In a surprising turn of events, tonight Keith Olbermann announced that this would be his last night hosting COUNTDOWN on MSNBC.
It wasn't a gag, or a publicity stunt. NBC News said on TWITTER that MSNBC has decided Olbermann's contract would not be renewed. Friends such as Luke Russert and Shannyn Moore immediately tweeted goodbyes and goodlucks to Olbermann.
Below, his short farewell and thank you to his audience.
It's just my opinion, but don't be surprised if Keith ends up on CNN. Their ratings are in the tank, their Parker/Spitzer is a disaster and is a poor lead in to the new Piers Morgan Show. The entire evening lineup needs a makeover, and fast.
I think after Olbermann's non-compete is completed he ends up at 8:00PM Eastern and Pacific on CNN.
One thing you can bank on...he's not in line to replace Regis.
Hurricane Katrina first hit the Florida coast on August 23, 2005, and then crossed the peninsula to the Gulf of Mexico, where it reorganized into a strong Category Three storm.
Five years ago on this date, August 29th, Katrina slammed into the Gulf Coast in Southeastern Louisiana. We all know the stories of the levies breaching, flooding New Orleans, causing more destruction than any natural disaster in US history.
When the storm finally fizzled out there were 1,836 dead and $81.2 billion in damages done to the Gulf Coast states, Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, and Florida. Images shocked us then, they shock us still.
Most shocking of all were the images of New Orleans, a national treasure, 80% under water, with men women and children dead or dying in the streets, and on rooftops, and in the New Orleans Superdome waiting for rescue that too often came late or not at all.
There was recovery, but still work to be done in New Orleans and the region when the BP oil spill occurred, another blow to people of whom we must ask; how much more can they take?
But there is will, there is faith, there is progress....and New Orleans looks at tomorrow, hoping to never to repeat that chapter of it's past.
Below, video from NBC Nightly News. Brian Williams, one of the first journalists in New Orleans five years ago, comes back to take a look at the city. Among those he interviews are actor/activist Brad Pitt and New Orleans native, musician/actor Harry Connick, Jr.
President Obama is interviewed by Matt Lauer for The Today Show in the video below. He responds to critics, and tells Lauer of his intent to kick "the right person's ass" who is responsible for generating this crisis.
"PERCEPTION IS REALITY" .......Jonathan Alter, Newsweek contributor, frequent commentator on MSNBC, and author of a newly published book about Year One of the Obama Presidency called The Promise, was a guest recently on Real Time with Bill Maher. The conversation turned to how Mr. Obama was handling the situation in the Gulf with the oil spill from the sinking of the Deepwater Horizon platform, and the criticism he was receiving for his response in the days after the crisis began. Though the administration did about as much as humanly possible to respond to a situation without precedent, Mr. Obama's personal reaction and demeanor was the subject of scrutiny and more than a little criticism. His style seemed to many to be detached and aloof when many Americans felt anger and wanted to vent. Alter told the following story from more than 60 years ago.
President Franklin D. Roosevelt's funeral procession snaked through the streets of Washington DC. There were two men standing together in the throngs on onlookers; the two were total strangers. As the caisson carrying Roosevelt's body passed by, one man fell to the pavement, overcome with tears. The second man helped the first man up. "Are you alright?" the second man asked the first man. The first man responded that he was OK, but felt heartsick at the death of Roosevelt. "Did you know Mr. Roosevelt?", the second man asked. The first man looked at the second man and said, "No, I never even met the President......but he knew me".
Maybe that was the essence of Franklin Roosevelt's greatness. He connected to the little guy, even though he was a wealthy patrician from New York's Old Dutch aristocracy. FDR was a a handsome youngish dilettante when tragedy struck, and he contracted polio, leaving him crippled for the rest of his life. But his illness made him more human, and his personal struggles gave him a connection to the struggles of Everyman. He WAS the Great Communicator forty years before Ronald Reagan, and a the man who steered America through the two greatest crises of the 20th century.
I voted for Barack Obama, and I've contributed to his presidential campaign, and I've been a supporter of policies. I want him to succeed, and I'll chide anyone who cheerleads for his failure, because it would be a failure for all of us as a nation.
Mr. Obama is cool, calm, and collected; it was part of his appeal as a candidate. He was jovial and rational, while at times his opponent seemed to become unglued.
But I must say.....I am among those who wished to see more anger from Obama the President in reaction to the disaster in the Gulf. I wanted to see Vince Lomabrdi in someone's face; we got understated Tom Landry seemingly, quietly analyzing and sorting it out....and initially trusting the perpetrator of this mess, BP, to find away to stop the leak and clean it up.
