Why I Watch Olbermann...

With all of the Olbermann-bashing I do here I sometimes get asked why I watch him, usually by my wife, who doesn't watch him, and last night was an example of why I do. The following misses something when not read in his inimitable voice, but,

"From Times Square to arrested in 53 hours and 30 minutes and a president is not crowing and is not trying to terrify the citizens for whom he works."

I actually backed that up and replayed it. He then spent the segment crowing on the president, the FBI and the NYPD for bringing off what was a pretty spectacular piece of law enforcement work. Well, Obama had little to do with it actually, and Olbermann never really claimed that he did. He just sort of tossed some of the general glow his direction. It is also true that the perp was no intellectual giant, master's degree or not, and that he did get on an airplane when that should not really have been allowed. Nonetheless, in about two days, two days, they have his scrawny ass in a box.

One way you prevent a nation from becoming terrified by things like this is to track down the perpetrator in a heartbeat and slap cuffs on him. You have then portrayed an image of a government that knows what the hell it is doing, and people calm down. Whatever else you want to fling at Obama, he is pretty good at calming people down; so good at it that he sometimes just bores the shit out of them.

Obama did get this right and, for once, most of the media is cherry picking the right sound bites. "The purpose of these efforts is to cause us to live in terror," the President said, "and as a nation we will not be terrified."

Damn right.