Tuesday, November 09, 2010

You think you're so illustrious, you call yourself intense

I remember watching Keith Olbermann back in his ESPN days and he was amusing, especially when paired on SportsCenter with the affable Dan Patrick. He's long since left what is known in the biz as the "toy department" and has long been a very strange presence on MSNBC.

What I've never been able to figure out is this: how much of what he says is real and how much of it is shtick. I think this piece by Ed Driscoll is spot on. Driscoll quotes a reader on Instapundit who described Olbermann thus:

The act is not at all what Olbermann says it is. It’s a very old act: The fire and brimstone preacher.

The left has become horrifically sanctimonious. They have become what they hated in the right back in the 60s.

Every issue for the left is a moral issue on the level of the Vietnam War and the Civil Rights movement. So, their opponents are always wicked devils consumed with sin.

And, it’s their job to save us from eternal damnation.

Olbermann is just the secular version of the fire and brimstone preacher.

Just nowhere near as attractive or moving.

You do get a sense that had Olbermann been born 350 years earlier, he'd have been fully capable of being Jonathan Edwards. Although I'd say Edwards is a lot more fair-minded.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Nice Cars Reference Mr. D!

It's seem like it was 350 years ago, but Jonathan Edward's song Sunshine was actually done in the late 60's. I'm still not sure what all that has to do with Keith, but I'll leave that up to you politicos. :)

Mr. D said...

Jonathan Edward's song Sunshine was actually done in the late 60's.

Well played.

Bike Bubba said...

To be fair to Edwards, his preaching has very little in common with most modern fire and brimstone preachers--which is a good thing to say about him, by the way. Edwards' writing, agree or not with him, is wonderful, and he's said to have delivered his most famous sermon, "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God," more or less in a monotone.

Not exactly your stompin' spittin' barnstorming evangelist, to put it mildly.

Mr. D said...

I agree, BB. Like I said, Edwards is more fair minded than Olbermann.