Clearly no matter what Mr. Obama does he'll be attacked by the usual gasbags on the right; there's no news there. But when James Carville, Keith Olbermann, Rachel Maddow, Howard Fineman, Maureen Dowd and others from the left or centrist media chime in about Obama's lack of emotion in the wake of this crisis that must be cause for concern. And the revelation that the President has not contacted BP CEO Tony Hayward is, at the very least, a real headscratcher. It's not often fair to compare the styles of one President versus another, but questions need to be asked how leaders of the past may have responded to this crisis. Imagine the reaction of a Lyndon Baines Johnson to an oil spill of this magnitude threatening our shores and rendering hundreds of square miles of marshlands and open waters lifeless. Johnson once called Robert Kennedy, whom he had no love for, a "piss ant". If he would say that to a man who later served (briefly) as his Attorney General, LBJ would have taken Hayward to task, and in all likelihood very forcefully. I wouldn't rule out LBJ threatening personally to shoot Tony Hayward on sight because of his low balls and "misstatements"....and I'm sure thousands of Louisiana residents would have looked the other way, and would have never seen a thing.
Now I'm not advocating violence to anyone (ie, Tony Hayward) regarding his words and "actions" in this crisis....but I really believe most Americans would have really wanted to see Barack Obama get into a room with the guy and ask him when the BS is going to stop; low balling the amount of the spill, the effectiveness of a top kill, the effectiveness of a bottom kill, how the cap is working, and of course, the strain this has put on Hayward who complained about getting "his life back".
Mr. Obama....a lot of us are cheering you on, and want you to succeed. But some of us want you to get mad as hell....and its OK to show it.....and make sure that those responsible for this disaster are going to pay with some serious jail time. Lives were lost, hundreds of other lives have been thrown in turmoil, and a precious resource has been infected and may be terminally ill. In natural history we have seen extinction due to comets, ice ages, droughts, famine and pestilence.
But the pending extinction in the Gulf is simply the result of human greed.
Representative Patrick Kennedy (D-RI), son of the late Senator Edward M. Kennedy of Massachusetts, ripped the news media on the floor of the House of Representatives Wednesday, citing the media's failure to adequately cover the war in Afghanistan while giving updates of the Eric Massa scandal 24/7.
Kennedy continued his loud tirade until cut off by Rep. Loretta Sanchez, who was presiding over the chamber. Kennedy has announced he is not seeking re-election in 2010.
Commentary Patrick Kennedy is on the mark...we are not well served by most mainstream media in this country, whether it be the Big Four Networks, or CNN, HLN, MSNBC, or FOX. All of the networks are owned by large conglomerates looking at a bottomline....all have cutback in coverage of international news, and some have specifically geared their broadcasts at particular demographics or political beliefs.
When was the last time there were meaningful stories leading off the hour about events in Iraq or Afghanistan? The news of American casualties seems to get buried in the middle of a broadcast, if mentioned at all. And the failure to inform the public is not exclusive to war coverage- any news about what's going on in Haiti in the aftermath of the devastating earthquakes has been sadly lacking; Sean Penn showing up on REAL TIME with Bill Maher and on CBS SUNDAY MORNING to tell of the plight of tens of thousands living in tents on hillsides with hurricane season less than three months away is not enough coverage.
A few years ago PBS had an episode of FRONTLINE that dealt with the change in broadcast media. The "bottomline" ownership of mega conglomerates was only part of the equation....this transformation began more than 30 years ago when a little show called 60 Minutes was moved to Sunday nights following NFL football, and became one of the most watched programs on television. Until then news coverage was a "loss leader" at the networks....ABC, NBC, CBS and local affiliates covered news as part of their licensing agreement to serve the public good. But with the ratings success of 60 Minutes the networks and affiliates has an eureka moment; there was a way to make money with news. Soon the copycats started up, tailoring stories that they thought viewers would watch.
Ted Turner came along with CNN....all news, all of the time. MSNBC and FOX followed years later...as well as the ownership by Time-Warner, General Electric and Microsoft, and by NEWSCORP. Along with DISNEY owned ABC, the news divisions of the Big Four networks and 24 hour cable news outlets shifted from what Walter Cronkite said "the public needed to know" to what the public wanted to know; and we had "infotainment" on a larger scale than what we had ever seen previously. Viewership was segmented by demographic and political preference in some cases, and always with the intent of maximizing ratings. Add the rise of the internet as an information source, and the slow protracted death of America's newspapers, and we have the situation we have today.
Some may accuse me of hypocrisy because I'll include personality driven features in this blog along side political entries. But here's the difference- I never set out to do a strictly political blog....but I do write a blog that has a decided and admitted political slant, and I make no apologies for it. I write about people places, things, and ideas that appeal to me....and I just like to write; so I throw these ideas and features back to you, all 900 + of them.
And I'm not doing it for the money.
I thank God for the dedicated bloggers we have out there...the one's who'll talk about subjects few want to, and of subjects few in media want to touch. Though there may be a slant in the presentation in some, its being brought for with a passion that's void of profit, other than profiting by doing a good job in its writing.
Maybe more of that zeal is need by some of the "MSM", minus the bottomline.
The article, courtesy of COMCAST.net, concerns the proposed takeover of NBC by COMCAST. If that does occur COMCAST would be a cable company that controls one of the Big Four networks and several cable networks, but a movie studio as well. To take it a step further, I'm typing this entry using an internet connection from COMCAST...the landline phone? That's from COMCAST as well. NEWSCORP...Disney...Viacom...COMCAST. Ladies and gents, meet the new "Big Four".
