As Steve Krakauer of Mediaite explains, Keith Olberman caught Glenn Beck's "white lie" told to the crowd at the August 28th rally:
...he didn’t actually hold George Washington’s first inaugural address. He just had it held in front of him.
Beck's discussion on his show, admitting the lie, seeks to make light of it because the full explanation is "clumsy" in a speech. So, he says, "They caught me." He recounted a trip to the Archives, but...
"...you can’t touch them..."
Glenn Beck
Keith Olbermann caught him telling a lie. He wants people to laugh it off; Beck says it's no big deal in his quasi-retraction, the equivalent of artistic license.
At a certain level, Beck's doubters are unsurprised by the irony that he'd stoop to fabrication to maintain his credibility with his audience. The problem remains that Beck followers are unlikely to even hear the correction, let alone to believe it if and when they do. We'd all like to think that presented with a truth, logic will dictate what most people believe - but Beck's realized that oldest truth: that a lie can run around the world while the truth is still getting its shoes on.
"Tell the truth," Glenn Beck exhorted the crowd on the National Mall, "and then expect it from others." But not, for heaven's sake, from a Fox Network entertainer in pursuit of ratings. But he probably did at least go to see the Archives building, I suppose. He wouldn't lie about that, would he?
Thomas Hayesis a political strategist, entrepreneur, and journalist currently working for the Madore for Congress campaign in Minnesota's Second Congressional District. He contributes regularly to a host of web sites on topics ranging from economics and politics to culture and community.
As alluded to elsewhere Senator Clinton's comments require a Special Comment tonight.
I need to be brief, but there's a preview below. We can sometimes have our most innocent remarks misinterpreted into the most violent of inferences - I know this firsthand. And we are still responsible for the words, no matter the intent.
The use of the word "assassination" is not open to misinterpretation. It has no place, not with our country's history.
Those words, Senator? You actually invoked the nightmare of political assassination. You actually invoked the spectre of an inspirational leader, at the seeming moment of triumph, for himself and a battered nation yearning to breathe free, silenced forever. You actually used the word "assassination" in the middle of a campaign with a loud undertone of racial hatred -- and gender hatred -- and political hatred. You actually used the word "assassination" in a time when there is a fear, unspoken but vivid and terrible, that our again-troubled land and fractured political landscape might target a black man running for president. Or a white man. Or a white woman! You actually used those words, in this America, Senator while running against an African-American against whom the death threats started the moment he declared his campaign? You actually used those words, in this America, Senator, while running to break your "greatest glass ceiling" and claiming there are people who would do anything to stop you? You! Senator -- never mind the implications of using the word "assassination" in any connection to Senator Obama... What about you? You cannot say this!
Here's Keith's television presentation on his show "Countdown: With Keith Olbermann."
Keith Olbermann delivered a classic and wonderful monologue on Geraldine Ferraro's racists commentary regarding Senator Barack Obama's run for President and Senator Hillary Clinton's very slow move to call for Ferraro's departure from the campaign, and her lack of a speech refusing and denying Ferraro and her words.
