Your Humble Blogger has high standards for good speeches, and I certainly have my complaints about it. But Keith Olbermann’s Special Comment on 9/11 deserves mention. I won’t give a detailed critique of it, partly because I would feel bad picking on the man when I’m so grateful he made the speech, and partly because it’s hard for me to tell whether what seem to me to be flaws and irrelevancies are actually resonant with his audience.
I don’t know, for instance, whether the ABC miniseries that he punches has any real significance at all. It smacks, to me, of a fundamental mistake, drifting away from actions and policies to talking about how we talk about them. But then, that mistake may be fundamental not in his speech but in our culture, where it may be true that what is important is what is on teevee. And, of course, Mr. Olbermann is in the television world, speaking to a television audience. The subtext of his speech, unavoidable I would think, is that he is the only person on television saying this sort of thing. That’s not true, of course, but it seems to be true, which works. And it’s true enough that most of the country watching television yesterday probably didn’t get the idea that this was a failed presidency, deeply unpopular, espousing unpopular policies, propped up by a spectacularly unpopular legislative party espousing even more unpopular policies, speaking to a country that largely shares Mr. Olbermann’s indignant anger, but that was getting the impression (watching television) that their neighbors and compatriots did not. It’s an odd thing.
chazak, chazak, v’nitchazek,
-Vardibidian.
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