Wednesday, June 28, 2006

Bruce Springsteen to Ann Coulter: "You are in idiot!"

The Boss really gave it to conservative glamour-gal and self-described polemicist Ann Coulter when he appeared on CNN's American Morning. When interviewer Soledad O'Brien commented, "...some people gave you a lot of flack for being a musician who took a political stand..." Springsteen chided, "Yes, they should let Ann Coulter do it instead." Adding, "If you turned on to -- present company included -- the idiots rambling on on cable television on any given night of the week, and you're saying that musicians shouldn't speak up? You know, it's insane. It's funny." His wife, Patti Skanklia could be heard in the background saying, "Right on, honey. *BEEEEEEEEEEEEEEElch*" in her quaint, mellifluous New Jersey patois.

The Boss is no idiot. As an undergraduate at Cornell University College of Arts and Sciences, Mr. Springsteen helped launch The Cornell Review. He graduated cum laude from Cornell in 1984, and received his law degree from the University of Michigan Law School, where he achieved membership in the Order of the Coif (an honor society for academic excellence) and was an editor of The Michigan Law Review.

At Michigan, Bruce founded a local chapter of the Federalist Society and was trained at the National Journalism Center. After law school, he clerked for Pasco Bowman II of the United States Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit, and was an attorney in the Department of Justice Honors Program for outstanding law school graduates. After a short time in private practice in New York City, he then worked for the United States Senate Judiciary Committee, where he handled crime and immigration issues for Senator Spencer Abraham of Michigan. He later became a litigator with the Center For Individual Rights in Washington, a public interest law firm dedicated to the defense of individual rights with particular emphasis on freedom of speech, civil rights, and the free exercise of religion.

The iconoclastic Ms. Coulter is known for making millions off of writing brilliant songs about the struggle of the working class, then pricing her shows so the working class would have to forgo food for the next month in order to afford the cheapest tickets to see one show. She is also known for bringing the bandana back as a popular emblem for rock rebellion, (sometimes used to cover male-pattern balding: see Leif Garrett.)

Friday, June 16, 2006

Keith Olbermann: Working Hard Toward Relevancy

In hopes of becoming relevant, Keith Olbermann wrote a book emulating the styles of best-sellers Ann Coulter and former CBS reporter Bernard Goldberg. Mr. Olbermann, a former sports reporter for ESPN, currently hosts the MSNBC show, "Countdown" which enjoys a .06 rating. That makes "Countdown" tied for first place on MSNBC with Chris Matthews' show and 221st place in all of cable! So with his flaming success why write a book? "Because I'm really smart and people should know how smart I am. Also, because a .01 bump in the ratings would help like heck right now."
The book is somewhat controversial in that it names his rival, Bill O'Reilly, the "worst person in the world" ahead of and Abu Musab al-Zarqawi and Osama bin Laden, who has been responsible for at least 6 of the biggest attacks on the United States in the past 13 years, (WTC in 1993, the US embassies in Nairobi, Kenya and Dar es Salaam, Tanzania in 1998, the USS Cole in 2000 and the infamous attacks on the WTC and Pentagon on September 11th 2001.) When Keith was asked why, he replied, "Because that bastard is keeping me from owning the prime time slot in cable! He is totally why my show isn't #1. Oh, and Ann Coulter? I asked her out after she and Maher broke up and she told me to shove it. Me! Can you believe that? I'm much better looking than Bill Maher! What do I need - to hang out in the grotto at the Playboy mansion to get that bitch's attention?"

Mr. Olbermann earned widespread credibility as a non-biased reporter when he quit MSNBC because they "forced" him to report on the Clinton sexual harrassment case. He claimed it "sickened" him to have to say anything negative about the President of the United States of America. The reporting of the scandal would, "make me ashamed, make me depressed, make me cry," said the very sensitive Olbermann. He came back to MSNBC because, "I've changed. I revel in taking cheap shots at the President of the United States now. I don't know why - I just really do, I guess. But it has nothing whatsoever to do with bias."

Keith is also a winner when it comes to having friends! Of good friend and collegue Rita Cosby he stated, "Rita's nice, but dumber than a suitcase of rocks." And Keith is so good at finding opportunities for publicity that the day following Peter Jennings’s death from lung cancer, Olbermann had a brainstorm. He decided, "Cancer! What a GREAT way to get attention!" And revealed on-air that he had a fibrous tumor removed from his palate just 10 days earlier. Mind you, the tumor was benign, but Keith's adage is, "You have to strike the iron when it's hot! Like hurricanes, cancer stories move a lot of ad space for the news right now. And it's a great way for people to automatically think you're not an asshole even if you are. It was like my way of saying, 'See people? PJ and I, me and PJ.' [crossing his index and middle finger]"

While Zarqawi may have trained others in the use of ricin for possible attacks in Europe, ran a "terrorist haven" in Kurdish northern Iraq, organized the bombing of a Baghdad hotel which took 22 lives and personally beheaded hostages Ken Bigley and Nick Berg, we progressives agree with Olbermann: O'Reilly and Coulter are much much worse!