Keith Olbermann, The Art of Madness « NewsReal Blog

Keith Olbermann, The Art of Madness « NewsReal Blog

Thursday, Glenn Beck used two stories — one of the Obama Administration’s misuse of the National Endowment for the Arts, the other of Obama’s planned speech to the nation’s elementary schools — to show that subtle propaganda in American culture is nothing new.

For his last Countdown segment of the week — the supposed “Number One Story!” — MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann purported to deconstruct Glenn Beck’s report on the fascist and communist roots of much of the art at Rockefeller Center, home of NBC News. Now, admittedly, Beck can get a bit emotional, but after this segment, MSNBC execs might spend their holiday weekend pondering changing the name of Olbermann’s show to Meltdown.

While Beck was at times imprecise in his timeline, Olbermann countered with deranged free association like:

The owl and the pussycat, you left out the owl and the pussycat… the horses Mr. Ed and Barbaro… Colonel Mustard in the library with the candle stick?… It`s all there black and white, clear as crystal, you stole fizzy lifting drinks, you bumped into the ceiling which now has to be washed and sterilized. You get nothing, you lose, good day, sir… I see it happening, they’ve got to tell people the ocean’s dying, life is dying. “Soylent Green” it’s made out of people. Next thing they’ll be breeding us like cattle for food. You’ve got to tell them, you tell everybody. Listen to me, Beck, you’ve got to tell them, Soylent Green is people…. You know I love you, baby, I wouldn’t leave you. It wasn’t my fault, honest. I ran out of gas, I had a flat tire, I didn’t have enough money for cab fair. My tux didn’t come back from the cleaners. An old friend came in from out of town. Someone stole my car. There was an earthquake, terrible flood, locusts. It wasn’t my fault, I swear to God…I am the fool for Christ and the Paraclete of Caborca (ph), I am the wrath of the lamb and the angel of the bottomless pit…The body snatchers are here, can’t you see? Everyone, they’re here already. You’re next. And look what they’ve already done at the Fox News Building, it’s part of the Rockefeller Center….We took those pictures less than 36 hours ago. An outdated hieroglyph of Alan Colmes. Look, Bill O’Reilly’s bar-mitzvah picture, but not one symbol representing the Glenn Beck. Overnight, overnight, overnight they sneaked in, the Communist symbol- mongers sneaked in and magically it appears at Rockefeller Center, the symbol of the Beck. This is a travesty, a travesty of a mockery of a sham of a mockery of a travesty of two mockeries of a sham!

But let’s start from the very first words out of Keith Olbermann’s mouth in this “Number One Story” segment: