed by Jan Brewer's REAL death panel, he kept us at a distance. Rachel is more like the big sister of the narrator in a Carson McCullers story -- the happy, athletic, popular big sister who is always there for you when your parents don't understand you because you're nerdy, bookish, and anxious. Her success has allowed her to be filmed doing segments and promos without full makeup, in the blue nerd glasses and the Converse All-Stars. And the fact that she exudes passion and unabashed liberalism, and then puts on Kent Jones in a funny costume, may help insulate her somewhat from the kind of controversy that has always shadowed Olbermann.

But as much as we adore Rachel, it's Keith Olbermann who has been the pioneer, the voice cursing the darkness when no one else could have. Without Keith Olbermann, there's no Rachel Maddow. There's no Ed Show. There's no Sam Seder in front of the cameras in prime time. There's no Cenk Uygur forcing Republican former Congressman Bob McEwen to admit that there's no money in the Social Security trust fund because they stole it and we have to just suck it up. Without Keith Olbermann, Lawrence O'Donnell (who is still too "centrist" for my taste) is still an occasional third banana on Morning Schmoe. Without Keith Olbermann, the only voices of opinion journalism on the medium in which most people still get their news are the reality-challenged hatemeisters on Fox News.

Who knows...perhaps with the "friendlier faces of liberalism" that now constitute the MSNBC lineup (because Cenk Uygur's seat-warming at 6 PM is still only filler), the "both sides do it" claim will be mitigated. But for those of us who invited Keith Olbermann into our homes at 8 PM every weeknight for eight years, there's a big empty chair today. And just another weepy-trigger for an exhausted blogger.

More on Olbermann:

Greg Sargent
Steve Benen
Nicole Belle, focusing on the crowing of the right.
Brad Friedman
John Aravosis
Justin Rosario
Steve Kornacki
Some speculation about what's next (I'm not buying it.)
Adrastos
Richard Bey (with some inside dirt)

Labels: America Gone Mad, Big Blue Smurf Blogging, Cenk Uygur, Ed Schultz, Keith Olbermann, Lawrence O'Donnell, Rachel Maddow, Real Time with Bill Maher, Roger Ebert, Sam Seder

I've never really trusted Ed Schultz. I don't know if it's the dyed red hair, the faux-Limbaugh bombast from the other side of the fence, or if I'm just still remembering the things that Randi Rhodes said about him being a phony lo these long years ago. But there's just something about Big Ed that I don't like. For that matter, I wasn't crazy about the idea of Cenk Uygur getting the MSNBC 10 PM slot either. I know that many people adore the Cenk-man, but to me he'll always be that guy strutting through the lobby at the Chicago Hyatt two years ago at Yearly Kos like he was King Shit of Turd Mountain. It's no secret that here at B@B, we've been stuffing the ballot box at the various media site polls for Sam Seder, though now that Break Room Live is starting to come together in the way Morning Sedition did after ITS first six months, it would almost be a shame to lose Seder to the constraints of network television. But you could make a strong argument that a show with either or both of those two would certainly help give MSNBC a lock on the coveted 18-49 demographic that the network so clearly craves.

So why on earth the suits at MSNBC decided that Schultz, who sounds like a throwback in so many ways, was the way to cement that demographic, I have no idea. I recognize that there's something to be said for giving a dinner hour slot to an unabashedly pro-union, "shower after work" kind of guy -- a sort of liberal Joe the Plumber only with a brain in his head. After all, Rachel Maddow has become more comfortable of late with showing her endearingly dorky side, such as in last night's interview with the guy who invented the motorized bar stool that seemed to be monopolizing last night's news. But despite her supportive-big-sister affability, she's still too ferociously and obviously intelligent and scholarly to bring in the so-called "Reagan Democrats" that seem to be Ed Schultz' demographic.

From a political point of view, if Schultz can bring in the people who need to hear the stories they're not getting on the John King/Wolf Blitzer whore-for-the-GOP CNN, then he's worth tolerating, if not watching enthusiastically. But if any MSNBC brass are reading this, you might consider checking out what's going on over at Air America Media from 3-4 PM on weekdays. Because there are a lot of young viewers who are not interested in watching David Gregory ask dumbass "gotcha" questions on Press the Meat on Sunday mornings, who might want a more irreverent take on the news. Right now they're watching the previous night's reruns of The Daily Show and The Colbert Report from 8-9 PM during the week, then switching over to Rachel Maddow as the lead-in to the 10 PM Countdown rebroadcast. Imagine if you could turn Sunday mornings into a moneymaker instead of running yet more sleazy prison documentaries.

Labels: Ed Schultz, media, MSNBC

It sure sounds like the Air America president has already decided whom he's backing:



Given that his 7 Days in America cohost Arianna Huffington is making no secret of her contempt for Mrs. Clinton and her partisanship towards Barack Obama, I wonder what's going on there.

I'm not a huge Ed Schultz fan; I've never had the sense that his progressive cred extends beyond his radio persona. But props to him for standing up for John Edwards in this Hardball appearance.

Meanwhile, Chase Martyn of the Iowa Independent believes that despite polls indicating that Hillary comes out on top, real people on the ground are having a hard time finding Hillary supporters, and that if the caucuses were held now, Edwards would come out on top, with Hillary third behind Barack Obama.

Let's hope he's right.

Labels: Air America, Ed Schultz, Hillary Clinton, John Edwards, Mark Green