TO: Keith Olbermann 09-05-07

RE: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/20593445/

A friend just passed on your comments from last night's show. I no longer receive MSNBC, or any other cable channel. Perhaps she knew that.

I fired your station, along with the rest for their singular betrayal of this nation and humanity itself. I learn more from Amy in an hour than all the networks and their adulterated bullshit allow me (as in, try to treat me like the child I am not) to know in a year. I eschew gatekeepers.

Media is not in a happy place today. My local rag, the St Pete Times, ran the banner yesterday that is the subject of your piece: "Bush sees possible withdrawal in Iraq" (in 10-point), thence doing this criminal admin's dirty bidding for them. Again. These are not bad people; not even traitors. If you asked them (and I have) they would tell you they are merely trying to report the "news." A similar position was espoused by the editor of Berlin's Volkisher Boebachter in the 30s. The only place for "opinion", they emphasize, is on the op or op-ed pages. When I point out that such a high-minded approach only works with a certain level (lower and lower, it seems) of honesty and fair play, the retort is that human affairs are all about advantage and unfair play. Silly me thought it was precisely their purpose to unmask same.

In short: it is simply not their job to be the arbiter of who or what is right or wrong as a function of reporting the "news." Given this construct, the poor reader who seeks the truth of a matter must figure out for her/himself where that truth lies. Don't even think of looking for help from the folks who are hip-deep in this stuff every day. Some help, eh?

One of any number of poignant analogies here might be of the safari guide who, when you (his customer) spy an extremely large carnivore bearing down on you with lunch on its mind, and in reponse to your query as to your best course of action says, "I'd get out of its way as fast as you can, but it's up to you to determine whether or not it can climb that tree."

Such an idiutic and circuler paradigm leaves one prey to the ravings and lunacy of a Limbaugh, Hannity, or Horowitz. If your luck holds, you end up on the more rational doorstep of a Thom Hartmann or Keith Olbermann; getting some light along with the heat. But, it's still a helluva way to run a railroad. At the moment they are most needed, the media is struck dumb by some fanciful notion of countenancing liars and cheats in service to goddamned faiplay for all.

Utter tripe to any person for whom thinking is an honor, not a burden.

Like yourself, I believe nothing this gang of Fascistic thugs says. Having been a long-time fan of the likes of Molly (she did her damnedest to warn us), Greg (Palast), Bill (Moyers), and your own sweet self - and knowing an honest broker when I see/read one - it's tough to slide one low and inside by me (couldn't let this end sans at least one metaphor from your fave sport). Would that the same could be said about the distracted and "framed," - and yes, played - American public.

While I'm not sure where all this will end up - will we summon up the balls, uh, intellectual honesty, to make the long overdue systemic changes to our decrepit (and increasingly antediluvian and irrelevant in a world moving forward to a place where we have, until recently, led them to aspire to) courts, voting rules, polemical regime, run amok laissez-faire-whatever-you-can-grab mentality, self-defeating and endless series of populist "crusades" against mostly victimless crimes (see Lou Dobbs, et al), rampant and unceasing rationalizations to keep blacks and browns unequal and in chains no less surely than if they were still on the plantation (of which some 3 to 6 million still literally are), and on and on ad nauseum - I am glad you are where you are, doing what you do; thankless task though it may be.

As Ms. Mead once opined, nothing will change here until enough folks get off their comfortable asses and afflict the comfortable, and nothing else ever has.

Good night and good luck, Sir Keith. I love you, man.

Nigel j Watson

freesense@gmail.com

727.822.9290

P.S. Give your bodyguards a raise.