Olbermann takes on Clinton

The Carpetbagger Report - USA - Many of us have come to enjoy MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann’s ‘Special Comments,” not only because they tend to highlight the outrages of the Bush administration in stark and powerful terms, but also because Olbermann has a tendency to say things no one else in television news is willing to say. When Olbermann gets into high dudgeon about torture, Iraq, or telecom immunity, it gives voice to a perspective that broadcast audiences simply never hear.

But last night, Olbermann went in a slightly different direction — he challenged Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign in a surprisingly forceful way.

The impetus for Olbermann’s outrage was Geraldine Ferraro’s racially-charged criticism of Barack Obama, not just published in one small California newspaper, but repeated on far-right talk-radio shows and Fox News, both before and after the report in the Daily Breeze. Speaking to Clinton, Olbermann said:

Senator, as it has reached its apex in their tone-deaf, arrogant and insensitive reaction to the remarks of Geraldine Ferraro, your own advisers are slowly killing your chances to become president.

Senator, their words, and your own, are now slowly killing the chances for any Democrat to become president. In your tepid response to this Ferraro disaster, you may sincerely think you are disenthralling an enchanted media and righting an unfair advance bestowed on Sen. Obama. You may think the matter has closed with Rep. Ferraro’s bitter, almost threatening resignation.

But in fact, Senator, you are now campaigning as if Barack Obama were the Democrat and you were the Republican. As Shakespeare wrote, Senator, that way madness lies.

Now, as it turns out, Olbermann’s timing may have been off slightly. The underlying point of his commentary was to implore Clinton to distance herself more forcefully from Ferraro’s transparently ugly remarks, after initially declining to do so (Olbermann said, “You have missed a critical opportunity to do what was right”). Of course, around the same time, Clinton was, in fact, doing just that.

But the “Special Comment” was not exclusively about Ferraro.

It was also about what Olbermann suggested might be a pattern.

To Sen. Clinton’s supporters, to her admirers, to her friends for whom she is first choice, and to her friends for whom she is second choice, she is still letting herself be perceived as standing next to, and standing by, racial divisiveness and blindness.