I personally don't think Clinton supporters like David Gergen get the negative power and impact of Ferraro's words. Keith Oldermann does. Here's a transcript of his classic work and the video of the television report he made on Tuesday:
Finally, as promised, a Special Comment on the presidential campaign of the Junior Senator from New York. By way of necessary preface, President and Senator Clinton -- and the Senator's mother, and the Senator's brother -- were of immeasurable support to me at the moments when these very commentaries were the focus of the most surprise, the most uncertainty, and the most anger. My gratitude to them is abiding. Also, I am not here endorsing Senator Obama's nomination, nor suggesting it is inevitable. Thus I have fought with myself over whether or not to say anything. Senator, as it has reached its apex in their tone-deaf, arrogant, and insensitive reaction to the remarks of Geraldine Ferraro... your own advisors are slowly killing your chances to become President. Senator, their words, and your own, are now slowly killing the chances for any Democrat to become President. In your tepid response to this Ferraro disaster, you may sincerely think you are disenthralling an enchanted media, and righting an unfair advance bestowed on Senator Obama. You may think the matter has closed with Representative Ferraro's bitter, almost threatening resignation. But in fact, Senator, you are now campaigning, as if Barock Obama were the Democrat, and you… were the Republican. As Shakespeare wrote, Senator -- that way… madness… lies. You have missed a critical opportunity to do... what was right. No matter what Ms. Ferraro now claims, no one took her comments out of context. She had made them on at least three separate occasions, then twice more on television this morning. Just hours ago, on NBC Nightly News, she denied she had made the remarks in an interview -- only at a paid political speech. In fact, the first time she spoke them, was ten days before the California newspaper published them... not in a speech, but in a radio interview. On February 26th, quoting... "If Barack Obama were a white man, would we be talking about this, as a potential real problem for Hillary? If he were a woman of any color, would he be in this position that he's in? Absolutely not." The context was inescapable. Two minutes earlier, a member of Senator Clinton's Finance Committee, one of her "Hill-Raisers," had bemoaned the change in allegiance by Super-Delegate John Lewis from Clinton to Obama, and the endorsement of Obama by Senator Dodd. "I look at these guys doing it," she had said, "and I have to tell you, it's the guys sticking together." A minute after the "color" remarks, she was describing herself as having been chosen for the 1984 Democratic ticket, purely as a woman politician, purely to make history. She was, in turn, making a blind accusation of sexism -- and dismissing Senator Obama's candidacy as nothing more than an Equal Opportunity stunt. The next day she repeated her comments to a reporter from the newspaper in Torrance, California. "If Obama was a white man, he would not be in this position. And if he was a woman (of any color) he would not be in this position. He happens to be very lucky to be who he is. And the country is caught up in the concept." And when this despicable statement -- ugly in its overtones, laughable in its weak grip of facts, and moronic in the historical context -- when it floats outward from the Clinton Campaign like a poison cloud, what do the advisors have their candidate do? Do they have Senator Clinton herself compare the remark to Al Campanis talking on Nightline... on Jackie Robinson day... about how blacks lacked the necessities to become baseball executives, while she points out that Barock Obama has not gotten his 1600 delegates as part of some kind of Affirmative Action plan? Do they have Senator Clinton note that her own brief period in elected office, is as irrelevant to the issue of judgment as is Senator Obama's… …while she points out that FDR had served only six years as a governor and state Senator before he became President? Or that Teddy Roosevelt had four-and-a-half years before the White House? Or that Woodrow Wilson had two years and six weeks? Or Richard Nixon… fourteen... and Calvin Coolidge 25? Do these advisors have Senator Clinton invoke Samantha Power -- gone by sunrise after she used the word "monster" -- and have Senator Clinton say, "this is how I police my campaign and this is what I stand for," while she fires former Congresswoman Ferraro from any role the campaign? No. Somebody tells her that simply disagreeing with and rejecting the remarks is sufficient. And she should then call, "regrettable", words that should make any Democrat retch. And that she should then try to twist them, first into some pox-on-both-your-houses plea to 'stick to the issues,' and then to let her campaign manager try to bend them beyond all recognition, into Senator Obama's fault. And thus these advisers give Congresswoman Ferraro nearly a week in which to send Senator Clinton's campaign back into the vocabulary... of David Duke. "Any time anybody does anything that in any way pulls this campaign down and says let's address reality and the problems we're facing in this world, you're accused of being racist, so you have to shut up. "Racism works in two different directions. I really think they're attacking me because I'm white. "How's that?" How's that? Apart from sounding exactly like Rush Limbaugh attacking the black football quarterback Donovan McNabb? Apart from sounding exactly like what Ms. Ferraro said about another campaign, nearly twenty years ago? Quote: "President Reagan suggested Tuesday that people don't ask Jackson tough questions because of his race. And former representative Geraldine A. Ferraro (D-N.Y.) said Wednesday that because of his "radical" views, "if Jesse Jackson were not black, he wouldn't be in the race." So... apart from sounding like insidious racism that is at least two decades old? Apart from rendering ridiculous, Senator Clinton's shell-game about choosing Obama as Vice President? Apart from this evening's resignation letter? "I am stepping down from your finance committee so I can speak for myself and you can continue to speak for yourself about what is at stake in this campaign. "The Obama campaign is attacking me to hurt you." Apart from all that? Well. It sounds as if those advisors want their campaign to be associated with those words, and the cheap… ignorant… vile… racism that underlies every syllable... And that Geraldine Ferraro has just gone free-lance. Senator Clinton: This is not a campaign strategy. This is a suicide pact. This week alone, your so-called strategists have declared that Senator Obama has not yet crossed the "commander-in-chief threshold"… But -- he might be your choice to be Vice President, even though a quarter of the previous sixteen Vice Presidents have become commander-in-chief during the greatest kind of crisis this nation can face: a mid-term succession. But you'd only pick him if he crosses that threshold by the time of the convention. But if he does cross that threshold by the time of the convention, he will only have done so sufficiently enough to become Vice President, not President.
