The Nature of Things

Keith Olbermann is a prickly personality at the best of times. He is bombastic and outspoken. He has a huge ego. He's never been able to hold onto a job in television for more than a few years, probably because of those attributes. He stuck with MSNBC and MSNBC stuck with him for about as long as he's ever stayed anywhere. His nightly news and commentary show Countdown has been hugely popular among liberals. When he announced on camera during his show yesterday that that would be the last Countdown , it was a massive shock to his rabid fans and they reacted...rabidly. They blamed MSNBC. They blamed Comcast which is about to take over NBC. They blamed everybody except Keith. I certainly don't have any more information about how the split came about than what I've read in the newspapers and online today, but I suspect the whole thing is a bit more complicated than his most passionate fans may be willing to admit. Let me state up front that I'm not one of h...

The liberal blogosphere and various liberal commentators ( see Michael Moore and Keith Olbermann ) hail Julian Assange, the Wikileaks guy, as a hero who is just doing what a good journalist would do - if there were any good journalists left. They excoriate the judicial system of Sweden for insisting that Assange must face the charges of rape that have been lodged against him by two women. The charges are all political, they cry. I doubt it. I don't think women are generally thinking in a political way when they charge a man with rape and I see no reason to believe that Assange's accusers were. So what were the Swedish authorities to do? Ignore the complaints? Sweep it all under the rug? It's what happens in all too many countries of the world today with crimes against women and I'm very much afraid that it happens all too often in this country. But not, apparently, in Sweden. So Keith Olbermann has been in high dudgeon all week railing and fulminating, as he i...