The Right Monkey At the Right Anchor Desk At the Right Time:

Every once in a while, in the mire and muck and shit that comprise the news networks, someone takes a stand and says and/or does something honorable. No, this isn't about Keith Olbermann, who is going at the story of our fucked up election process with the savagery and tightened jaws of a police dog on a trespassing black teenager, actually behaving like a newsman, in that he believes in the public's right to know. But we'll spend some more time with Keith at a later date.



This time, the Rude Pundit is referring to Olbermann's MSNBC host, Dan Abrams. Generally, Abrams' show is filthy with Laci and Kobe. Sure, it is a program about "legal issues," but, really, and, c'mon, let's be honest: it's a chance to focus in on gratuitously over-reported crimes and exploit them to the hilt. Except when it isn't. In a rare moment of - dare the word be spoken? - integrity, Abrams took a moment from polling us about what we would have named Laci's dead fetus and addressed the subject of punditry in his "Closing Argument" editorial this past Tuesday. Said Abrams, "I'm so tired of hearing lawyers on TV saying something like, while all the talking heads and pundits were saying X, I was saying Y. And what are you? Are you not a talking head or a pundit? We see the same thing from news hosts and analysts, members of the media who attack the—quote—'elite media', the amorphous unidentified evil doing symbol of debauchery and bias."



Then, in a slam at Fox "News" hosts Bill O'Reilly, Sean Hannity, and others, Abrams explained, "When you hear a media figure attack or snidely remark about the elite media, ask yourself, is this person really part of the blue-collar media? Is his or her salary about what mine is? Can he or she really understand what I have to endure or is this just a faux populist charade? Most of the time it is an effort by some to pretend that they are different, that they are just average Joes fighting for the little guy. It's like a lifelong politician accusing his or her opponent of engaging in politics as usual." Abrams ended with, "I regularly criticize certain lawyers and TV hosts, but I don't try to pretend that I'm not one of them. I'm going to be straight about it. I'm a member of the media and I'm a lawyer, two of the most hated professions around. I am what I am."



Every once in a while, you look into the cage at the zoo, and some random baboon has taken its own shit and used it to draw something that Picasso would be proud of. You can pause and admire for a moment, but, in the end, it is just a monkey and a turd.