Clinton's Righteous Anger Justified, Needed
1 Comments Ryan Welton on Wednesday, September 27, 2006 at 2:10 PM.
For those of you who missed it, here is Keith Olbermann's oral essay on FOX News' interview with Bill Clinton on Sunday.
Olbermann's brilliance is in top form here, but another Web site reported on Wednesday that the MSNBC pundit got a surprise in the mail on Tuesday.
It should come as no surprise that some right-wing wacko would plan on killing Olbermann. It hasn't come to this just yet, but Olbermann truly serves as the single greatest threat to the Bush administration, outside of the president's own incompetence. Olbermann has a way of connecting concepts in such a way that a third-grader can understand them yet an intellectual progressive can appreciate them.
He's dangerous because he's preaching the truth to an audience that is growing by the day.
As to the Clinton interview, right-wing bloggers have taken to coloring Clinton's face to make it seem red. Drudge used the headline "Purple-Faced Anger," but in truth Clinton's face never even turned pink. I've watched the interview several times on a color-calibrated television, and the only thing animated about the interview were Clinton's words.
Olbermann correctly points out the connection between concepts in George Orwell's "1984" and our nightly news, whereby the past is being erased for the purpose of creating a new truth -- this concept that, somehow, Clinton was actually to blame not only for 9/11 but also for the failure to catch Osama bin Laden since.
Olbermann also knows his history, comparing Bush to our 15th president, James Buchanan. However, I don't know that a direct parallel can be made considering Buchanan was to the Civil War what Clinton actually was to 9/11, the guy before the disaster.
The comparison relative to incompetence is certainly justified in my opinion, though.
Nevertheless, Clinton was right to show some anger in Sunday's interview. Truth be told, it's important that Democrats start demonstrating some emotion as we approach 2008. I think taking it as far as Vermont's Howard Dean did in 2004 is risky; however, when William Jefferson Clinton gets pissed off, particularly as it pertains to a matter of policy, he does so with righteous anger.
Righteous anger is what Olbermann is continuing to demonstrate competently.
And, righteous anger is what the Dems need desperately in 2008. I still don't see anybody in the party, outside of Bill, who can bring it with effectiveness.
The conservative media has blamed Clinton for everything bad in the world since 1992. The fact that Clinton has been out of office for six years has done little to slow the blame game. The fact that the Republicans control all the branches of federal government (and yes I include the judicial) apparently does not mean they are responsible for anything. I don't know what Clinton expected when he went on the fairy-tale network for an interview. I would have expected an unfair and unbalanced right wing agenda to be advanced. I would have been right.