All the President's Lies

Tonight, Keith Olbermann again entered the fray of the "I did; he didn't" joust between Bush and Clinton about their respective efforts to prevent terrorism. His purpose was to compare the Bush team's assertions that Clinton didn't act to prevent, and had no plan in place to combat, the growing terrorist threat to the historical record. And to this viewers delight, he delivered another KO, point by painful point, informing us of Clinton's corroborated, documented, repeated efforts to somehow get the incoming Bush administration to take the threat of Osama bin Laden seriously.

I sometimes ask myself why Keith Olbermann is so effective. I think it may be the fact that he is willing and able to sift through the actual record, and not just the spun record. For some reason, he, unlike so many of his colleagues, is able to wade through the flood of information to get to the truth. For some reason, he is willing to honor his viewers by presenting them with the details of that truth. For some reason he doesn't treat them as if they are too stupid and too disinterested to care. For some fool reason, he acts as though we might give a damn.