1. Did you ever use the self checkout at supermarkets or discount store, and get into an argument with the disembodied Voice that's "instructing" you what to do next? It happened to me this afternoon- and I lost. I really thought The Voice was being condescending and I sent an email to the store manager. I just hope there's a Voice with a better attitude next time I use that self scanner.
2. I don't care if its on ESPN. Poker is NOT a sport.
3. And neither are dog shows.
4. However...speaking of ESPN and poker...kudos to ESPN and their 30 for 30 series of sports documentaries. They never cease to impress. This week's entry was The Legend of Jimmy the Greek. I feel sorry for those who are too young to remember or had never seen or heard legendary members of the sports landscape like Howard Cosell or Jimmy "The Greek" Snyder. Jimmy was an oddsmaker who's appearances on the 1970's and '80's iconic version of CBS's The NFL Today took sports betting out of the back room and gave it a sort of legitimacy in America's living rooms. He was a larger than life figure, who's rise and sad downfall are chronicled in this film by director Fritz Mitchell.
The film has remembrances by cohorts Brent Musburger, Phyllis George, and Irv Cross, as well as friends like Miami radio and TV personality Hank Goldberg. The Greek was from Steubenville, Ohio, where one of his boyhood neighbors was one young Dino Crocetti, better known as Dean Martin.
(An Update 11/12/09- I was checking out some of the search queries and some people wanted to know more about the Dean Martin-Jimmy The Greek connection. They indeed did know each other back in Steubenville from childhood. WFAN radio's Mike Francesa, who used to work for Jimmy on THE NFL TODAY, took it a step further. On his radio show Mike told his audience that Jimmy once told him that young Dino used to beat up the even younger Jimmy on a regular basis when they were kids. If that was the case you could say they knew each other- intimately. And if it was an embellishment by The Greek, its still a helluva good story.)
And the poker connection? Jimmy emceed the very first WORLD SERIES OF POKER on TV.....way back in the early 1970's!
5. More on Jimmy The Greek. Here's an audio podcast from WFAN's Mike Francesa in New York talking to former NFL TODAY producer George Veras about life with Jimmy. Mike worked for Jimmy the Greek in the early days of the NFL TODAY, and was kind of a go'fer for The Greek when he was a kid. A GREAT listen. Give it a few minutes, its very revealing. You think Indian casinos are a recent phenomenon? Jimmy was on to it years before it happened.
6. Still more on The Greek, and original NFL Today on CBS. On ESPN"s Monday Night Countdown the old CBS crew of Brent Musburger, Phyllis George, and Irv Cross made a return in a remarkable recreation of the old show's opening moments. Joining them are current co-hosts Chris Berman and Tom Jackson.
7. And just to prove the theory of SIX DEGREES OF SEPARATION- even in an obscure part of the blogesphere of which I am The Lord and Master- did I mention that the aforementioned Phyllis George was Miss America, 1971, and was at one time the First Lady of Kentucky? Well, youngin's....now you know. Which leads us (drumroll please!) to a former Miss West Virginia.
Kim Parrish, former QVCer, HSNer, and current fashion designer and children's author moves on to ShopNBC on Friday the 13th (11/13 7-9 PM EST) with her latest creations from The Kim Parrish Collection. I don't think the rumor that this Renaissance woman has taken up ice sculpture is true- being that she will now be working in the Twin Cities- but its early. I'll check with Linda the Homeshoppingista...she'll know.
And throwing in this little "reminder" gives me the excuse to post that incredible head shot.
8. And speaking of ShopNBC's corporate sister NBC, the latest skinny is that the ratings for the Jay Leno Show are sinking faster than a rock. It looks like this "great experiment' might be failing- big time. NBC didn't want to lose Leno to a rival network, and thought it could save money over ordering scripted series by giving Jay the 10-11 PM block Monday thru Friday....but it seems to be a concept that wasn't really well thought out by all involved. There have been rumors that local affiliates aren't happy with the situation, and are seeing ratings for their 11PM news hurt by a poor lead in from Leno.
Personally, I was trying to think about when the last time I watched NBC for anything other than SUNDAY NIGHT FOOTBALL. And that was probably the ER finale last spring. The once formidable Thursday night juggernaut that lasted for close to two decades is long gone, the LAW and ORDER franchise jumped the shark when (pick one) Jerry Orbach or Jesse L. Martin left the show, and the reality program they have is less than real.
That's one fading peacock they've got there.
9. The "joy" of living in New Jersey. Just when you think its safe to put the TV back on because the election for governor in New Jersey is all over and there won't be any political ads for awhile, guess again. New York's governor David Patterson has started his ad campaign last week. If the CIA needs something to get the Al Qaeda detainees to talk, just let watch the political ads we're bombarded with nonstop. They'll flip....and probably give up Mom and Dad as well.
10. In conclusion....here's a "thank you" shout out to all veterans past and present. If you haven't done anything yet to show your appreciation to our men and women in uniform, please do so. They like to hear it (trust me, many moons ago I was one of them)....and they deserve it.
