Keith Olbermann - again

The man deserves a Medal of Freedom - of course he won't get it from this administration, but he deserves it still.

His commentary last night. He began:

The President of the United States owes this country an apology.

And took off from there. A few paragraphs later:

In a larger sense, the President needs to regain our confidence, that he has some basic understanding of what this country represents -- of what it must maintain if we are to defeat not only terrorists, but if we are also to defeat what is ever more increasingly apparent, as an attempt to re-define the way we live here, and what we mean, when we say the word "freedom."

And here's the exchange that triggered all this:

"Mr. President, former Secretary of State Colin Powell says the world is beginning to doubt the moral basis of our fight against terrorism," he was asked by a reporter. "If a former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and former secretary of state feels this way, don't you think that Americans and the rest of the world are beginning to wonder whether you're following a flawed strategy?"

“If there's any comparison between the compassion and decency of the American people and the terrorist tactics of extremists, it's flawed logic,” Bush said. “It's just -- I simply can't accept that. It's unacceptable to think that there's any kind of comparison between the behavior of the United States of America and the action of Islamic extremists who kill innocent women and children to achieve an objective.

To which Olbermann responded:

Of course it's acceptable to think that there's "any kind of comparison."

And in this particular debate, it is not only acceptable, it is obviously necessary, even if Mr. Powell never made the comparison in his letter.

Some will think that our actions at Abu Ghraib, or in Guantanamo, or in secret prisons in Eastern Europe, are all too comparable to the actions of the extremists.

Some will think that there is no similarity, or, if there is one, it is to the slightest and most unavoidable of degrees.

What all of us will agree on, is that we have the right -- we have the duty -- to think about the comparison.

But here's the slap:

And, most importantly, that the other guy, whose opinion about this we cannot fathom, has exactly the same right as we do: to think -- and say -- what his mind and his heart and his conscience tell him, is right.

All of us agree about that.

Except, it seems, this President.

Hahaha! Here's how he ended:

Apologize, sir, for even hinting at an America where a few have that privilege to think and the rest of us get yelled at by the President.

Anything else, Mr. Bush, is truly unacceptable.

Of course, Newsbusters had a piece on it. Their explanation? That Bush's "unacceptable to think" line was

an awkwardly worded, off-the-cuff remark by Bush at his Friday press conference, which was more likely intended to mean that it was "ridiculous to claim" a comparison between America and terrorists, and blew it out of proportion...

Yea, that's it. It was taken out of context. The President of the United States of America said what he said, but he didn't really mean to say what he evidently said. One problem with the above is that the question Bush was asked had nothing to do with "a comparision between America and terrorists." But that's a rhetorical device used by the right to invalidate an uncomfortable question. Here's a hypothetical, over-the-top, non-nuanced example:

Point: Communism is totally bad and Capitalism is totally good.
CounterPoint: But hasn't Capitalism also caused some harm? How then can it be "totally good"?
Response: How dare you try to equate the two. There's no comparision at all.

And anyway, the problem with NewsBuster's "explanantion" is that Olbermann has already woven it into his commentary:

And when a President says thinking is unacceptable, even on one topic, even in the heat of the moment, even in the turning of a phrase extracted from its context, he takes us toward a new and fearful path -- one heretofore the realm of science fiction authors and apocalyptic visionaries.

That flash of lightning freezes at the distant horizon, and we can just make out a world in which authority can actually suggest it has become unacceptable to think.

Thus the lightning flash reveals not merely a President we have already seen, the one who believes he has a monopoly on current truth. [emphasis added]

See? The point is that in that phrase, Dubya showed what he really thought. The point is that in chastising the reporter with the phrase "It's unacceptable to think..." Bush revealed that he thinks it's unacceptable for anyone to disagree with him.

But here's the commentary from Olbermann watch.

The same twisting of words and semantic tricks of last Friday made no more sense when delivered by Reverend Olbermann from his pompous pulpit. Hyperbole ("spat through his teeth") does not equal credibility. No amount of semantic hanky-panky and selective editing can transform a simple colloquialism into some sort of clarion call for totalitarianism. Smugness ("Mister" Bush), phony outrage ("frightening", "dangerous"), and stale guilt-by-association smears ("Richard Nixon") do not make for heroic journalism. They are the tools of demagogues, tricksters, and propagandists. And they are at heart un-American, as is Herr Olbermann's "special comment".

Hey, did he just call Keith Olbermann a Nazi? That's the whole point of using "Herr" before the name, right? I thought the guy at OlbermannWatch was against demagoguery. And do I have to add that hyperbole ("clarion call for totalitarianism") does not equal credibility?

Keith Olbermann - an American hero.