Olbermann: Manchurian Candidates and Fox

Keith blogs at Daily Kos:

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2008/5/2/115219/2226/754/507740

-snipped-

Starting with Senator Clinton and Fox. Nobody appreciates outrage about Fixed News more than do I. I am the East Coast Distributor of Fixed News Outrage. But hasn't the most telling explanation about the surprisingly-yawny Billo interview struck anybody? She did it because it was serious free television time and if it costs much more than free, she can't afford it.

She was doing a freakin' info-mercial.

This appearance with an 8 PM host on a network whose 9 PM host still likes to insist she's a murderer, is a kind of political version of the story of the legendary gossip columnist Walter Winchell, for 30 years dominating newspapers, radio, television, even film, and acting gigs like voiceovers for "The Untouchables." One day the tv show was cancelled. Then the radio. Then the newspapers started dropping the column. And seemingly overnight, Winchell is standing on a street corner with a handful of his columns, which he has typed out himself and copied on a mimeograph machine, and he is giving them away to passersby.

And the desperation in this was not one way. The Mighty Favog of Fox billed this as his "World Exclusive." To repeat two observations from last night's televisioning, if you live in your own world as he does, this might be technically correct. Billo's "World Exclusive" with her came ten days after my "World Exclusive" with her and ten days after Larry King's "World Exclusive" with her and the same day as Cynthia McFadden's "World Exclusive" with her. I am half expecting to see my buddy Joel McHale do a "World Exclusive" with her on E!'s The Soup.

The other point that has sung faintly in the distance to me in the past, just came up and yelled in my ear after I read it anew here: Coulter's invoking of The Manchurian Candidate about Obama -- and yes, this is something I'm teasing for its brief mention in tonight's Countdown.

Uhhhh... the premise of the movie (both the Frankenheimer classic and even the crapola Denzel Washington remake) was that the key figures in the plots were POW war heroes. Am I the only one who thinks this is a radioactive rod of an image which Ms. Coulter has decided to juggle? I mean, even if we acknowledge that even as a crazy bit of brainwashing imagery, it's a pretty stupid one that isn't going to fool more than 4100 voters nationwide - why would her ilk ever want to bring this one up, instead of sticking with something safe like "Trojan Horse"?

Well, I have to run. Have to prepare for my World Exclusive Interview with Richard Lewis tonight. It's my third one with him in the last nine days.