Senator, if the serpentine logic of your so-called advisors were not bad enough... Now, thanks to Geraldine Ferraro, and your campaign's initial refusal to break with her, and your new relationship with her -- now more disturbing still with her claim that she can now "speak for herself" about her vision of Senator Obama as some kind of embodiment of a quota... If you were to seek Obama as a Vice President, it would be, to Ms. Ferraro, some kind of social engineering gesture, some kind of racial make-good. Do you not see, Senator? To Senator Clinton's supporters, to her admirers, to her friends for whom she is first choice, and her friends for whom she is second choice, she is still letting herself be perceived as standing next to, and standing by, racial divisiveness and blindness… And worst yet, after what President Clinton said during the South Carolina primary, comparing the Obama and Jesse Jackson campaigns -- a disturbing, but only borderline remark... After what some in the black community have perceived as a racial undertone to the "3 A-M" ad... a disturbing -- but only borderline interpretation... And after that moment's hesitation in her own answer on 60 Minutes about Obama's religion -- a disturbing, but only borderline vagueness... After those precedents, there are those who see a pattern... false, or true. After those precedents, there are those who see an intent... false, or true. After those precedents, there are those who see the Clinton campaign's anything-but-benign neglect of this Ferraro catastrophe -- falsely or truly -- as a desire to hear the kind of casual prejudice which still haunts this society voiced... and to not distance the campaign from it. To not distance you from it, Senator! To not distance you... from that which you as a woman, and Senator Obama as an African-American, should both know and feel with the deepest of personal pain! Which you should both fight with all you have! Which you should both insure, has no place in this contest!
This, Senator Clinton, is your campaign, and it is your name. Grab the reins back from whoever has led you to this precipice, before it is too late. Voluntarily or inadvertently, you are still awash in this filth. Your only reaction has been to disagree, reject, and to call it regrettable. Her only reaction has been to brand herself as the victim, resign from your committee, and insist she will continue to speak. Unless you say something definitive, Senator, the former Congresswoman is speaking with your approval. You must remedy this. And you must... reject... and denounce... Geraldine Ferraro. Good night, and good luck.
Yep. IF you want to learn what crap the Clinton campaign's throwing at America on the eve of Super Tuesday Two, you've come to the right place. This is a video of Keith Olbermann's show featuring Rachel Medow of Air America Radio. They look at the Clinton 3:10 AM ad and pick it apart as "Something a person running for John McCain's Vice Presidential seat" would do.
This is simply one of the most "spot-on" monologues I've ever seen MSNBC's Keith Olbermann do. He gets after CNN's Lou Dobbs for Dobbs' really terrible and just plain racist rants about immigration. Check this out:
explains, Keith Olberman caught Glenn Beck's "white lie" told to the crowd at the August 28th rally:
Thomas Hayes is a political strategist, entrepreneur, and journalist currently working for the Madore for Congress campaign in Minnesota's Second Congressional District. He contributes regularly to a host of web sites on topics ranging from economics and politics to culture and community.
