SwiftVets.com

[JK]

Below is Olbermann's blogger page re his "spin" on comments about Michelle Malkin after she appeared on Hard Ball. Matthews went crazy when Michelle mentioned Kerry had self inflicted his wound to earn a Purple Heart, he never gave her a chance to explain and berated her. Later Olbermann says Michelle made a fool of herself on Hard Ball.

On Saturday evening Olbermann's program spent a large amount of time focusing on discrediting the swift boat veterans for truth including his comments about Michelle Malkin. Michelle is now a target of the liberal media, Olbermann had a cut version of her interview with Rush Limbaugh (like Michael Moore) to place her in an unflattering situation.

Olbermann's blog:

• August 20, 2004 | 4:30 p.m. ET

And heere come the e-mails (Keith Olbermann)

For a moment there I thought I owed Michelle Malkin an apology.

Very few people who find themselves criticized on television, or even critically characterized, go out and make the criticism sound worse than it was. Evidently, judging by the fact that the same e-mail appeared a few hundred times in our Countdown inbox today (not similar e-mails; the identical one, with different return addresses), Ms. Malkin is one of the very few.

“How dare you call this woman an idiot?”

That’s apparently what she said, while appearing on Rush Limbaugh’s Entertainment Radio Program today. She certainly wrote it on her blog. To be precise: “his (Chris Matthews’) scurrilous charges were repeated by his MSNBC colleague Keith Olbermann, who called me an ‘idiot.’”

Well, I felt terrible. In my little naïve old-fashioned way, I feel you preserve terms like that exclusively for men. I was preparing a formal apology. Political differences, fault or innocence, are all secondary. There are codes.

Funniest darn thing happened, though. Checked the tape of the show, re-read the blog. I never called Michelle Malkin an “idiot.”

Never used the word.

Second time I referenced her, I did say “this woman, Malkin, who made a fool of herself on this network, about an hour ago…”

So that’s what you’re dealing with here. She’s an author or a journalist or something, and she misquoted the insult to herself.

For those of you scoring at home, the excerpts of both references to her on Countdown last night are appended below (look for the asterisk)

One more thing. Crack Senior Producer Denis Horgan reminds me that Ms. Malkin appeared on 'Real Time With Bill Maher' last Friday, and was shut down by my Cornell contemporary (he’s older) when Maher referred to President Bush as “The Boy In The Bubble.”

Last night on 'Hardball,' Ms. Malkin went for a similar thrust against John Kerry by calling him… “The Boy In The Bubble.”

Now that’s a coincidence.

Final note here: Ms. Malkin complains online that I wrote I was never prouder of Matthews, which reminds me of something from my sportscasting days.

15 years ago, when I was still a comparative newcomer in television, I made a gigantic rookie’s mistake. Bill Stout, the legendary Los Angeles newsman who haunted the hallways as a figure of indomitable moral force, looked at me later that day and said, “I’m proud of you. You have courage. If I had just done that on television, I would go home, and open my veins.”

So, Michelle Malkin, I’m proud of you, too.

* *Olbermann on Malkin, during an interview with John Harwood, 8/19/04, No. 1: “And perhaps nothing better symbolizes that, at least in this week’s headlines, than the story of the ‘Swift Boat Veterans for Truth’ ad and now the fact that there’s another one coming out, and I guess we’re getting a hint, after the appearance of two people on “Hardball,” earlier this evening on MSNBC, Larry Thurlow and Michelle Malkin, that the next ad is going to be even more… I don’t know how to characterize it, it’s going to be more ‘out there’ than the previous one.” (My note: I got kinda lost in this question. I’m glad John Harwood knew what I was talking about).
* Olbermann on Malkin, still with Harwood, 8/19/04, No. 2: “Larry Thurlow said, and we just played a clip of it, that his belief was that John Kerry had arranged for not only his heroism in Vietnam, but also his ‘early out,’ which is a code word for being sent home, and you get sent home usually because you have been injury, meaning he arranged his own injury in some way. And this woman, Malkin, who made a fool of herself on this network, about an hour ago, basically said that in this -- in what she was reading, the book that accompanied the Swift Boat ad, that Kerry, at least, somebody asked whether or not Kerry should be asked, in that sort of, ‘let‘s step away from actually making a statement, let‘s just put it as a question about a question about a question...’” (My note: Boy, John really rolled with the punches here. This actually reads better than I sounded. But I believe the operative point is what I said about her, and what she says I said about her, and just how good her journalism really is when she can’t get a quote right when the show’s on tape, and the transcript’s on the Internet. For free!)

