We Hardly Knew Ye Keith O

Did you name yourself as the Worst Possible Person In The World this Week? Say it isn't so Keith O. Is this a prime example of the Peter Principle at work? Mr O seemed to be very good at his sports desk but has he now reached his level of incompetence?

They say he shouldn't have made a political contribution to some of his leftist guests but hasn't he made an in-kind contribution to the political opponents of George W Bush and John McCain and Sarah Palin and other conservatives each time he comes on the air for the past couple of years?

From our friends at Wikipedia (they seem fairly reliable if they are not talking about global warming, or is it climate change, or maybe climate disruption—it is hard to keep up sometimes):

Keith Theodore Olbermann (pronounced /ˈoʊlbərmən/; born January 27, 1959) is an American news anchor,sportscaster, writer, and political commentator.^[2] He hosts Countdown with Keith Olbermann, an hour-long nightly commentary program on MSNBC.

Olbermann spent the first twenty years of his career in sports journalism. He was a sports correspondent for CNN and for local TV and radio stations in the 1980s, winning the Best Sportscaster award from the California Associated Press three times. He later co-hosted ESPN's SportsCenter from 1992 to 1997. After leaving ESPN amid controversy, Olbermann became a sports anchor and producer for Fox Sports Net from 1998 to 2001, during which time he hosted Fox's studio coverage of baseball.

After leaving Fox, Olbermann re-joined MSNBC after a hiatus, hosting Countdown with Keith Olbermann in 2003. Olbermann has established a niche in cable news commentary, gaining note for his pointed criticism of major politicians and public figures, directed particularly at the political right.^{[3][4][5][6][7][8]} He has feuded with rival commentator Bill O'Reilly^[9][10] and strongly criticized the George W. Bush administration and John McCain'sunsuccessful 2008 Presidential candidacy.^[11] Although many have described Olbermann as a liberal,^{[12][13][14][15]} he has said on at least one occasion "I'm not a liberal; I'm an American."^[16]

^{> > >}

How do they do this? This paragraph was in the Wiki article within a few days after it

happened!

Suspension

On October 28, 2010, days before the 2010 U.S. elections, Olbermann donated $2,400 each to three Democratic candidates for Congress: Kentucky Senate candidate Jack Conway, and Arizona Democratic Representatives Raul Grijalva and Gabrielle Giffords.^[65] In response, on November 5, MSNBC President Phil Griffin suspended him indefinitely without pay for violating a network policy regarding political contributions which required prior approval from management.^[66]

America Has Been Warned

Anthony Daniels aka Theodore Dalrymple, his usual nom de plume when essaying for us fellow commoners, is a retired British prison physician and psychiatrist who makes a lot of sense. He must have a number of secretaries to whom he dictates judging by his output in recent years.

Daniels wrote a short essay a few days ago on Pajamas Media, entitled Sophisticated Incompetence Is Britain's New National Characteristic. Here is a short excerpt in response to some dumb academics:

"It is remarkable that economic historians, of all people, should view the matter so statically, as if the present moment were eternal, not taking into account the speed of the increase in the debt, the ageing of the population, the different place the country now occupies in the world, the uses to which all the borrowing was put, or indeed the crushing and impoverishing size of the debt after the Second World War. Never, it seems, have so many professors learnt so little from so much; sophisticated incompetence is now our national characteristic."—My emphasis on the last sentence. Note the Churchillian cadence in the last sentence.

 I know this is somewhat geeky but it is addressed to geeks of the academic persuasion primarily and and only secondarily to us commoners. Remember when President Eisenhower [president from '53 to '61 for you youngsters] warned us about the military-industrial complex near the end of his term? I guess we did keep our eye on them but missed the ascendancy of the academic-government-media complex.

There are a surprising number of observers all over the world who are trying to warn us Americans. Is it too late?