Let us this Thanksgiving week honor the biggest turkey in American media. And let us thank the Lord that most media progressives are as bird-brained as today’s honoree.
The winner of 2007’s Tinsel Turkey Award as the year’s most foolish media personality is MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann. Congratulations, Keith!
Competition for this award was fierce, with deserving morons across the political spectrum doing their worst to pollute the airwaves with pomposity and stupidity.
But Mr. Olbermann distinguished himself by combining the highest levels of ego, arrogance, ignorance, error and partisan imbalance in all of broadcasting.
If Keith Olbermann were even 1 percent as smart as he thinks he is, he would outshine Einstein.
A typical example of his Olbermannic egomania aired on his weeknight show “Countdown” on Friday, Nov. 16: “When did Jesus Christ die? Do not ask our winner in tonight’s Worst Person competition . . .” teased Olbermann, as he prepared yet again to denigrate his favorite target — the bashing of whom has become Keith’s multimillion dollar ratings meal ticket — Fox News Channel star Bill O’Reilly.
O’Reilly, declared Olbermann, “blasts secular progressives and makes fun of people who slip up on biblical knowledge. [O’Reilly] made a Bible reference himself: ‘Go to Revelation in the Bible and look at the predictions for the end of the world. This was written, what? 5,000 years ago?’”
Olbermann continued, patronizingly addressing Bill O’Reilly in these words: “Let me go through this slowly for you. The revelation in the Book of Revelation was said to have been written by John of Patmos after an angel came to see him with these revelations from Jesus — Christ. Jesus Christ, Bill.
“Now he was supposed to have died roughly 2,007 years ago, which is where we got the number on the calendar. The calendar thing with the years on it. A.D. anno Domini, year of our Lord. You know, dated to the death of [Jesus Christ].”
Olbermann’s voice trailed off, a usual part of his schtick pretending that Bill O’Reilly is simply too stupid to understand Olbermann’s brilliant explanations, no matter how slowly or demeaningly they are spoken.
Let’s, as postmodern leftists say, “deconstruct” Keith Olbermann’s claims and logic to appreciate how his overweening ignorance won the Tinsel Turkey Award.
John of Patmos was not inspired primarily by an angel. John indicated that his inspiration was a direct vision of Christ. But, to give Keith the benefit of the doubt, Revelation does include visions of angels and information from them. This was not Mr. Olbermann’s worst faux pas.
The most bizarre thing in Keith Olbermann’s snide attack is that, from first to last, it clearly indicated that O’Reilly was ignorant for not knowing that this year, 2007, represents the number of years since Jesus Christ was put to death on the cross . . . a count of years from the day Jesus died.
Keith, let me go through this slowly for you.
The Christian calendar marks its beginning, the great dividing line in human history — A.D., anno Domini, the year of our Lord — from the moment that God “became flesh and dwelt among us” in the human form of Jesus.
The year of our Lord, Keith, refers to the year of Jesus’ birth, not his death.
Christians, Keith, believe that Jesus was born in Bethlehem approximately 33 years before his death on a Roman cross outside the walls of Jerusalem.
Which is to say, according to the Western calendar, Jesus died approximately 1,974 years ago, not as you believe roughly 2,007 years ago.
And Christians on Easter celebrate not Jesus’ death, but Christ’s resurrection that scripture says happened three days later.
Keith, as usual you’ve displayed breathtaking ignorance.
But were you right in suggesting that Bill O’Reilly was wrong? In a word, no.
Bill O’Reilly, as you reenacted him, tossed off questions asking whether the Book of Revelation was written 5,000 years ago. But odd and off-base as this number is, we technically cannot call O’Reilly wrong.
Why? As its resident star-scientist Carl Sagan could have explained to you when you attended Cornell, lowest vine of the Ivy League (which, as a privileged loony-left kid from Westchester, you probably chose because it is known as “Big Red”), simple questions may imply but rarely assert factuality. Therefore simple statements in the interrogative mode — questions — are almost never “wrong.” E.g., “Could it be that this footprint is evidence that Bigfoot exists?”
It’s like Sen. Hillary Clinton avoiding direct answers in debates.
But, Keith, Bill O’Reilly’s inflection made clear that he himself was asking questions about whether the Book of Revelation “was written, what? 5,000 years ago?”
By contrast, Keith, in your eagerness to play "gotcha" and show off your purportedly superior knowledge by ridiculing Bill O’Reilly, you led with a question — “When did Jesus die?” — but then answered by saying that Jesus is “supposed to have died roughly 2,007 years ago.”
“Supposed” by whom? Certainly not by any Christian theologian, nor by any secular cultural historian.
Or, given your usual slippery and imprecise use of the English language, did you mean that Jesus deserved to die, that he had it coming, that it was supposed to happen?
Unlike Bill O’Reilly’s interrogative mode of speech, Keith, you made a direct assertion of fact that is wrong, an assertion that clearly evinces your ignorance of the very basis, the starting point, for the entire Western calendar.
Keith, you apparently do not even know what in the history of the Western calendar is the event that separated A.D. from B.C., “before Christ.”
Jesus Christ, Keith.
Or do you prefer the secular-progressive calendar that also designates this year as 2007 but uses alternative terms to avoid any acknowledgement of Jesus Christ: B.C.E., “before the common era,” and C.E., “common era?”
Recently you had the integrity to include yourself among your “Worst Persons in the World” for making a factual error. It’s time to do so again, and to apologize to Bill O’Reilly.
Congratulations, Keith, on your richly-deserved Tinsel Turkey Award. Happy Thanksgiving.
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