A Convenient Realization

Sometimes one must see one’s actions reflected back to them, by another person committing them, to see how atrocious they really are. Now, I’m a dyed in the wool conservative, and I’m proud of it. I think of people like John Leo, John McCain, Milton Friedman, some of the more sane radio personalities, etc when I think of Conservatives. To me a conservative is a person who believes in self-reliance and the idea with the proper incentives that most people will do good, and live a good life. To a certain degree, most conservatives, myself included, believe that there is a certain minimum moral standard that is grounded in right versus wrong; however, the minimally acceptable bar isn’t that high.

Now, the conservatives have their nut jobs: Michael Savage, Ann Coulter, any televangelist, and, of course, Bill O’Reilly. Now, I’ve always thought these folks were kind of, a little bit of, douche-bags. They were little off base, maybe a bit too far off into the tall weeds on some of the issues; but, apart from a few transgressions, not that bad of folks. I was wrong, dead wrong. How did I come to this realization? Two words: Keith Olbermann.

Keith Olbermann was a former anchor for ESPN. While he was there, he was a great anchor, maybe a little preachy and self-important, but great on Sportscenter. He was hired away by MSNBC, and there he has become the left’s answer to Bill O’Reilly. The guy is a douche-bag on the level equal to, or greater than, the previous list of douche-bags plus one. The guy’s snide-ness, holier-than-thou attitude, and pandering to the left is deplorable. I would say pandering to the Democrats, but he is so far off into the Coo-coo for Crazy Puffs land that it would be disrespectful to Democrats to say this guy is pandering to them.

After watching a few clips of this guy on YouTube, I came to the conclusion that his method of comporting himself was disgusting. Then the realization hit (much in the vein of ‘if you point your finger at someone else, you have three pointing back at you’): this guy is a huge douche-bag and he is acting just like Bill O’Reilly, just with opposite politics. I no longer thing that the conservative shills are kinda douche-bags, they are full on douche-bags.

Bah, there are so few good commentators out there anymore. I think that John Leo, while very conservative, does a very good job of making good arguments and of keeping the conversation civil. I know that there must be people on the left who do this, I just don’t know them. (NPR does a good job of keeping their news and commentary civil, but they’re an organization, not and individual.) I just wish there was more intellectual discussion and less of the meta-arguments and ad-hominine attacks.

Later,

B