Keith Olbermann is soon going to have his own blog! 'Bloggermann' is coming soon. Check back at Countdown.msnbc.com.

• August 19, 2004 | 11:01 p.m. ET

Self-inflicted politics (Keith Olbermann)

My producer handed me a piece of paper, unexpectedly blank except for a brief quote that had just been clipped from Chris’ 'Hardball' interview with Larry Thurlow. He told me he thought the brief sound bite would fit ideally at the end of page A-2, our story on the conflict between Thurlow’s current version of the day John Kerry got his Purple Heart, and the Navy’s official records of 35 years ago— records that should have been written by Thurlow himself.

“I’m saying that he had a plan that included not only being a war hero, but getting an ‘early out.’”

There wasn’t much time to reflect —Countdown was to start about 20 minutes later— but the question formed quickly in my mind. “An ‘early out’? What the hell does he mean by that?”

The answer magically appeared moments later: “The Swift Boat Veterans For Truth” are going to steer the Kerry-Shot-Himself flotsam into the mainstream media.

Michelle Malkin, the unfortunate and overmatched author of a self-loathing book that attempts to justify our World War II internment and robbery of Americans of Japanese heritage, became the harbinger of the next mucky smell of low tide. She raised the story— heretofore consigned largely to Robert Novak and everybody to his right— in that delightful, Teflon way of modern politics: ‘I’m not saying that John Kerry shot himself. But in the Swift Boat Veterans’ book, they ask whether or not his wounds were self-inflicted.’

If Ms. Malkin isn’t seen on television, or moving on her own power, in the next few days, it’s understandable. My colleague Mr. Matthews forced her to hang herself out to dry ten or eleven times (never prouder of you, Chris). He may have directed the momentum, but her wounds were ultimately, uh, self-inflicted.

As Chris rightly pointed out, nobody has produced an iota of evidence that John Kerry’s wounds were anything other than the result of combat. Even in the book, the references to it are speculative and without provenance. Ms. Malkin wouldn’t even go so far as to attribute the suspicion to herself. It was in the book.

Late Thursday, the Swift Boat gang announced a second commercial to premiere in the morning, and to this writing, nobody’s been tipped about what it contains. Yet the Thurlow comment (“he had a plan”) and Malkin’s humiliating performance reek of a trial balloon. The story of the wounds will appear somewhere— probably soon.

When I raised this prospect with John Harwood of 'The Wall Street Journal,' several viewers e-mailed to chastise us for not recognizing the difference between wounds that are “self-inflicted” and those that are deliberate attempts to injure one’s self. Throw a grenade, wipe out an enemy enclave, and get a piece of shrapnel in your head in the blow-back, and you’ve received a self-inflicted wound. It isn’t intentional and it isn’t dishonorable.

But of course that’s not what Thurlow said. He spoke of some vast Swift Boat Conspiracy in which Kerry steered not a crew of soldiers through hell, but rather, steered history. “A plan,” Thurlow said. “Included not only being a war hero,” Thurlow said. “But (also) getting an ‘early out’,” Thurlow said.

He’s not talking about an inadvertent blow-back wound. It was all a plan. And if the wounds weren’t deliberately self-inflicted (again, kudos Chris— he immediately told Malkin that such an act constituted a criminal offense), they must have occurred thanks to the timely cooperation of the Viet Cong, who were good enough to shoot Kerry on cue so he could go back home with all those medals and ribbons. You know, the ribbons he threw away in protest.

We’ll save the logical disconnect that pops up right there for another time.

This is about the politics of the Smear Thrice Removed. I’m not saying this, but questions have been raised by others.

It is a perfected version of what many of President Bush’s opponents have tried in the murky depths of his reservist days. It is execrable no matter who presents it, no matter which party benefits from it.

We will hear from the very jaded that it is nothing new. It was Winston Churchill, 70 years ago, who so succinctly, and so English-ly, noted “Politics are foul.” But with instant communications, the internet explosion, and the 527 Groups, they are foul at warp-speed. The blur between an accusation with at least a thimble of evidence upon which it can rest, and the whole cloth fabrication, is so rapid as to appear as a solid line.

It is remarkable to think that we are living in the same country where a vast majority of the population never knew that Franklin Roosevelt was in a wheelchair, and where four different Republican presidential challengers, successively more and more distant of electoral chance and more and more desperate to close the widening gap, actually believed it inappropriate and unfair, just to mention it.

And that one was true.

Could Mr. Roosevelt’s limitations have been self-inflicted? Maybe some historian is asking that question. Because certainly I’m not.

Keith Olbermann is soon going to have his own blog! 'Bloggermann' is coming soon. Check back at Countdown.msnbc.com.

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