From the anchor desk…
Before you read the below, I ask that you scan the transcript or watch the video that prompts this, so it will make sense.
Heres a full link also:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/18316770/
Well, thank goodness. My celebrity crush on Olbermann continues unabated…but I think the honeymoon is over…
The most recent of his “Special Comment” segments concerns me.
Because Guiliani’s hyperbole about “how many casualties” will ensue if the country elects anyone other than a Republican….was the speech of a desperate Republican party, rocked by perception of scandal or incompetence….so they fall back on fear. (Is the party itself that desperate? I think not. But that’s what the speech conveyed to me. Desperation. Can’t use competent running of a war. Can have no airtight claim to moral high ground. Best scare ‘em to death… )
By making them a centerpiece of a “Special Comment,” instead of consigning the “Vote Democrat and Die” idea to obscurity, he now gave the stuff that was heard by a small group of people in New Hampshire a *much wider audience.*
Not everyone who sees that speech will understand the outrage behind the comment.
They’ll *agree* with Rudy, and thus this insane speech gets traction…Legs…momentum.
And in addition, while most of his daggers hit their mark about America’s Mayor, ( the discussion of remains being left uncovered and unprotected being particularly damning) just one of the many wrongs assigned to Guiliani actually irritated me a bit.
“Which mayor of New York was elected eight months after the first attack on the World Trade Center, yet did not emphasize counter-terror in the same city for the next eight years, Mr. Giuliani?”
I know, he’s speaking for friends and strangers killed in the attacks. I get it. But…
In fairness, the first WTC bombing happened *on the ground.* and my understanding is, many many changes were put in place about how these types of buildings were watched.
Pointing the finger at Guiliani rather than the dismissal or ignoring of many national intelligence rumblings about Al Quaieda seems off.
Would not any idea that the mayor might have had, that in hindsight seems impossible, “Hey, they might try planes next time, how do I go about sealing this airspace? To whom do I appeal in the Clinton (or Bush II ) administrations to secure airspace above my city, so that as nuts as this sounds now, they couldn’t possibly fly into the WTC with a passenger plane?”
How would he have handled that…? He had, perhaps the most influence of any mayor then seated,…*but*
Did he have enough information about the real threat or enough clout to move Clinton or Bush to seal of his airspace???
I doubt it. Because the information just wasn’t pushed hard enough…
But, further through the comment, in perhaps its least emotional moment, Olbermann hits a home run when he says:
“No Democrat has said words like these. None has ever campaigned on the Republicans’ flat-footedness of Sept. 11, 2001. None has the requisite, irresponsible, all-consuming ambition. None is willing to say “I accuse,” rather than recognize that, to some degree, all of us share responsibility for our collective stupor.”
Italics mine.
*That’s* the meat of it. The country *all* of the Red/Blue country was asleep about these things.
Which is why, even when I suffer a moment or two of irritation, of thinking that his righteous anger has actually pulled him off track a small bit…
I’ll keep watching.
It happens every spring…
I found some interesting (and in one case provoking stuff for you to read.)
Wrongful birth…the next big way to get rid of us
So now we have:
The Duty to Give Birth Movement
The Duty to Die Movement,
and the “We’ll Euthanize This Child Because We’re So F*cking Omnipotent We Know Better Than The Mother Which Pregnancies Should Have Been Terminated and Which Should Not” Movement.
Although during a week when old men in robes ruled that they get to have that sort of opinion in the US, I suppose I shouldn’t be a bit surprised.
And a post that shatters the stereotype “It’s all in your head…”
Another, where being by oneself is cool.
And only this blogger could write about the ways of duck romance, and make me laugh and smile.
Happy Friday.
Cell Phones: 21rst Century Consciences
At least on film. I’m not talking about Steven King’s booga booga book “Cell” or the short lived, but amazing speculative fiction TV series “Threshold” where they become “evil…”
But they’ve almost crossed that line into being characters themselves, a versatile irritating moralist that you don’t need to pay wages, or buy costumes or make up for. They’ll *give* you lines, you don’t need to write them. And the only cost are the contracts written in labrythine language that mean you’ll be paying for it for at least three years…
Money, time, and impairment mean that I’m still a movie fan but I’m always going to be about six months behind…
My Netflix batch this week included “Notes on a Scandal,” where a cell phone has a hand in undoing Cate Blanchetts cozy life (not that Dame Judy Densch’s Scariest Old Maid *Ever!* or Cate’s own entitled clueless woman didn’t do the major unraveling already)
And “The Departed.” The phone is the real snitch, working both sides, giving alibis, granting favors,providing direction, misdirection, confusion…as well as the warning note of retribution, that in the earliest movies, was left to music alone, and before the arrival of cell phones, was a phyisical character (a bartender, a priest, an elderly sage), sound, music, a sunset, a church bell…
It’s hard for a simple piece of tech to upstage Jack Nicholson…Matt Damon, Martin Sheen, but it nearly does…
And, for me it did upstage the two actors that everybody else loves but me, Mark Walberg who basically had to show up, be offensive and wave his gun, and Leonardo DiCaprio, who I’ve just not had my “My God, he’s *such* a wonderful actor!” epiphany about yet…
I hope for a bit part someday…where I get to wave a rubber mallet, and smash the little beeping shiny sonofa…to pieces.
Sigh. But I need one too. How else could I ever be sure of paratransit showing up on time?
