I can’t believe I haven’t been watching Countdown with Keith Olbermann all this time -- if a snarky, scathing political-newsy blog could be televised, this is probably what it would look like. I’m totally hooked... Olbermann is such a geek, and even if he is just a wee bit too old to be an Xer, he exudes Xer attitude. His show is full of pop-culture references, but not just any old random Simpsons quote to fill the time and get the kids interested -- he uses carefully chosen Simpsons quotes (as well as those from all sorts of other sources that only a gen-u-ine geek would use) to deliver a completely appropriate zinger when the idiocy of the world demands it. When he referenced the Kent Brockman line “I, for one, welcome our new insect overlords” the other night, my jaw actually dropped open, and how often does that really happen? It feels like my head is gonna explode when I think about the layers of meta twisting in on one another here: a newscaster on a major network commenting on corruption in media and government by alluding to a fake newscaster who attempts to curry favor with powers-that-be in a joke prompted by real-life corruption that itself comments on why sucking up to power rather than speaking truth to it is never gonna work out in your favor.
More importantly, Olbermann says things like this like he believes them, like he gets them. He’s my kind of “witty bastard,” as Slate called him.
Totally not at all important in my new decision to catch Olbermann whenever possible: Ohmigod, he’s like really cute.
The fresh flush of new infatuation I’m experiencing for Olbermann may help him displace my other newsy crush of long standing: journalist and CNN’s terrorism analyst Peter Bergen. (His new book, The Osama bin Laden I Know: An Oral History of al Qaeda's Leader, isn’t likely to be an Oprah selection, which is itself a fine recommendation, and is more than likely one of those rare nonfiction books these days that is relatively factual.) But he may have been on the way out anyway: He was on The Daily Show last night, and it turns out he’s got a giggle that kinda ruins the Britishy weighty intellectual thing he has going all those Sunday mornings on the CNN talk shows.
4 Comments
Leave a comment