Reply #44: Unfortunately, those were the good old days. [View All]

[Berry Cool]

He's as much as admitted he doesn't read his emails anymore. Certain parties spoiled it for everyone else. (And no, I don't mean DU'ers.) And he definitely doesn't reply to them the way he used to.

Anyway, my feeling is this. Someday, Keith will be looked on the way Murrow is looked on today. There may even be a movie about him. And then the hindsighted naysayers will come out of the woodwork just like they did after Good Night and Good Luck, saying that he wasn't REALLY that big of an influence, that Rumsfeld had one foot out the door before Keith ever criticized him, that the country would have voted Democrat in this election anyway because the tide was just turning on its own, that MSNBC didn't have that much in the way of ratings, yadda yadda. Also, that Keith had the full support of his management and thus wasn't being really "brave" by saying the things he did or taking any risks.

They will ignore that Keith spoke effectively and eloquently to those feeling the wave of public discontent that began with the stolen 2004 election, Terri Schiavo and Katrina, and kept building and building over the final years of the * administration until it became a majority opinion that could not be silenced. That in these years in which swiftboating is the order of the day, anything and everything Keith has said has been grabbed, bent and twisted by his political enemies, who have used every tool they can think of to discredit, belittle and demean him and get him off the air.

Has he taken risks? You bet. Has he changed people? Absolutely.

Let's not let anyone forget that.

Decades from now, when someone asks you "But was Keith Olbermann really that big of a deal?," tell them: "Yes. He WAS that big of a deal. Because while everyone else was still parroting the Bush talking points, he was saying what I felt."