Sarah Palin Posterizes Keith Olbermann

Sarah Palin continues to be right. We’re not talking about her political positions, but right as in correct. From death panels to Putin, the former Alaska governor has predicted the moves and epic failures of the Obama administration with uncanny accuracy. Palin also has her finger of the pulse of the lapdog media and the culture war.

 

Usually, Palin’s commonsense and logic-filled comments deliver her vital messages, but sometimes she can sum up things without saying a word. Case in point: a recent posting on her Facebook page. Palin featured a photo of one of those motivational posters. You know, like the ones plastered all over Barney’s office on How I Met Your Mother. This one’s titled “LIBERALS,” and under it is a quote from the late conservative icon William F. Buckley Jr. It reads “Liberals claim to want to give a hearing to other views, but then are shocked and offended to discover that there are other views.”

 

As Palin often does, she drove home the point with humor. The picture above the message was the bespectacled face of the one and only Keith Olbermann. There may be no one better to represent the face of liberalism than Olbermann. Maybe Piers Morgan, but since he is newly jobless Olbermann makes perfect sense.       

 

I remember when Olbermann’s latest awful program hit the airwaves. I was watching ESPN while relaxing on the couch. Nothing particularly exciting was being covered, so I thought I’d check out what else was on TV. Unfortunately for me, I couldn’t locate the clicker. Anyone who has little kids knows that often when the coveted channel changer goes missing, the chances of finding it in short order are remote. Too tired after a long day, I just watched the end of SportsCenter. Then, it happened. To the dismay of my innards, organs, and soul, I saw him staring back at me from the idiot box. Keith Olbermann was on my television. A fate worse than death.

 

I would never seek out this guy’s show. Unless you are a fan of tired schtick mixed with hate, why would anyone? But after a long day and no remote control, this is the awful television hand I was dealt. So I watched and I listened. I didn’t puke, but I was close.  

 

He mocked players again and again. Not in a funny way. In more of a “your types didn’t talk to me in high school, so now I will get sweet revenge” kind of way. He said then-Royals outfielder David Lough’s skill set on a particular play was “low.” Get it? Lough and low. Wow, Keith, you’re so funny.  

 

As the show continued the predictable political rants were mixed in, all disguised as “sports news.” When Bill Maher calls Sarah Palin or Michele Bachmann the C-word, he gets a free pass as a “comedian.” The same could be said about Olbermann’s propaganda and hate speech, all tidily camouflaged as “journalism.”

 

The real question here is, why did ESPN bring this person back in the first place? Remember, this is the network that pushed Rush Limbaugh to resign from his position on Sunday NFL Countdown after he offered an opinion on then Eagles signal caller Donovan McNabb.

 

“Sorry to say this, I don’t think he’s been that good from the get-go,” Limbaugh said. “I think what we’ve had here is a little social concern in the NFL. The media has been very desirous that a black quarterback do well. There is a little hope invested in McNabb, and he got a lot of credit for the performance of this team that he didn’t deserve. The defense carried this team.”  

 

That was enough to sever ties. Yet, ten years later the network brings back Olbermann, who used to anchor SportsCenter before hosting far-left talk shows on MSNBC and the wildly unpopular Current TV. He’s been welcomed back by ESPN with open arms even though he has a long history of spewing hate.

Olbermann targeted Palin many times while hosting “Countdown.” He talked about her “stupidity” and called her a “phony.” He even said while referencing Palin: “that woman is an idiot.”

 

His biggest and silliest attack on Palin came following the Gabby Giffords shooting. Olbermann unleashed this case of verbal diarrhea. “And if Sarah Palin, whose website put and today scrubbed bullseye targets on twenty representatives, including Gabby Giffords, does not repudiate her own part, however tangential, in amplifying violence and violent imagery in American politics, she must be dismissed from politics. She must be repudiated by the members of her own party. And if they fail to do so, each one of them must be judged to have silently defended this tactic that today proved so awfully foretelling. And they must in turn be dismissed by the responsible members of their own party.”

 

Blaming an American patriot for the deeds of a psychopath. That’s dangerous, reckless, and wrong. This is who ESPN wants as a host?

 

In 2006, Olbermann repeatedly used a Nazi salute while unleashing an onslaught on Bill O’Reilly.

 

The next year he went on a bizarre rant over the FOX hit drama “24.” “Is it a program-length commercial for one political party?” Olbermann asked. “If the irrational right can claim that the news is fixed to try to alter people’s minds or that networks should be boycotted for nudity or for immorality, shouldn’t those same groups be saying “24” should be taken off of TV because it’s naked brainwashing?”

 

This is who ESPN wants as a host.

As the years rolled on, the rants of hate continued.

 

“What was the more likely cause of the Oklahoma City bombing: talk radio or Bill  Clinton and Janet Reno’s hands-on management of Waco, the Branch Davidian  compound? Obviously, the answer is talk radio. Specifically Rush Limbaugh’s  hate radio. Frankly, Rush, you have that blood on your hands now and you have had it for fifteen years,” Olbermann said in 2010.

It gets worse. He bashes more women.

 

“The total mindless, morally bankrupt, knee-jerk, fascistic hatred without which Michelle Malkin would just be a big mashed-up bag of meat with lipstick on it,” Olbermann said in 2009.

 

Get the idea? This is the best ESPN could come up with? What an ambassador for their network. Pathetic.

A man who has been downright mean to so many on his past shows and is condescending and unfunny at best on his new one is someone ESPN wants in a prolific spot. Next time I lose the remote control I hope the TV is locked on VeggieTales or Dora. Anything but the nightly hate hour masked as sports journalism.