Keith Olbermann really ripped into Glenn Beck tonight. I didn't tape it, and I don't want to wait for the repeat, but trust me, KO ripped into GB. But there's a problem: In attacking Beck so feverishly, Olby let slip more of his own persnickety persona. It seems that Beck committed the great crime, in Olbermann's eyes, of misspelling the word "oligarchy"--the Fox man left off the "c."
Is that a big deal, or not? Most people would say "no." But instead, KO made a huge deal out of it, and then went into a generalized diatribe against Fox News viewers. You read that right: Olbermann didn't just attack Fox News (his usual term is "Fixed News"), but went after Fox News viewers. Nothing really new there, either--Olbermann has called them "racists" in the past, and tonight he added, "stupid," I think. You get the idea.
But tonight Olbermann used another telling cultural reference. He repeatedly referred to Beck as "'Lonesome' Rhodes." Who? Larry "Lonesome" Rhodes was the character played by Andy Griffith in the 1957 movie, "A Face in the Crowd." The Rhodes character is a genial, southern-fried, entertainer, who gets his own network TV show, only to be revealed, at the end of the movie, as a bad guy. Indeed, he is revealed as a nogoodnik on live television, to the horror of his gullible fans, thus destroying his appeal and ruining his career.
"Face" is a good movie, directed by the great Elia Kazan,but at the same time, it is undeniably a film for snobbish liberals, the kind who look down on a) TV and b) Middle America. In this Hollywood telling, those Middle American TV watchers are portrayed as simple-minded boobs--the kind who would fall for a vaguely Elmer Gantry-esque huckster such as Lonesome Rhodes. It's nice that at the end of the movie the "booboisie" is rescued from its ignorance by the egregious nastiness of Lonesome, but as the film makes clear, Lonesome's rottenness had to be spelled out for the full folks watching him on the boob tube. Spelled out IN BIG LETTERS. Otherwise, the simple dolts never would've figured it. (Although, of course, the movie audience is in on the truth about Lonesome all along during the film.) That's snobbish liberalism for you, in 1957.
And a half century later, in 2009, nothing has changed. Olbermann assumes that the Fox audience is dumb--heck, he says that they are dumb.
But the question, for 2009, is who is the real demagogue? Who thinks that his audience is dumb, so dumb that it will fall for anything? It seems to The Cable Gamer that it's the MSNBC audience that is being duped.
Oh sure, MSNBC watchers think that they are in on the joke--that by watching "Countdown," the folks at home can join in on the snobbish fun. But of course, for the smug world of Manhattan-based liberals, ordinary Americans aren't welcome, even if they are fellow liberals. For the Town Car Crowd--Olbermann and his coterie of usual-suspect guests, Lawrence O'Donnell, Arianna Huffington, Howard Fineman, there's no need to include any superfluous ordinary Americans, the kind who have no business being in the Hamptons. (Dana Milbank and Richard Wolffe are no longer invited to Olbermann's televised Republican-bashing fest.)
No, instead, MSNBC fans, the vast majority of them, will be stuck paying higher taxes, waiting in line for health care, and being left unemployed by cap-and-trade legislation, if that disastrous legislation passes. And at that point, the MSNBC masses--the ones without trust funds and TV contracts--will realize that they can't afford to insulate themselves from the consequences of limousine liberalism, for the simple reason that they lack limousines.
As for Olbermann, when he curls his lip and snarls at the camera, who thinks that he is just making fun of conservatives? It's obvious that he is mocking everyone, channeling his own inner H.L. Mencken. (Yes, Mencken was a conservative, for the most part, but above all else, Mencken was a snob, who appealed to the smart set without regard to ideology--because the shared ideology was epater la bourgeoisie.)
Does that make KO "the worst person in the world"? Well, I report, you decide. But I think that Americans of all "political colors"--red, purple, and, yes, even middle-class blue--will soon enough figure out what the real Olbermann is like. The camera doesn't lie.
So if there's a Lonesome on the airwaves, it's Keith Olbermann, not Glenn Beck. His own "Lonesome"-like meltdown is coming. It's just a matter of time.
That's a screen grab from "A Face in the Crowd," above, suitably updated.
