Making sense - with style: Olbermann offers mix of political, sports, pop culture knowledge

[DeepModem Mom]

Houston Chronicle: Jan. 2, 2008
TELEVISION
Making sense - with style
'Conservative' Keith Olbermann offers up a mix of political, sports and pop-culture knowledge without any regrets
By DAVID BARRON

NEW YORK — In at least one fundamental aspect of life that is pivotal to his role as a journalist, Keith Olbermann considers himself to be conservative.

Stop laughing.

Keith the Conservative is, granted, an odd notion, and it is hardly a description that can be applied to many elements of Olbermann's career.

There was nothing traditional, for example, about the fashion in which he and ESPN colleague Dan Patrick in the mid-1990s constructed a new style for the delivery of sports highlights, the craft he resumed this year as co-host of NBC Sports' Football Night in America.

His weekday job as host of MSNBC's Countdown With Keith Olbermann also veers from the norm. The show unfolds in much the same fashion as New York's Guggenheim Museum, spiraling (with the occasional sideways lurch through Oddballs and Worst Persons in the World) through the day's top stories from No. 5 to No. 1 and dropping off viewers at ground level with the sobering Murrow-esque farewell of "Good night, and good luck."

Neither do Olbermann's politics, as expressed through the periodic "Special Comment" editorials aired on his MSNBC show and collected in a new book, Truth and Consequences, which was published the day after Christmas, hew to the description of conservatism as defined and practiced by the administration of President George W. Bush or, for that matter, by any number of news/talk shows on radio or cable.

There is nothing neo about Olbermann's conservatism. It is grounded in the time-honored belief that just because the government says something doesn't make it so and that his job requires him to stare into a camera five nights a week, to confront authority and reply, "Oh, yeah?"...

http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/ent/tv/5421792.html

[malaise]

1. Nice read

K & R

[Berry Cool]

2. Another K&R for Keith n/t

[DeepModem Mom]

3. Thank ya, Berry!

:)

[Shakespeare]

4. I love the Countdown/Guggenheim comparison

What a GREAT analogy! :rofl:

[DeepModem Mom]

5. Yep -- not a bad piece of writing, Shakespeare. nt

[Radio_Lady]

6. K&R. Great post! I wouldn't have seen it if it weren't brought to this site.

We only read the Chronicle when we're in Texas!

Thanks so much.

:hi:

[DeepModem Mom]

7. An interesting source! You're welcome, Radio_Lady. nt