Monday, September 11, 2006

Keith Olbermann Seriously Rocks

I've been watching Countdown with Keith Olbermann on MSNBC regularly for the past couple of months, becoming more and more of a fan. I've always enjoyed his sardonic sense of humor (not to mention his ongoing feud with "Billo"), but in the last few weeks especially I've developed a tremendous respect for the man. His occasional "special comments" on the show are both poignant and pointed, decidedly left-leaning (which I have no problem with, since I lean to the left myself), and always thought-provoking.

In tonight's special comment, Olbermann quotes from the late, great Rod Serling's closing narration from the excellent Twilight Zone episode, "The Monsters are Due on Maple Street":


"The tools of conquest do not necessarily come with bombs and explosions and fallout. There are weapons that are simply thoughts, attitudes, prejudices, to be found only in the minds of men.

"For the record, prejudices can kill and suspicion can destroy, and a thoughtless, frightened search for a scapegoat has a fallout all its own -- for the children, and the children yet unborn."

Olbermann then adds his own Serling-esque observation:


When those who dissent are told time and time again -- as we will be, if not tonight by the President, then tomorrow by his portable public chorus -- that he is preserving our freedom, but that if we use any of it, we are somehow un-American...When we are scolded, that if we merely question, we have "forgotten the lessons of 9/11"... look into this empty space behind me and the bi-partisanship upon which this administration also did not build, and tell me:

Who has left this hole in the ground?

We have not forgotten, Mr. President.

You have.

May this country forgive you.

As I said, Keith Olbermann seriously rocks.

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