Hogan's Alley

Tuesday, July 03, 2007

Olberman Changes His Tune About Perjury and Obstruction of Justice

Keith Olberman was in high dungeon last night about the Libby commutation. He even suggested that a good model for us to follow in the wake of this final indignity by Bush would be the dictator Oliver Cromwell's dismissal of the Rump Parliament. Apparently he can not stand Bush to the degree that he no longer can tolerate our silly democratic processes and he wants to disenfranchise the rubes who reelected Bush and forced Olberman to tolerate another year and a half of the man.

Well, the last time Olberman was covering acts of perjury and obstruction of justice the alleged perpetrator was William Jefferson Clinton. Was Keith equally outraged at such dishonesty in the White House? No he was not.

Here are some quotes from NewsBusters:

Regarding Olbermann's denial that he was ever accused of "being a liberal" during the 1998 Monica Lewinsky scandal, while he was hosting MSNBC's Big Show, the MRC at that time documented several instances of hostility to Kenneth Starr, impeachment, Newt Gingrich and Republicans in general. On August 18, 1998, in the aftermath of President Clinton's speech admitting to his affair with Lewinsky, Olbermann thought it insightful to remark that Starr reminded him facially of Heinrich Himmler, and suggested some might compare Starr to a "persecutor opposed to a prosecutor."

Olbermann, from August 18, 1998: "Can Ken Starr ignore the apparent breadth of the sympathetic response to the President’s speech? Facially, it finally dawned on me that the person Ken Starr has reminded me of facially all this time was Heinrich Himmler, including the glasses. If he now pursues the President of the United States, who, however flawed his apology was, came out and invoked God, family, his daughter, a political conspiracy and everything but the kitchen sink, would not there be some sort of comparison to a persecutor as opposed to a prosecutor for Mr. Starr?"

Or this:

"It worked in Stalingrad. To some degree, it worked in the foreign compound during the Boxer Rebellion in Peking in 1900. It certainly seems to have worked for Bill Clinton. When there’s no capability of offense, no escape, and especially if you’re lucky enough to have an overconfident opponent -- just batten down the hatches and wait for the idiots to defeat themselves. Impeachment, once spoken gravely by presidential defenders and opponents alike, now engenders giggles and arguments about it carry all the weight of arguments about who is the rightful Czar of all the Russias."
-- MSNBC Big Show host Keith Olbermann, November 23, 1998
Apparently Olberman views consistency as the hobgoblin of small minds, at least when there are Republicans to be assaulted .

Labels: