EPISODE 39: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN 9.23.22

THIS IS VICHY CNN

A-Block (1:37) SPECIAL COMMENT: Apropos of the Vichy CNN shake-up yesterday that saw Chris "Ate Paste" Licht reward Jake Tapper after he defended the "Special Master" ruling and attacked those on MSNBC who attacked CNN's biased analysis, and rewarded Alisyn Camerota for questioning whether what Ron DeSantis did to the asylum-seekers in Texas could really be kidnapping because they were treated so well by their rescuers in Martha's Vineyard, let's look again at the beginning. When Licht fired Brian Stelter and cancelled "Reliable Sources," we didn't know he had also already fired John Harwood. When I knew him at MSNBC, Licht was Joe Scarborough's hatchet-man. And now he's John Malone's. This... is Vichy CNN.

B-Block (19:57) SPECIAL COMMENT: Would that it were exclusive to CNN. It's not. Every news outlet in the country has had "the" meeting: 'If this country goes fully fascist, how do we protect our profits?' The meetings began at MSNBC in 2006 - and they have never stopped. I told that story in the first episode of this series and it's worth revisiting it in the context of the collapse in the only ratings measurement that counts in television: viewers aged 25-54. These ratings at MSNBC, CNN, and Fox News are as low as they've been in 20 years, and MSNBC's newest show has settled in nicely into last place in prime time in the category. The fear of offending Right Wingers will kill the profits of cable news long before fascist oppression can.

C-Block (38:38) SPECIAL COMMENT: With a little perspective, the obsession of CNN and other right wing media with the presence of two marines in the background of President Biden's Philadelphia speech about the threat posed by MAGA-Republicans, seems ridiculous and futile. EVERYTHING they've done since has served merely to prove that the president was right; contrast what Biden said in Philadelphia to the Q-Anon references and Q-Muzak and mass fascist salutes and stochastic calls to violence that Trump presented in Youngstown.

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