Keith Olbermann: "Life Panels" And An American Cry For Help

"Subhuman ghoul" Alert: In the wake of the healthcare summit, this post has been updated.

Surfing channels last night before the elusive Sandman finally came to visit, I came across Keith Olbermann.

Now, normally, I zip right on by. Olbermann, in my book, is the worst excuse for a journalist I've ever encountered in my forty-some years of news watching (and that's saying something since these days I'm mostly a Fox viewer). And it's not because he's dead wrong about just about everything. It's because what he does is not journalism. It's not impartial or balanced. It doesn't even try to be. And lately, as "the teabaggers" he hates wreak havoc on his plans for total world domination by and for those of a progressive mindset, Olbe's partisan rants have become increasingly shrill and rude and disjointed. It's actually painful to watch now. Like the Edwards saga.

Like last night.

Last night, I paused because Olbe's lip was quivering and his eyes were misted over. This was clearly must-see-TV. My surf had landed me smack-dap in the middle of a rant on healthcare reform featuring the trials and tribulations of his seriously-ill Father (it sounds like he has MRSA) . . . over whom our hero apparently has healthcare power-of-attorney.

That alone would scare the hell out of me. We'll get to why in a minute.

Now, I had landed on the tail-end of the rant . . . when Olbe characteristically glares into the camera with that educated hurt puppy-dog look and then, like a rabid bull dog, hurls what Ed Cone calls "invective" at the target(s) of his self-righteous rage (best recent example: his riff on Scott Brown). Coming in on the tail end, I could not make heads or tails of "the point" Olbe was trying to make except (obviously) that anyone who stood in the way of Obama's grand plans for healthcare reform (the much bally-hooed healthcare summit is today) were "sub-human ghouls". Then, Olbe delivered his "closing argument":

And I want all of you to think of somebody lying in a hospital bed tonight who needed that care and needed that conversation, and imagine that that is your father, or mother, or son, or daughter, or wife, or husband, or partner. If you cannot do that, if you cannot put aside the meaninglessness of your political careers for this, my request to you then, is that you not come back out of that meeting for you would not be worthy of being with the real people of this country who suffer, and suffer again because you have acted on behalf of the corporations and not the people.

If you cannot do this, go into that room and stay there and we'll get new ones to replace your worthless roles in the life of our country. My father cannot speak for himself. He appointed me to do so for him and I haven't the slightest doubt he wants me to say this tonight, right now.

He mouthed the words to me and I will now give them such voice as I have to you going into that summit tomorrow. Help. Help. Help. Help.

As Olbe's picture faded into the furrowed brow of Rachel Maddow (that's when the TV went OFF), I leaned back against my pillow and marvelled that this premeditated emotionally-manipulative clap-trap was on MSNBC passing itself off as journalism . . . while my story-of-woe still cannot get the time of day from even a local journalist.
This morning, I tracked down the text of Olbe's rant.

And I'm sorry to say, I still cannot make heads or tails out of it. I mean, Olbe seems to have taken a delirious plea for pain relief from his septic Father (again, it sounds like MRSA), realizing the man was not (at that time) terminally ill, and turned it into a request to die.

And Olbe (acting like the chairman of a death panel) actually took that request to doctors . . . doctors who wound up giving his Father a sedative instead of a lethal injection.

Olbe's rant proceeds on to its politicized end. Legitimate concerns about the rationing of care that will likely result from Obama's proposals for a government take-over of healthcare (which some have likened to "death panels") become, in Olbe's tortured mind, an affront to a simple request for pain relief blown all out of proportion.
Moreover, there's just something inherently creepy about the semantics of turning "death panels" into "life panels" . . . word-play that, historically speaking, always turns out badly.

Anyway, my point it this: I don't have a lot of hope that this healthcare summit is going to amount to very much. And that's because it's just not . . . and cannot just be . . . about the people on the receiving end of care.

It's about the people giving it. It's about the people who have to encounter and deal with the likes of a histrionic Keith Olbermann in the middle of the night (knowing full well he'll exploit the hell out of it the next day on TV) . . .

. . . people who respond to horrific disasters and find themselves facing criminal charges for murder . . .

. . . people who blow the whistle on bad care and wind up fighting off a bunch of Texas good-ole-boys . . .

. . . people who serve our country and are used/abused/abandoned . . .

. . . and, on a more local level (since that's what matters to the likes of Cone and Robinson), people who defy the edicts of "non-profit" executives in order to do their duty by a dying newborn, and as a reward see everything they held dear turned to ashes.

We need help too. We've needed it for a long time. But I don't see us being asked to testify about our horrible experiences before Congress . . .
. . . or sitting at Obama's table.

Ours is just as much an American cry for help as that of Keith Olbermann's Father.

And like Keith's dad, we just need some pain relief, not a lethal injection.

Evening Update: The summit is over. From my view not anywhere near the table (only two of the attendees were doctors), the blow-hard politicians put on a nice show that was essentially a massive waste of time (even the Brits think so). Obama did not appear the least bit "Presidential" as he made quips about not marking time because he was President . . . or showed his true colors when John McCain chided him about the closeted/highly partisan/laden-with-special-deals-&-outright-bribery process thus far . . . a process that fractured the President's own campaign promises.

Obama closed "the meeting" with a threat that makes it clear reconcilliation is going be to used to "Rahm" it down our throats. It's gonna be his way or the highway. Nice.
Right now, I vote for the highway . . . for the President and anyone who makes good on this threat. Like he said, that's what elections are for.

The promises you made during that campaign are how you got to sit in that chair and not mark your time, Mr. President. Baby steps actually work very well in terms of developing the stride that gets people where they need to go. And the process DOES matter.

I guess thinking this way makes me a "subhuman ghoul" in Olbe's book.

Whatever.