We're not alone in our concern, luckily; Keith still has plenty of supporters. But sheesh.
If we ever wondered what will happen to Keith if a Dem is President and he dares to criticize that Dem for not doing his or her job the way Keith believes it should be done, we need no longer wonder. We already know.
There will be MASS defections. HUGE numbers of threads with titles like "I used to like Keith Olbermann, but..." Followed by lengthy, petulant, heartfelt essays about how he "used" to be "on our side," but now he has "gone over to the dark side" and is "defending Republicans" and "bashing Dems" and so on and so on and so on.
There's a lot of immaturity on DU...a whole lot. I knew that before, but boy, is it showing itself now.
And that's not to say that liking KO is the only way to demonstrate maturity. It's just to say that those who REALLY appreciate the work of any journalist will not be so quick to accuse him of shilling or selling out the second he says something they don't like or understand. Because they don't expect him to agree with them on everything anyway. And they do expect that he will have a higher cause...the truth, wherever he finds it. Even when it hurts.
A lot of people used to recognize Shuster was essentially a good guy...maybe not perfect, but a good guy. OK, so he jumped the gun thinking Rove's indictment was imminent, but he wasn't the only one, and look how many people believed Jason Leopold more readily than they believed Shuster, merely because Leopold writes for a blog and therefore must be a more noble, truth-dedicated journalist than anyone who collects a paycheck from the corporate MSM, right? Both ended up with egg on their faces over Rove. Yet I still see DU'ers every day more willing to believe what they read on a blog than what they see on MSNBC, CNN or anyplace else on their TV.
Now they want to hang Shuster from the highest tree, because he said something extremely stupid and ill-thought. ONE thing.
In the meantime, know what Glenn Beck said about Keith the other day? If you listen to Stephanie Miller, you do. "If I saw Olbermann standing on the subway
, I might think for a moment about pushing him, but I wouldn’t.” Wow. Mighty big of ya, Glenn. And what does Keith say to that? "The subway remark summarizes who Glenn is. If he (or anybody else) fell in front of a train, I hope I’d have the courage to emulate Wesley Autry and try to save him.” Good on you, Keith.
I worry about Keith. I always knew he had wingnut enemies who would love to get him off the air, but now I realize he's going to have a lot of progressives who will want him off the air any time he says anything that displeases them. Between the two of them, he's going to have his hands very full.
Right now, he's probably safer than Tweety. Even if he said the stupidest, most thoughtless and asinine thing on the air Monday night, the worst he'd probably have to do is apologize. Just like Tweets. This, because right now, Keith IS MSNBC, as far as ratings are concerned.
But let his ratings drop even the slightest, and he too could get suspended. Let a movement be fomented against him to get advertisers to boycott MSNBC, and he's gone. That fast.
I wasn't all that shocked when it happened to Imus, and I sure wasn't sorry--what with his reputation and the way he got off scot-free for what he and his posse did for so long, his comeuppance was late, if anything. It was well deserved as his lifetime achievement award for his repeated acts of assholiness. But this Shuster thing (along with the golf/Tiger Woods thing, in which the offending speaker was suspended ONLY because Al Sharpton threatened to picket The Golf Channel) has only served to illustrate how precarious the situation is for an on-air personality.
Get the right person, or people, with enough clout to take just one stupid thing you said and express high dudgeon over it to the point where it costs your employer serious money, and it doesn't matter whether what you said is a true expression of who you are as a person or not. It's over for you. It just is.