John Ziegler On Olbermann, David Keene, And His Conservative Critics

Just to be clear, I happy to take the heat, but it is Keene who is important here, not me. The conservative media completely blew this one. The next time I hear a call for accountability within the leadership conservative movement I will suppress the vomiting sensation I am sure to get by simply laughing.

The conservative media is in the process of blowing another golden opportunity when it comes to their coverage of my $100,000 debate offer to Keith Olbermann.

This story should easily expose Olbermann as a fraud and coward. After all, if he really is in the right and even half the man he portrays himself to be then he should take my offer more quickly than he punched his ballot for Obama. He would get the chance to embarrass a frequent target and Palin defender on a show that would surely garner big numbers and his favorite charity would be $100,000 richer.

It should also be noted that Olbermann has made similar (though far less lucrative) charity offers of his own to Sean Hannity over water boarding. And yet, despite the fact that another major NBC show was interested in promoting/brokering this deal, Olbermann has not accepted the offer.

What possible explanation (other than well founded fear) could there be for Olbermann to not jump at this proposal? I think you know the answer. But despite Olbermann being completely boxed in, media from both sides of the political divide are allowing him to slither away, remarkably without even having to formally reject the bid.

The Huffington Post, which highlighted the Keene story, “strangely” decided that the Olbermann angle (which flowed directly from the Keene episode) was not even worthy of mention. Gee, I wonder why. No one else of note on the left has even bothered to write about it. Apparently the desire to protect Olby outweighs even their thirst to mock people like me.

Meanwhile, the big guns of the conservative media were also almost totally silent on a topic that (had it not tangentially involved Keene) might have easily unleashed a torrid attack.

In short, almost no one has seen it in their personal self interest to give any oxygen to this potential firestorm. Sadly, since personal self interest is what drives the vast majority of news coverage (especially in the low accountability world of the internet), it appears as if Olbermann will suffer as little consequence as Keene in all of this.

In fact, as I predicted in my original Mediaite piece, I am likely the only one who will endure any real penalty here. While these developments are unpleasant and unfortunate, they are hardly a surprise and I take solace from the knowledge that I have done right thing and that at least I have added to my quickly growing list of frauds and sell-outs.

This is an opinion piece. The views expressed in this article are those of just the author.