Last updated on February 9th, 2013 at 06:54 am
Keith Olbermann returned to network television today and shredded the Republican attack on President Obama for eating dog meat as a child.
Here is the video from ABC’s This Week:
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Olbermann said, “Well, first off it is the proverbial man bites dog story coming to pass finally. But when you think about this every time a Republican is accused of something the strategy has been for the last five, ten years to try to find something that is similar to it, or contains the same keyword such as dog. Something that will instantaneously neuter and counter effect…but you’re point is where I am going. It is now one week, and it whatever you find, and almost every point that is made on one side must be countered with something similar on the other. This admission by the president that he ate dog meat as a child is in a book that he published in 1995. There has been no umbrage about this for sixteen or seventeen years, and the question then becomes if you want to go back to the next round of this, were Republicans pro dog meat eating until they discovered this clip in the book? It raises the level of absurdity to something exponential, and George’s point is exactly right. With so many valuable questions going on, we’re wasting most of time dealing with the dogs.”
Keith Olbermann was the only person on the panel to bring up that this is part of the Republican strategy. When a Republican has a problem like Mitt Romney has with women, dogs, or any other issue, they don’t confront the issue, or explain it. Instead, their strategy is to find something that a Democrat may be nothing like what they did, but they link them together in the most tenuous of ways in order to claim that both sides do it.
Notice that the conservative response on the panel was to blame the media for spreading the information that they gave them. They create the false equivalency then blame the media for spreading their talking point. Does anyone really believe that Barack Obama eating dog meat as a child is the same thing as an adult Mitt Romney engaging in animal cruelty? It’s not, but Republicans know that the lazy mainstream media won’t care.
Republicans are trying to muddy the waters with distraction politics. They would rather talk about President Obama eating dog meat as a child than Mitt Romney. Truth be told, they would rather talk about anything other than Mitt Romney. The more they talk about Mitt Romney, the more likely it becomes that they will lose the election. These trivial issues aren’t put out there by the left. They are part of a broader Republican strategy to avoid talking about the issues.
It was nice to hear a few minutes of an actual progressive voice on one of the always conservatively biased Sunday morning shows. It should be noted that the panel Olbermann was on was composed of three Republicans and two Democrats, which is the standard breakdown for the Sunday morning shows. It was nice to see Keith Olbermann back on television, and it was even nicer to see the Republicans get called out for their absurd distractions.
Jason is the managing editor. He is also a White House Press Pool and a Congressional correspondent for PoliticusUSA. Jason has a Bachelor’s Degree in Political Science. His graduate work focused on public policy, with a specialization in social reform movements.
Awards and Professional Memberships
Member of the Society of Professional Journalists and The American Political Science Association
