Yesterday morning (in the wee hours as it were) I wrote a short post about Keith Olbermann’s commentary the other night, and the response of some posters at Free Republic.com (the ubiquitous “freepers) to what he had said.
In reaction to that diary, a member of our community, someone I respect a great deal though we do not always agree on issues of substance or of style, Arthur Gilroy, posted his own diary, entitled Olbermann And The Marginalization of Effective Dissent. His diary is, at present, on the recommended list. I urge you to read the piece that he wrote in its entirety. I’ll quote just a brief section of it here now, because it’s important to what I will have to say later:
Now make no mistake…I think that Mr. Olbermann is serious, attentive, and honest in his efforts. And overall, pretty near correct in his positions as well. As correct (as far as I am concerned, anyway) as he can possibly be and still manage to regularly appear in any mass media capacity on the public mediaspace. […]
[Olbermann] is just not heavy enough…and/or he is not in a “heavy” enough position. In this case, the chicken and the egg are mutually dependent. You cannot GAIN that kind of weight while stuck in a dependent, marginalized position, and you know damned well that Mr. Olbermann is not presently in the running to overthrow Baby Doll Couric or any of the other Barbie/Ken doll blathering heads and most likely never WILL be in that position. Not so long as the PermaGov runs things. The Corpserate Media simply will not ALLOW someone like Murrow to gain commanding position over a career. Not today they won’t. And the balkanization of TV…5000 stations instead of 7, innumerable networks instead of 3…makes that sort of commanding position almost impossible to attain anyway.
Having read Arthur’s diary this morning (I confess for the first time) I realized that while I agree with much of what Arthur has to say about the marginalization of dissent in our major media these days (for reasons too numerous to get into now), I felt he deserved a reply from me. Or maybe I just felt the need to express the thoughts that ran around in my brain while reading his quite perceptive analysis of the current media landscape in our country, one dominated by the voices of corporate interest, right wing hatred and bullying and shameful kowtowing to the dark power that rules in the White House (rules over us but does not govern, I might add). For better or worse, here they are:
Arthur you may be right. But big things sometimes come in small packages. As to the effect that Olbermann’s comments might make on the political climate that is tearing our nation apart, we shall see.
Myself, I alternate daily, even hourly, between optimism and pessimism. The sources of my pessimism are all too easy to chronicle.
I fear that we are being set up for another stolen election this Fall. I fear the Democratic Party will never fulfill the hopes progressives have for it. I fear another war, before or after the election, one that may start a conflagration whose dimensions we cannot predict, with consequences too terrible to imagine. I fear more terrorist attacks may come to our shores. I fear an economic depression to rival the Great Depression may be brewing. I fear the rise of a Fundamentalist Christian fascism that would eradicate the last vestiges of that dream of America of which we were taught in our youth. I fear a coming global catastrophe from our reckless and criminal use of fossil fuels to poison our air and alter our climate.
Against that, all I have to place on the other side of the scale is a little hope. Keith Olbermann, marginalized as he may be, feeds that hope. The people here at Booman Tribune and around the left side of the blogosphere feed that hope. Al Gore with his crusade against global warming feeds that hope. The increasing irrelevancy of the pundit class as more and more people look for alternative viewpoints online feeds that hope.
Arthur, even you feed that hope because I know, despite your oft expressed cynicism (well deserved as it may be) you are still here, you are still passionate, and you are still fighting for what used to be called simple human decency before the right wing turned it into a curse word.
That hope is all I have to combat my fears. Maybe it isn’t enough. Maybe its a foolish denial of reality, but its still there. For the sake of my Children, and everyone else’s children, I have to believe it isn’t an utter delusion.
