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As the host of MSNBC’s “Countdown”, Keith Olbermann has established himself as the premier television journalist in America in the eyes of left-leaning political junkies. Having broken free of the intellectually stifling environment of sports broadcasting, Olbermann tackled his new assignment with all the élan of Andrei Chikatilo on his first day as janitor at the Moscow Home for Unwed Mothers. His enthusiasm has paid dividends, drawing viewers in the near six-digit range to the nightly broadcast in which he delights in lampooning the most newsworthy right wing figures of the day.
Success has made Olbermann a very busy man, which makes landing an interview with him a Herculean task for a right-leaning journalist. It was through sheer monomaniacal persistence that I was able to get a few minutes of his time to sit down for the following one-on-one. I hope the reader will find it as enlightening as I did.
Walt Gilbert: Good afternoon, Keith.
Keith Olbermann: It’s Mr. Olbermann. You don’t know me. You have no right to address me by my first name without first getting my permission.
You see, that’s the problem with you right wingers. You see the world and all its people as nothing more than automatons that you can program to do your nefarious bidding through lies, deceit and unconscionable treachery. You see yourselves as the great puppet masters of humanity, pulling the strings of ignorance to elicit the Pavlovian responses that keep you in power. You have no respect for human dignity. You do not care that the world is soaked in the blood of children as a consequence of your quest for power and wealth. You sow fear and hatred wherever you plod as you lay one jackbooted foot before the last, traversing the globe in your diabolical bloodlust. Control is your unholy grail. And the crushed souls of the victims who lie in your path are little more than “collateral damage”, as you euphemistically view it in your Mephistophelean minds.
W.G.: My apologies. Good afternoon, Mr. Olbermann.
K.O.: Good afternoon to you, too. . .Walt! You may call me Keith.
W.G.: Thank you. If I may, I would just like to begin by telling you how much of a fan I was of your work when you were at ESPN. I found you to be a very entertaining sportscaster, and often laughed out loud at your obscure references and ironic critiques. What made you decide to move on from that genre of broadcasting?
K.O.: The growing popularity of NASCAR, in spite of my persistent mockery and derision, led me to conclude that the sports world is populated by a vast collection of chaw-spitting dullards worthy of no more respect than the garden slugs they represent on an intellectual level. All the swinging of sticks and throwing of balls for the entertainment of poltroons in the stands lost what minimally redeeming value it had when it finally occurred to me that the sports world was being overrun by the bastard sons of backwoods moonshiners and sister-courting simpletons who know nothing beyond how to make a left turn while strapped into a sheet metal-covered cage bolted onto an outrageously expensive wad of nuts, bolts and wires designed to do nothing more than ravage the planet we temporarily call a home, yet treat with no more concern for the future than is attributable to the common housefly. The tedious conversations with slack-jawed rubes and the monotonous recitation of meaningless facts and statistics became so mind-numbingly repetitive that I could no more imagine myself enduring another day of it than I could imagine myself standing before the throng of tuxedo-clad fatheads at the Espies in a singlet and cowboy boots.
W.G.: So, you’ve lost all interest in sports? I think a lot of readers will find that shocking, given that it was your calling for so many years. What made you decide to go into the world of political commentary?
K.O.: I don’t care what your so-called “readers” find shocking, frankly. In fact, it was the people who make up your so-called “readership” that drew me out of that tar papered hovel they called a studio in Connecticut and into my corner office in Manhattan where I am finally getting the respect that my keen intellect and rhetorical adroitness command. It became painfully clear to me that my estimable skills as an analyst were the proverbial pearls cast before the swine that are the sports fans who huddle daily before their idiot boxes to find out which juiced-up jock managed to knock a leather-encased sphere of twine over a fence and into the grasping hands of a teeming mob of howling, drunken nitwits whose lives are so bereft of meaning that the mere act of finding oneself in the path of a ball is deemed sufficient cause to hop around and shout with glee like a toddler upon discovering the wonders of the backyard kiddy pool.
The people who read the tripe you and your ilk put out are responsible for the demise of a once-great nation, filled with hope and promise. You, sir, have poisoned the collective mind of this nation with the vile, putrid, hate-filled bilge that emanates from your so-called “think” tanks. You, sir, have lowered the standards of the intellectual life of our people to such an extent that the barest glimmer of independent thought is subjected to the moronic hoots of the Jerry Springer audience you call a party. The slightest expression of dissent is howled down as though it were a solar eclipse taking place over a time-forsaken land of Cro-Magnons. You, sir, represent a toxin to this nation’s – nay, this world’s – mind, body and soul. And, it is my task – my mission – to eradicate the planet of the scourge of your slithering, reptilian horde of mental vipers just as St. Patrick did the Emerald Isle.
For all the mouth-breathing fatuousness of the sports world, it represents a mere dram in comparison to the vast reservoir of venom that you and your kind are pumping into the veins of all that is good about the world. And, so, I have my priorities. And, when I succeed in making the world aware of the pestilence that you represent, those priorities will take hold and we will all be gloriously free of your presence, once and for all.
W.G.: And, with that, I see we’re out of time. Thank you for your time.
K.O.: Good day, sir!
