Via Dennis Dale, I learn that Keith Olbermann took notice of Andrew Bacevich's Sycophant Savior essay in the Oct. 8 American Conservative. Dale writes that "Olbermann evinced (or affected) an unlikely ignorance of the vast gulf between current Republican Party leadership and the American Conservatives' valiant insurgency, deliberately encouraging the misunderstanding that the magazine and such Republican boosters as Rush Limbaugh are intellectual and political kin. Similar to the neocon's creative categorization of Shi'ite Hezbollah along with Sunni Al Qaeda."
I'm guessing that Olbermann had no idea of the vast gulf separating TAC from the Republican and rightwing establishment, which is pretty sad considering that the publication was cofounded by his MSNBC coworker, Pat Buchanan. I remember PJB and Bill Press promoting the first issue on that channel five years ago.
Olbermann declaimed that "for some reason there does not seem to be a George Bush-led race among Republicans to blast either Limbaugh or 'The American Conservative' the way they so happily wrung hands over the MoveOn.org Petraeus advertisement." For anyone in the know--a comparison between Bacevich, a perceptive critic and author who is one of our finest thinkers on foreign policy; and Limbaugh, a boorish ignoramus--is laughable. Also, I can't imagine Olbermann resisting Bacevich's backstory--a Vietnam veteran who lost his son to the Iraq War--if he had known about it.
P.S. When I wrote the part about the discussion of TAC's first issue it occurred to me that the magazine is now five years old. Happy Birthday!
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4 comments:
You have got to be kidding me! Are you really this stupid or are you just hoping people who stumble across this site are this stupid?
TAC and Lamebrain are as related to the Republican party as MooOn is to the Dems.
KO must have you clowns pretty scared if this is the approach you want to take.
Buchanan comes across as much more sympathetic to the Bush administration on MSNBC than he does in print, and the guy did endorse Bush in 2004 after all. So Olbermann's confusion might be understandable.
I happened to hear Olbermann holding forth on this the other night, and I winced. And I agree with ashish george that Olbermann's confusion is understandable. "Conservative" is, by now, completely useless as a descriptive political/philosophical category name, and TAC should have been called something else if they wanted to distinguish themselves readily and clearly from the pachyderm caucus of the War BiParty.
Ashish george also makes a good point about Mr. Buchanan, to whom I pay no attention -- he has that whole "chameleon" thing down much too well. Who's the real Pat -- the one whose writings appear at Antiwar.com, or the one you see on MSNBC and McLaughlin? Better question: who cares?
Bartleby is right that "conservative" is almost fatally tainted at this point, and had TAC's founders consulted me five years ago, I would have suggested another name.
George has a point about the way that Buchanan sounds diffrent in print than he does on TV, but it isn't relevant to the Bacevich article.
Anymous however has his head up you-know-where. If he thinks that TAC is to closely aligned to the Republicans, then he should try Bacevich's contributions to the LA Times, Boston Globe, The London Review of Books, and The Nation--all Republican party propaganda organs. He should look to TAC to read such Republican shills as Kirkpatrick Sale, James Howard Kunstler and Glenn Greenwald.
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