In order to balance out last week’s Worldcon nerd/nerd/nerd edition, here’s an all-geek installment... and it’s all Keith Olbermann. Keith was on fire last night -- I caught his show on DirectTV on the flight home from Los Angeles (thank you, JetBlue, for your seatback satellite television) and I was stunned and delighted to see him even more justifiably angry and wonderfully articulate than he usually is. He was channeling the spirit of Edward R. Murrow as he took defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld to task for his speech, earlier in the day on Wednesday, in which he impugned the patriotism of Americans who disagree with the Bush administration’s take on, well, just about everything.
You can watch a video of Keith’s entire rant on Crooks and Liars, but here’s a choice excerpt:
[T]o date, this government has proved little besides its own arrogance, and its own hubris.Mr. Rumsfeld is also personally confused, morally or intellectually, about his own standing in this matter. From Iraq to Katrina, to the entire “Fog of Fear” which continues to envelop this nation, he, Mr. Bush, Mr. Cheney, and their cronies have — inadvertently or intentionally — profited and benefited, both personally, and politically.
And yet he can stand up, in public, and question the morality and the intellect of those of us who dare ask just for the receipt for the Emporer’s New Clothes?
I always get a huge kick out of Keith’s throwing in little commentaries on the day’s events via quotes from The Simpsons or Internet in-jokes, but it’s when he’s dead serious, like he was last night, that his geeky intellectualism -- which, in a way, redefines intellectualism as geekiness -- is at its pinnacle.
(Technorati tags: geek, Keith Olbermann)
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